How to handle Code of Conduct violations?

OK, so, actual suggestions:

  • No vague “Multiple people have violated the Code of Conduct here. Do not talk about this going forward.” warnings. Be clear about what was a problem and why. Uninvolved people are not going to hunt through five pages of posts in an administrative forum just to find out what exactly was wrong; what they are going to take away is what is in the thread, and what they will probably take away is “both sides are wrong,” regardless of whether this was the moderator’s intention. This is particularly a problem for threads that are likely to be read by non-regulars. Keep in mind how a person just stumbling onto the thread, via Google or wherever, might interpret it.

  • While well-intentioned, the suggestion that people just “not reply” to violations is, quite frankly, horrifying. Not replying to violations doesn’t make them go away. It isolates people. It tells them that whatever violations happen, they can do nothing about, nor can they expect anyone else to do it. In this way it’s worse than saying “shut up and take it”; it’s saying “shut up and take it, and I’ll make sure nobody is going to help you.” Again, keep in mind what a reader might think. They will see a comment that no one has any objection to. (This was my biggest problem with the comp gag rule, incidentally. But in this case it’s like the gag rule extends to everyone, except of course whoever made the offending post in the first place.)

  • Warnings in private messages are also tacit acceptances. A reader won’t see whether people have been warned. And while it is nice to think people might listen to them and change their behavior, warnings are in reality more likely to cause them to escalate it.

  • As far as people responding to threads elsewhere – if people decide the Code of Conduct is too restrictive for whatever they want to say in a discussion they are participating in, and they say it in another trafficked public forum, that doesn’t exonerate them from having said it, and it is unrealistic to expect it to go unread. I don’t, obviously, think this dynamic is good for discussion. Nor do I think “I want to say nasty things and the Code of Conduct won’t let me!” is equivalent to “For my personal safety, I do not want to post on a forum with connections to GG” (source: page 8 and on, https://intfiction.org/t/code-of-conduct-community-standards/7467/1)