This strikes me as having some potentially adverse consequences. Although you suggest a possible extension to positive adjectives in the addendum, I am skeptical that this would be workable as a community norm. So I’ll focus on the main proposal here.
I submit that it’s generally undesirable in a truthseeking community to make negative evaluations more difficult or costly to express than positive ones. This is likely to tilt the field in favor of the latter. And there are already some nudges to skew positive—both psychological (e.g., many people would rather avoid conflict) and structural (e.g., being positive is generally a better strategy in life for winning friends and influence). There are, of course, other social circumstances in which slanting the field toward positive feedback is desirable.
As others have implied, a Forum post is often intended to express a view about the nature of reality (~ a judgment) to third parties. To the extent there is “winning,” the theory of change of such a post is that third parties update their views in a way that more closely tracks the way things are. That theory of change is harder to accomplish if one refrains from expressing a view about the nature of reality. And I don’t think phrasing things as “I feel this model is badly flawed” would help things—the reader understands that this is equivalent to a claim that the model is badly flawed.
That’s not intended as a broader criticism of NVC, a topic on which I have no general opinion. But it does strike me as emphasizing ends like meeting participants’ emotional needs and maintaining relationships rather than being focused on community truthseeking. I’m not someone who thinks that community norms should always maximize truthseeking over all other relevant considerations, but it is a rather important consideration (especially in the context of criticism of something with millions of page views, YouTube video views, etc.).
This strikes me as having some potentially adverse consequences. Although you suggest a possible extension to positive adjectives in the addendum, I am skeptical that this would be workable as a community norm. So I’ll focus on the main proposal here.
I submit that it’s generally undesirable in a truthseeking community to make negative evaluations more difficult or costly to express than positive ones. This is likely to tilt the field in favor of the latter. And there are already some nudges to skew positive—both psychological (e.g., many people would rather avoid conflict) and structural (e.g., being positive is generally a better strategy in life for winning friends and influence). There are, of course, other social circumstances in which slanting the field toward positive feedback is desirable.
As others have implied, a Forum post is often intended to express a view about the nature of reality (~ a judgment) to third parties. To the extent there is “winning,” the theory of change of such a post is that third parties update their views in a way that more closely tracks the way things are. That theory of change is harder to accomplish if one refrains from expressing a view about the nature of reality. And I don’t think phrasing things as “I feel this model is badly flawed” would help things—the reader understands that this is equivalent to a claim that the model is badly flawed.
That’s not intended as a broader criticism of NVC, a topic on which I have no general opinion. But it does strike me as emphasizing ends like meeting participants’ emotional needs and maintaining relationships rather than being focused on community truthseeking. I’m not someone who thinks that community norms should always maximize truthseeking over all other relevant considerations, but it is a rather important consideration (especially in the context of criticism of something with millions of page views, YouTube video views, etc.).