TL;DR: Don't go into chat without thinking about the other side.

Don't be a Sith.

I've never been particularly involved in politics. Sure, my age is a major factor in that, but I consider myself pretty well-read in what's going on in the world - outside my house, my state, and even my country. And in years past, I had stances on some issues, and some that I felt strongly about, and the few times when I talked about politics to someone - anyone, online or offline - I was able to rein myself in if the conversation got heated. I was able to think of it as a difference of opinion, so to speak, a discussion based on relative points on view.

This past year, what with the various things politicians have been doing, I found myself taking a much stronger stand on issues, in real life. I talked about issues, and when I got heated with someone, I started to justify it by thinking, I'm right, this position is right, and my opponent is absolutely wrong. I started to view things in absolutes. But as Obi-Wan tells us, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes."¹

I was better online, at first in part because I knew that as a mod, I kind of had to. There's no way you can justify enforcing a policy if you violate it yourself. So I watched my tongue, bit back one or two things I was tempted to say that would have been unwise to type, and tried to deal with issues as they came up (that's the great thing about chat - you have time to think before you press Enter). And I realized that there's absolutely no point in discussing something if you're unwilling to see the other side. It's a waste of everyone's time.

The problem was, I saw the same thing in other users. In other people. Some spoke as if they were dealing in absolutes, and they were right and everyone else was wrong. Can I judge them? Maybe not. I felt the same way, at times. But I held it back.

In 2017, a new bunch of American politicians are going to take the stage, and bring the country - and the world - in new directions. Love 'em, hate 'em, they're probably going to rile you ('you' as in you the reader, not 'you' as in Shog9) up a wee bit. And you may want to share your opinion online, on Stack Exchange, in chat. Any you may think that there is absolutely no way, no way, no way on Earth that someone could be so pigheaded as to disagree with you.

But before you do that, please talk to someone who disagrees with you. You know, an actual human being who has thoughts and feelings and emotions and hopes and dreams (avoid the spambots), preferably face-to-face. Do not go into a chat room and try to talk politics without knowing about what folks who disagree with you think.

Because as Randall Munroe has taught us all, there's a human being on the other side of that screen, and trust me, they may feel the same way you do: So secure in their convictions and beliefs, and ready to bash anyone who disagrees - like you. And if you understand why they disagree with you, and why they think what they do, and why they might have a valid point, your conversations in chat will be much more productive.

This isn't to say that you can't disagree with these people, and tell them that you disagree. Talking to those on the other side hasn't changed my own opinions about the controversial issues in question. It's still a bit frustrating, and sometimes I still don't agree with their logic. But I find that it lowers the overall sense of antagonism.

It's a lot easy to respect those who disagree if you already respect at least one of them.

Be prepared.

Now, let me say a thing or two on respect, because there have been a lot of comments on posts here that are effectively reduction ad absurdum attacks on Shog's premise. I think it boils down to what respect actually is.

In my view, respect is . . .

• Entering a room and not interrupting a conversation with your own ideas.
• Refraining from calling someone "stupid" or an "idiot", or saying that their position is "bull****".
• Not portraying the discussion as a good-vs.-evil debate, because that once again leads to absolutes. You're not Luke Skywalker taking on the Emperor here.
• Not flagging something just because you don't like it.

However, respect does not have to mean . . .

• Actually agreeing with what the other side says. You respect the person, not necessarily the ideas.
• Thinking that hate speech is allowable (it is not, and is the single greatest way to get a chat suspension faster than you can say "chat flag")

So let's all be clear on what Shog's actually asking for, and what I'm trying to defend (I think they're the same; I hope he'll correct me if they aren't). Don't complain that you should be allowed to insult people because "respect" implies you have to like what they say, the premise is therefore faulty, and you can ignore it. It doesn't, it isn't, and you can't.

It just means you don't walk into a room and start punching people - even if they aren't there yet.

^{1 Yes, that's an absolute in itself, but still.}

One of the problems with political discussion is that they tend to escalate to heated debate and eventually insults and personal attacks. In some cases, people may be offended enough to flag political messages, even if they read like mere parody or fall just short of offensive to the general audience.

I responded to two sets of flags on political messages on The Bridge, Arqade's main room, dismissing all of the flags as invalid. On review, at least some of the messages in question should have been deleted, though some still remain (and one was deemed okay by a local mod). Regardless of whether my decision to counterflag was correct or not, the fact that flags were being raised, even if only for political disagreement, indicates that the discussion was getting out of hand.

It's vital that we follow the Be Nice policy and not let political chat reach the point where people start to feel offended. If this continues, we could wind up with a blanket ban on political discussion altogether.

Nonetheless, it's important to flag content that you find is genuinely offensive. At the same time, it's just as important to not flag non-offensive, non-spam content that you simply disagree with.

This answer was completely rewritten due to fundamental issues with my original position.

I don't think this behavioral pattern is limited to politics at all.

Generally, in respectful discourse, it is unacceptable to denigrate others because of their opinion if you want to continue to have respectful discourse.

In my experience, Stack Exchange is one of the best places on the internet for respectful discourse. The level of maturity and relative absence of baseless mud slinging that's oh so common in other otherwise decent corners of the internet has been amazing and refreshing, especially in times like right before and after the american election, where basicly everywhere else on the internet was completly unbearable for a month.

So SE must be doing something very right for that.

There's two similar but very divergent views in discourse on a contentious issue

That viewpoint is wrong

Lots and lots of people are wrong on a great many things. This is neither new, nor uncommon. But, of late, there's been a growing move towards a more aggressive, and extreme, viewpoint of the "other side"

That viewpoint is dangerous

Now, some viewpoints are dangerous. Militant racism, as seen in the 1960s, is a sterling example (it's an easy example that few would disagree with). But we've taken to a new low of late, in which people are running around stating that certain viewpoints are not just wrong, but dangerous. Once you cross that line you stop listening to the other side. Or you ascribe some accepted dangerous viewpoint to the other person. Rational arguments then fall flat because, at best, you admit they might have a point, but it's negated by these other dangerous views (i.e. "We think they have this dangerous view on another issue, therefore anything they say about this issue is invalid").

The core problem is that we tend to not criticize our own ideas. So when others criticize them, it's easier to say "That's dangerous" than to put forth an argument why you think it's just wrong. Or, as Lifehouse put it, "Everybody talk, nobody listen". Stop assuming the worst in other people and a lot of the problem goes away, because you can listen to a person you think is simply wrong.

Isn't there a limit though?

If someone says 'You know, Hitler (yeah, Godwin's law...) had a point - maybe we would be better off without the Jews...'

The notion that I should somehow go 'Hmm, that's an interesting point of view. Have you considered that maybe genocide is a bad thing and we should avoid it?. But of course, you're free to think that, and I totally respect your anti-Semitism as a legitimate point of view...'seems somehow completely wrong...

My 2 cents: I largely agree with what Shog9 said and I'll add a different perspective, being a non-US citizen living in another country.

Premise

I don't use chat; not only on SE network. Maybe because I like to think to what I'm going to say to people who I don't know personally, and maybe because I'm not too young! :-)

I really prefer slower communication media over the Internet (mail, forums, Q&A threads like on SE network, etc.). This is because chat is a medium that tries to mimic the quickness of speech, but lacking all the meta-linguistic information that can avoid misunderstandings between two speakers talking to each other (body language, eye-contact, voice tone, etc.).

Even during phone calls, with no visual cue about the other speaker, our voice can convey some information about whether we are angry, joking, serious or whatever. Chat communication lacks all of that.

Ok, you may say, there are emoticons and other ways to express nuances in writing style. Compare:

You are a Sith!

You are a Sith! ;-)

You are a Sith! :-D

You are a Sith! :-P

You are a Sith! :-|

You are a Sith! :-(

You are a Sith! :-O

You are a Sith! >:-(

But the big difference is that all these means of putting emotional content into writing must be used consciously. I must remember to type an emoticon after an ambiguous sentence to convey the exact meaning. This, IMO, is easier in media that allow rethinking what you are going to "say" (write). In chat you (try to) type as you would speak, so you may forget to reread what you are saying and you could end up conveying something you didn't mean.

Moreover, given the rapidity with which the chat window scrolls up, especially in crowded and/or heated debates, you may also miss the chance of seeing that's you that said something that could have been misinterpreted, and so this is prone to misunderstanding escalation.

Usually this is not a big deal on subjects that aren't that emotional in themselves: if I say "Maxim chips are crap because of Maxim's customer service", this may lead to some discussion, but I doubt it would reach white heat. When talking about politics, or other intrinsically emotional topics, it's easy to "press the wrong button" and let a flame war begin.

Beyond all what I said before, I suspect (but I've not hard data to back this up) that that sort of escalation might be exacerbated when native English speakers are involved. Being used to communicate in their own language, they might be more prone to forgetting the linguistic barrier the medium represents.

As non-native speaker I always try to remember that a word that I may think is appropriate in a context may be misinterpreted in another (false friends and linguistic interference are always lurking!), and that cultural differences and backgrounds may make a perfectly acceptable (for me) word or sentence offensive.

BTW, it would be interesting to see if such escalations are effectively more common between native English speakers or not. Maybe SE has a quick way to determine that on the basis of the declared country of the users.

As I said, just my 5 eurocents. No easy solution here, but I hope this could be useful and provide some more insight in a different perspective.

I'll add one aspect that wasn't mentioned here yet, the whole chat flag system still sucks. Especially for the grey areas, messages that are not blatantly offensive, but more in the "not constructive" area.

If a regular user flags those, odds are it will end with a bunch of users from all across SE chat barging in and just adding their opinion. Some will argue that this isn't worthy of a flag, some with take sides in the discussion, others will complain that chat flags suck, and we'll have far more attention to a situation that would have been solved almost silently if it had happened in comments on the main site.

There is no good way to flag problematic, but not really offensive content. You don't always want to suspend the user, especially if they're not intentionally disruptive, the only thing you achieve there is pissing them off for no good reason.

Of course a better flag system won't solve the issue, but at least it wouldn't broadcast the drama across the entire SE chat and could help to deal a bit more efficiently with this kind of issue.

When faced with a quality problem with a subset of posts from a larger topic some people say, "I know, I'll make a dedicated place with it so that only people who care about that sort of stuff have to be exposed to it."

That is nice in that you just took the problem and moved it out of your backyard. It however does nothing to address, or actually harms, the quality issue. The dumpster fire is still there; you just moved it a few inches, where less moderators see it, and where people will start and get territorial — this is a politics room, this is a RealPolitics room, this is a TrumpSupporters room, this is a The_Donald room. This, combined with non-existent community management, is how Reddit wound up where it is.

Of course we do have community managers so if we do start going there you will be there to stop things from going sour. However, we moderators didn't sign up to moderate chat, let alone a 24/7 politics only rooms. I mean, obviously, a politics rooms would have to only discuss politics, unless I rename the Bridge's room to "Politics" and your proposed rule is technically met?

Besides, where does politics start and end? Is Trump's views on nukes politics? Probably. Is a discussion on Tesla's self driving trucks politics? Kinda. Is a discussion about game publishers and preorder bonuses politics? Technically. Will some people find unwelcome when someone start asking about using specifics pronouns for themselves? It's gender politics! Out of my safe space!

The Bridge has been specifically called out above and elsewhere for its politics talk. Guess what, videogames are art, and like art, videogames are deeply political, in plot, themes and/or mechanics. Do we have to stop talking videogames on the videogame chatroom? What does this mean for television.SE? What about politics.SE?

Should we point people complaining about uPlay, people who want a singular they for themselves to the Endless Clinton Trump 24/7 Warzone?

Or maybe we shouldn't have an Endless Clinton Trump 24/7 Warzone in the first place?

Maybe you think programming should be a politics-free zone, but you can't escape the reality that choosing to work in Silicon Valley, or for Oracle, is still a political statement with political ramifications. You think you can ignore politics, and then people picket at your bus stop on the way to work and your CEO is now in the Trump administration. WOW! "Keep your politics out of my codes!"

No can do.

I can understand if you didn't quite like the tone of the political discussion in non dedicated rooms, but I can also see dedicated rooms getting much much worse. After all, if a politics discussion is what you individually seek as you decide that you want to join a politics room, you probably have a bone to pick and a rant to write. You want a soapbox, a write-only space in which to vent.

If a politics discussion is something that you stumble upon in a room you're normally in, well, that's completely different. You didn't start the discussion, you didn't seek the discussion, the only thing holding you back is the Dogma that You Don't Politics Online Ever.

At the end of the day you can segregate politics away, but that won't really make The Bridge or any other place any more or less polarized, because the room has people in it and those people still hold those polarized views.

If I hold strong political views, I do BECAUSE I have made the mistake to talk to some people in the wrong context and pretty much lose hope in giving others the benefit of the doubt. Context is essential and politics only rooms do not provide adequate context.

I ran across this article a while back and I think it's a good set of rules/guidelines that is very relevant to this discussion.

We need to, as much as possible, take out the emotional response and get to the heart of the disagreement. If someone is wrong, you should be able to prove it through logic and/or facts. Calling people names and otherwise insulting them is what we are trying to avoid (here and elsewhere). This behavior doesn't prove anything other than you don't know how to defend your belief and/or prove a point.

The author provides an intro, part of which is quoted below.

If we're all going to be disagreeing more, we should be careful to do it well. What does it mean to disagree well? Most readers can tell the difference between mere name-calling and a carefully reasoned refutation, but I think it would help to put names on the intermediate stages. So here's an attempt at a disagreement hierarchy:

He then goes into the different levels of disagreement, provides examples and commentary. I found it an interesting read and I think discussion on the internet and elsewhere would be a lot more productive if we all (including me) followed these rules more successfully.

The part of this post that sits uneasy with me is that it's asking everyone to adjust their behaviour just because some don't know how to behave.

And that seems the wrong way 'round to me...

I understand that this sort of thing is a balance between managing the practicalities of every-day moderation and giving people the freedom to talk about what they want. Moderators have better things to do than jump from brushfire to brushfire.

But ... it still sits uneasy with me that now it's apparently required to "make a room for the topic" just to have a normal adult discussion about e.g. Brexit. I have no real answer at the ready to solve this better, but stuffing it in a dark corner doesn't seem like much of a solution to me...