A Rule of Life, and Online Participation: Be Kind
Amazing how simple it is; be kind. Advice you can get from most kindergraden children, yet adults need all sorts of complex rules for explaining what we should and should not do. Funny.
When I had the chance to meet with the President of my undergraduate university (Ryerson) to talk about leadership advice that was what I got. Be kind. It isn’t complicated, but it can be hard at times. President Levy didn’t give me a course worth of readings or a life text to follow, only those simple words to live by. I didn’t know if he was trying to be Yoda or couldn’t think of a better answer, but I keep seeing the truth in what he said.
A few weeks ago I was writing a chapter about professionalism online. There are some responsibilities professionals are obliged to follow, I would never deny that. However, after that it basically comes down to being nice. I came across Mashable’s community guidelines and they really re-enforced what the advice I previously had to give: be kind.
1. Personal Attacks: Please don’t engage in personal attacks (on authors, other users or any individual), persistent trolling or mindless abuse. The Mashable community should focus on intelligently discussing topics by furthering the conversation and informing the participants with resourceful and constructive ideas.
2. Hate speech: Racism, sexism and homophobia will not be tolerated.
3. Language and Threats: Please watch your language and respect other people’s views, beliefs and emotions. We reserve the right to remove any content that might be found extremely offensive or threatening.
4. No Spam: Spam and advertising content will be removed.
5. Smear Tactics: Although we acknowledge criticism of our articles and our writers, we will not allow misrepresentation. We will distinguish between constructive arguments and smear tactics.
6. Relevancy: Please keep conversations relevant. Off-topic comments are subject to removal in order to keep the thread on track.
7. Quality: We encourage you to take responsibility for the quality of the conversations in which you’re participating. Maintain intelligent discussions in the Mashable community by being respectful and considerate.
8. Help us: Maintain an inviting interaction space by self-policing threads and flagging spam. Although we have a hands-on approach to community engagement, we do sometimes miss problem commenters or trolls. We appreciate your efforts to keep the Mashable community environment inviting, insightful and constructive. Let the conversations be quality ones.
