Welcome to my page about rules. It is about the philosophy, ethics, and morality, if interpreting and enforcing rules, as well as the logic, of rules.
Preface:
This is actually not a page based upon or influenced by Wikipedia. As you look at my nick, it is based on a place far more corrupt than Wikipedia.
This article is useful if you are someone that wants to start your own community on the Internet, particularly a chat room or a forum message board, and you want some base guideline on ethical rules to enforce.
Of course, if I find anything in Wikipedia that violates the below, I would be on their case. However, since this was not written for or about Wikipedia, some these are actually incompatible with Wikipedia. However, I modified them so that the principles can apply in Wikipedia.
Why you should trust me:
I know all about the problems of humanity. I know all about the flaws, the lies, the corruption and scandals of humans.
This is my area of expertise. I have 7 years of experience on IRC. I've experienced the worst kinds of scenarios and drama between admins and regular users. I came as a force of justice as a result of being bullied a lot on the Internet at age 13, where I was told to click on porn, learned a lot of bad words, etc.
I am actually very happy to have discovered Wikipedia, since Wikipedia is among the least corrupt (but large) place on the Internet.
The philosophy, ethics, morality, and logic of rules: enforcing them and making them.
Scenario: A jurisdiction where there are people who enforce rules and people who cannot enforce rules.
Examples of these scenarios include:
-A chatroom (IRC), where operators have complete power over non-ops.
-Message boards, where admins have complete power over non-admins.
-Wikipedia, same as above.
Examples where this is not the case.
-The criminal justice system.
Reason: police officers and courts have the ability to terminate your life, just as much as you can terminate theirs. They are not "immortal." However, in an Internet environment, it's possible for you to have 0 control over operators/administrators. Whereas in real life, you actually have physical power over police officers.
The philosophy, logic, and ethics of rules.
Usually 2 ways this can be done:
-Lists of things you should do.
-Lists of thing you should not do.
That is, when such and such happens.
However, there are 2 lesser-important stuff not really covered. They are.
Op/admin discretion, and temporary bans.
Apparently, anything discretion is life. There's police discretion, judge discretion, etc. Not many points making a typical Internet-place perfect when the world isn't anyways, but that's no excuse not to.
Part 1 - The philosophies.
1.Pragmatism is not ethical.
Pragmatism is the doctrine that people/admins should do whatever works. The problem with this doctrine is that we cannot determine what works and what does not until we have a standard of value for comparing them. Once we have a standard of value their is no further question of what we 'should' do. Thus pragmatism is not a system of ethics because it does not tell us what to value and that is the role of ethics.
2.Admins and rules.
I see 2 philosophies when involving admins and rules.
They are.
1.Admins are someone who can enforce the rules and cannot break them.
2.Admins are someone who can enforce the rules and can break them.
Therefore, there are 2 possible reasons why you want someone to be an admin:
1.So they can enforce rules.
Or.
2.So they can enforce rules and not be bound by it.
(Should we bother listing other possible possibilities?).
3.Bans and unbans are equally important.
The importance of an unban is proportional to the importance of setting that ban in the 1st place. Therefore, if the ban wasn't important, then the unban was equally not important.
Think about it - how can an unban be worth more than a ban? Or even, the other way around? If a ban was 'so' controversial to begin with - then the unban is just as controversial.
Note: Why is this included? This actually does not apply to Wikipedia. On IRC, I wrote a script (or computer program), that notified the instant the unbanned people were unbanned from chatrooms by chatroom operators. And in some cases, this actually pissed the operators off, because the unbanned users could join right after receiving my notice. I obviously argue that if they don't want unbanned users to come back, then don't unban them. Wikipedia does not have this problem because the admins actually mention the block duration. And then, Wikipedia has no problem when unblocked users come back..
4.In order to enforce a rule, there has to be evidence where rules are broken.
An example of this is.
The user who got banned by an admin goes "Prove to me I broke a rule," where prove = show evidence. And the admin responds "Prove to me you didn't break a rule, and I'll unban."
The problem with this is the burden of proof goes on the user. It is impossible in these situations to prove something you didn't do. Therefore, the burden of proof should be on the admin.
Therefore, if the admin has no evidence that a person broke a rule, he should not ban someone for breaking a rule he does not have evidence of.
4b.Bans should be in reference to time.
This quite simply means, we don't ban people for something they will do in the future. Mainly because there is no accurate way of knowing that. Unbelievably as it sounds, this situation can be a common problem. This is similar to, "I'll ban people for what they [i]can[/i] do." But we don't ban people for what they [i]can[/i] do, we ban people for what they [i]do[/i] do.
5.Bans set by other admins.
A common problem is going to a different admin regarding a ban set by a different admin. The general guideline:
"Going to admin B when you get banned by admin A."
Well - if the place was run by rational staff, then it shouldn't matter which admin to go to regarding a ban.
A general thing that goes in most jurisdictions are "each admin is responsible for their own bans." This means, the only people that unban bans are the 1's who set the ban to begin with. And this works pretty damn well for places with inconsistent rules.
So I disagree with it - because the fact that admin B cannot unban a ban set by channel op A quite simply means there are no rational standards on justifying whether a ban is set or not. This also leaves room for certain admins to abuse - and get away with it.
6.Regarding rules, this is not a popularity contest.
This means certain people are exempt from rules because they are more "liked." Or people that build a reputation. The problem with this is the equal opportunity crap. You're giving 1 person a better chance to not ban him then you wouldn't have for someone else. The fact that an admin dislikes you, is no encouragement that he will not look for a case where he wouldn't have done the same to someone he [i]did[/i] like.
The problem with this is: if you're not liked, then you will be given the disadvantage of the doubt, and rules can be enforced stricter on you.
Well, this system could work, assuming everyone was given that equal opportunity.
7.Jurisdictions.
This means rules are only enforced to places within its jurisdction. A ban should not be as a result of something that happened outside the jurisdiction.
A classic example of this case is where you got banned by an admin for breaking a rule in another jurisdiction, and that admin was an admin on both jurisdictions, but decided to ban you everywhere where he was an admin
8.Ban evasions.
8a."The ban for a ban evasion should not be greater than the original ban."
Quite simply, if someone did something that resulted in a 2-minute ban, and that person evaded it, and it just so happens that for that channel, channel ban evasion is a 1-year ban, then, whenever that person evaded the ban for a year would instantly be banned until the year is over.
Clearly I find that illogical, mainly for the fact that I'm against channel ban evasion bans to begin with. Contrarily, I also take into consideration the time reference. Supposed within the 2-minute ban, the victim evaded and evaded. But then, when the original 2-minute ban is over, well then, all bans that came as a result of that now-non-existant ban is by default to be meaningless.
8b."If the original ban that lead to all the ban-evasion bans is removed, then all the ban-evasion bans should also be removed."
An example of this is when you ban someone for a week, and they evaded their ban. After the week is up, and their original ban is removed, then no doubt, their ban evasion ban should also be removed.
Other ban evasion.
Of course, I'm against ban evasion rules in general. The reason mainly being you can lie and say you are ban evading, and then, you might be banned for it.
I'm against ban evasion for this following scenario which I'm against:
When asked whether you broke a rule or not, you can tell the truth and say you didn't. Then nothing will
happen.
When asked whether you broke a rule or not, you can tell the truth and say yes, you did break a rule. Then
the admins will ban you.
When asked whether you broke a rule or not, you can lie and say yes, I did break a rule. Then the admins
will ban you.
When asked whether you broke a rule or not, you can lie and say no, I did not break a rule. And if the
admins weren't testing you, then they won't ban you.
Looking at the above, this means the admins will ban you if you lied about telling the truth when you didn't break a rule. But if you told the truth that you did break a rule, they're still going to ban you.
That's a small reason why I'm also against ban evasion rules.
This goes back to, when enforcing a rule, 1 must be certain that 1 broke a channel rule. If you cannot be certain that someone broke a rule, then, there is a probability that you will break a rule and wrongfully ban the person - and that's a risk I'm not willing to take.
9.Forcing people to get along is a nice alternative.
This is probably best explained as an example:
I once joined a network where I knew most of the users from another network. But 1 admin there hated me - he banned me for no reason at will. Everyday. Another admin, that actually liked me, decided to do something about it. He made me an admin. That way - I can no longer be banned, as admins can't ban each other. And the other admin was to deal with it.
Luckily, Wikipedia does not have this problem.
The above story I am sort of against - I believe it is an alternate possibility. But quite frankly, I believe people should work around together so the above does not happen.
10.The Golden Rule.
Here's a scenario:
Suppose there were 2 brothers, brother A, and brother B. Both brother A and brother B hate each other. Both of them hang in #channel. Both of them want to be admin in there. Both of them do not want to be banned.
Suppose brother A becomes admin. He will ban brother B.
Suppose brother B becomes admin. He will ban brother A.
I'm completely against this situation - because it violates the Golden Rule (the do unto others thing).
/* Additional stuff */
Part 2 - unethical rules.
All of the above makes sense if rules are just. However, the above can't imply if there are unfair rules.
11.Examples of unethical rules to enforce.
-Any rules based on the premise of faith.
-Any rules to screw people over.
-Contradicting rules.
Specific examples of unethical rules to enforce.
"Do not argue with the admins." "Do not piss the admins off."
The reason where I am against the "do not argue with the admins" thing allows no priviledge for a user to logically argue or rationally debate about rules, such as discussing discussing the intent of a rule. However, this conversation ends when the user cannot logically argue about the rules, so that, the conversation is already over.
The reason where I am against the "do not piss the admins off" thing is because I find getting pissed off to be a flawed and illogical expression. However, this is more based on an emotional appeal than a logical appeal. I would obviously argue that in order to conclude anything specific, should be discussed in situations in a more specific level. I've written pages and pages about this on my IRC-version of unfair rules that I didn't copy and paste here. Most of the time, though, this borders with another rule which I'm against, particularly the "ban anyone for any reason" rule and "no rational standards."
Of course, I'm also against this because I believe any system should be able to accept legit criticism.
Examples of bad ban reasons.
"Because I can."
"Because I can" is another illogical argument. To say 1 will do something because 1 can do something, does not distinguish between what 1 wants to do and what 1 doesn't want to do when 1 can do.
"Cuz I said so.
"Because I said so" is another illogical argument, because it does not distinguish between what 1 does when 1 said so and what 1 does when 1 doesn't say so.
"Life isn't fair."
The "life isn't fair" reason is pretty redundant, from a subjective point of view.
Because it doesn't distinguish between purposely leaving life unfair, and trying to improve. I could do considerable damage to someone, and use the "life is not fair" excuse, but that doesn't justify my doing.
"Life isn't fair," - what is that supposed to mean? Life in the individual level? Or for the universe? How does 1 know life isn't fair? I think people who say "life isn't fair" apparently don't view both sides of the story.
Other specific examples of rules that shouldn't exist.
-Age limit.
-Control of outside jurisdictions.
I'm obviously against age limit rules because that would violate the "must have proof of rule being broken." Someone could ie about their age in order to not break a rule. Now, suppose such a rule came with an enforcement that everyone must provide a standard proof of their age. Then that would be fair. But that certainly might discriminate against those whom cannot provide proof of their age (such as a homeless).
An example of the 2nd 1 is, suppose you're in #ChatRoom1 and you joined #ChatRoom2. And #ChatRoom1 says you must leave #ChatRoom2 or they will ban you from #ChatRoom1. Examples of this could be... #Democrat and #Republican, or #Christian and #Atheist. I'm against this also for the fact that the 2 opposing jurisdictions are against each other in principle, but still not a good reason not to take it on the individual level. The 2nd reason I'm against this is that there is no accurate way of knowing who are in the outside channels without breaking this rule itself, which is a contradiction.
Part 3 - unethical arguments.
List of counter-arguments.
Usually when you debate with someone, you want to be on the winning (+) side, and not, on the neutrality side.
Therefore, having a 0 is neither winning nor losing (or both). Which is why, you can avoid using arguments that have counter arguments of the equal and opposite validity.
"Any admin can ban you for any reason."
Same as "any regular user can evade any ban for any reason."
"I don't need a reason to ban you."
"I don't need a reason to evade your ban."
"Stop evading your bans."
"Stop banning me."
But of course, if you enjoy having "tied" arguments, you can use the above listed.
Sufface:
This whole article sums up that there must be rational standards in enforcing and making rules.
This article was inspired by: my life story. Everything essentially, was based on a true story.
I will accept any and all kinds of criticism to this. As well as clarifications. Post them on this discussion page. If you do so and I don't respond, look at my contributions history page - I should not purposely ignore you, so leave a note on my talk or e-mail me if I don't reply.