Stay on topic

[sqbr]

In any place on the internet where multiple people get together to talk (forums, communities, or even the comments to a blog post) there are going to be rules of communication. As I discussed in my Freedom of speech doesn't mean what you think it does post, the owners and maintainers of these spaces have a right to expect you to follow those rules, whether it be no posting pictures, no swearing, or no straying from the given topic. You should always check the rules of the place you're posting to before posting: these should be laid out in the "About"/userinfo etc section. (If they're not then you should try to rely on commonsense and hope for the best)

These rules tend to be pretty straightforward and easy to follow, but the one that can cause some issues is "Stay on topic", since the definition of "on topic" can be quite ambiguous. I'm going to start from the obvious and work my way to the more difficult cases, since I think this makes the basic principle more clear.

It's worth mentioning that this post is mainly about being in conversation with strangers. Friends will tend to be a lot more forgiving. And even with strangers there's usually a certain amount of leeway. These are more the general rules you should start from in principle.

First off, the simplest situation is when you're talking in a specific conversation on a particular topic, either in the comments to a particular blog post or inside a particular topic on a forum or bulletin board etc. In this case it's pretty simple: stick to the topic, and if you want to start an off-topic conversation then it's probably best to start a new topic or post and maybe link back to it.

More difficult is when you want to talk to the same people about a topic which is against the overall theme of the blog or forum etc (I'm going to use "community" from now on but I mean all of these places). On the whole, unless there's an "Off topic" section, if it's against the rules, don't do it. Find some other more appropriate place to talk to the same or similar people, or find some way to make what you want to say fit the rules.

I'd stop there but a LOT of people have trouble with this in practice, so I'm going to go into some examples.

There are many communities on the internet designed for discussing a particular topic. If you go off topic, people will become justifiably annoyed, even if they might like your post if you posted it somewhere more appropriate. It doesn't matter how "objectively" good your post is: if it's off topic, it's bad.

To give an example, the main reason I was inspired to become a moderator at webcomics was to stop people posting fanart. It's not that I don't like fanart, but it's not webcomics and it was taking over the community. If I wanted to see fanart, I would have joined fanart.

Some communities are designed for people with a particular point of view to post on a particular topic. In such cases not only should posts be on topic, but they should match the POV of the community. For example, if you post to cosmopolitan_xo with a rant about how terrible the magazine is (or vice versa for kissmyass_cosmo) people will get justifiably annoyed, not because Cosmo readers are particularly narrow-minded, but because it goes against the purpose of the community. It's possible that exactly the same people would be fine with your post if they encountered it at a general magazine discussion community (and if you want to post such a rant and have Cosmo readers respond, that would be the place to do it)

Finally, there are communities designed for a particular group of people. There may or may not be a set topic, but overall the posts and comments are expected to come from the POV of the members of the given group. People from outside the group may be allowed to join, but are expected to try to fit in. This can be subtle, since if you're not in the group you may not realise how different your POV is, and it may even overlap with some members of the group in a lot of ways.

For example, it would be entirely on topic for an australian to post about the football grand final to aussielj. It would be rude and off-topic for an american to post about the Superbowl. It might be ok for an american to post about the Grand Final unless they asked a bunch of questions that assumed the reader was familiar with the Superbowl and thought gridiorn was way better than aussie rules.

All of this goes double if this is a minority opinion/group etc (just talking in terms of numbers). In this case the members of the group will be constantly inundated by people/opinions etc which go against them, and probably have to constantly work to stop their community being taken over by the mainstream/majority. Not because the mainstream is necessarily maliciously trying to take over, but just because of the sheer weight of numbers. In this case they really do have to stop any off-topic etc posts, no matter how well meant or otherwise valid. (See, for example, the way hpcomics has been taken over by HP fanart, of which there is a lot more made)

This all goes triple if it's an oppressed minority (or oppressed non-minority like women) Such groups live in a society which is strongly geared to discounting and silencing their voices, and have very few places they can be themselves. It's very very easy for people outside the group to perpetuate their oppression by silencing their voices on the internet, even if they don't mean to. This is not to say you can't get into conversations with or disagree with members of these groups, but don't do it in their communities.

So in short, don't post:

• Fanart to fancomics
  
• Anti-Cosmo rants to cosmopolitan_xo
  
• Superbowl discussion to aussielj
  
• Anti-feminist rants to feminist
  

The place for these posts is either your own blog/site etc or a more appropriate community.

The one exception, I suppose, is when you feel that the very existence of that community is an affront to everything you hold dear and you feel the need to confront it's members directly (like an "I love Nazis" community) But keep in mind that you are guaranteed to immediately alienate everyone by posting something against the community ethos, even those who might otherwise have listened to what you have to say, so it's probably the worst way to try to really engage with those people and should only be used if you genuinely don't think they deserve any respect at all.

This post was written as part of my General principles of internet communication.

Comments

[alias_sqbr]

Ha, yeah I guess that's the flipside to the coin: just because you are in the target demographic of a community and so have certain things in common with the other members, don't expect them to have anything in common with you in other areas.

Wow, those are some in-depth rules! They do bullet points and clarifications even more than I do, I like it :)