The Official Rules of PersonalityCafe (which includes INFP Forum and forum for other personality types): http://personalitycafe.com/misc.php?do=showrules
The official rule that governs the forums in PersonalityCafe is quite a concise one. It reminds users tp hold responsibility for any content they had post on the forums, and if there is any objectionable message including “obscene, vulgar, sexually-oriented, hateful, threatening, or otherwise violative of any laws” information posted, it might be remove or edit by the owner of PersonalityCafe.
Negative Examples (and what I will do)
#1. A member posted a thread asking if anyone know anything about Immigration Laws because a friend of him/her got some visa problems. I tried to read the messages in this thread again and again but still could not find anything related to personality types in the discussions. However, one INFP member and one member with unknown personality replied to the post in very friendly tones, and it was neither closed nor moved to other forums. It does seems strange to me because 99% of the threads in this forum are discussing issues or topics related to INFP personality type, and since there is a “Cafe Lounge” area including “General Chat” forum and “Advice Center” forum in PersonalityCafe, moving this thread to either place will be more appropriate and will help the author get more useful answers. A suggestive report by any other users in this forum should be encouraged, and of course, a warmly message to the author explaining why the thread should be moved to other forums is indispensable as well. Maybe like what is mentioned in How Oversight Improves Member-Maintained Communities, “oversight increased both the quantity and quality of contribution while reducing antisocial behaviour, and peers were as effective at oversight as experts.” Though there are no antisocial behaviour involved in this case, a peer oversight seems to work more effective as well. Besides, my personal opinion will be even the author is an INFP type does not simply mean that all of his/her topics should be putted in this forum.
#2. The second example is one that made me feel insulted somehow. It initially started with a message encouraging the guys in this forum to discuss what is a “woman”. After 53 replies, the thread was closed. Apparently, some members thought that there was a sense of Sexism in some replies, and then quarrel began. Interestingly, a thread alike this one called Ladies, what is a “man” also existed in this forum. And it seems like a coincidence that there are also 53 replies, but it was neither closed, nor there were any aggressive words. I won’t say it is because women users are more moderate, but I will say that the admins did the right thing by closing the thread that contains words that are considered “obscene, vulgar, sexually-oriented” by certain group of people. Besides, there was this member named “tuna” who was very active in the debate, almost like a rogue user to me, not because he is actually “violating the community’s rules or spirit”, but because he is acting in a overaggressive way.
#3. For the third example, I’m sure it is not a post violating any of the official rules, neither it is offensive to anyone. The author posted a same poem twice in the forum, and asked the admin to remove one of it to avoid clutter. This seems like a typical technical mistake that anyone could made when posting, and it could be handled more effectively when the author can reported the mistake by him/herself. Unfortunately, the extra post was not removed or closed by the admin, maybe because the author just left that “ask for delete” message in the post and the admin didn’t see it at all. Although this is a simpler case comparing to others, I’m surprised that it wasn’t handled well. However, if the author can directly report to or request from the admin by mail or on-site message, there might be better results. Besides, when I saw a poem posted, it just reminds me of that caricature of an Artiste with a pink flower, who is fond of posting a poem. Although our poem here was not posted “in the midst of battle”, I’m still not sure if it is appropriate for the INFP Forum because it seems to have little relation with the forum, even the author is a INFP. Also, I will consider this a self-aware behavior since the author was trying to get some kind of emotional social support from the forum. Accordingly, the member’s site participation was increased, but the problem is there weren’t many replies. So does it mean other members are not interested at a topic like this? Should they report a post like this if they think it’s not something they expected from a forum? Maybe yes, let’s also have peer oversight here and leave the admins to decide. (To me, the answer is better move it to another forum)
Five “Unwritten Rules”
First of all, I think the most obvious unwritten rule is that any message that is not related to the topic of being an INFP personality will be inappropriate for the INFP forum, and this rule is applicable to the ENTP Forum, ISFJ Forum, or ESFP Forum as well.
Second, the admins will tend to move or close threads discussing technical problems, even if it is about this forum. There was this case when a member was asking if there is a chat room for the INFPs, and after the admin posted his reply, the thread was closed.
Third, if a flame war was started, a big chance the thread would be closed.
Then, I guess members should mentioned it if anything they post is is transferred from another forum or anything that has been published elsewhere.
At last, even not written, this rule will be important in both offline and online environments: one should always act polite, and show respect to others when in a community.
In general, I have to say there aren’t many post REALLY violating the official rules by posting any information that is “obscene, vulgar, sexually-oriented, hateful, threatening, or otherwise violative of any laws” in the INFP Forum. Can we attribute this to the fact that INFPs are peaceful people and the atmosphere of this forum is warm and supportive? Maybe. Anyhow, the majority of the posts that should be removed or moved is just because they are inappropriate for this forum but will suit another forum in PersonalityCafe by far.
Reference:
Cosley, Dan, Dan Frankowski, Sara Kiesler, Loren Terveen, John Riedl (2005). How Oversight Improves Member-Maintained Communities. CHI 2005, April 2-7 2005, Portland, Oregon.
Kollock, Peter and Marc Smith (1994). Managing the Virtual Commons: Cooperation and Conflict in Computer Communities. In: Susan Herring (ed.), Computer-Mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social, and Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 109-128.
Gazan, Rich (2009). When Online Communities Become Self-Aware. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.
Gazan, Rich (2007). Understanding the Rogue User. In: Diane Nahl and Dania Bilal, eds. Information & Emotion: The Emergent Affective Paradigm in Information Behavior Research and Theory. Medford, New Jersey: Information Today, 177-185.
Reed, Mike (no date). Flame Warriors. http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/index.htm
I am really enjoying reading our classmate's "unwritten rules." I especially like your rule about being polite and respectful. I wish more people would follow this in real life.
ReplyDeleteI also like the connection you made between the lack of egregious rule violators and the nature of the INFP community, I think you explained that perfectly.
I agree mernie, reading the unwritten rules is interesting. In a conversation, it would appear slightly rude to abruptly change the topic, but most people would accommodate the offender and respond courteously. Some folks must think that they have a captive audience, so what the heck...
ReplyDeletein the case of duplicate posting, does the user have the ability the delete it on their own? perhaps thats another reason why the moderators did not respond to the message.
ReplyDeleteas for stray threads, is there a flagging capability that would raise attention to the moderators about something off? this is aside from the nice messages posted within the off-topic thread.
in general, as you pointed out, these cases are a rare few compared to the majority of postings as this is an INFP thread full of warm and peaceful people :)
Interesting post, as always!
ReplyDeleteI'm particularly interested in the point you make about the "personality type" of this forum being one factor to consider for the relative lack of official rule violations. I wonder if a more extroverted personality type forum would contain more?
Good stuff to think about.
Now on to the final projects! Let's go!
I think you summed up the likely reason for the relatively few and minor transgressions, when you have a community of introverts the type of behavior discussed in the Dibbell article is relatively rare. For the final project, it is possible to approach this basic question from the other side--are there unwritten rules that, if followed, tend to result in a more positive experience for the participants. I don't just mean on the level of "be nice," but for example you might look for any evidence of a time when someone contradicted or challenged another poster, but the interaction overall was conducted in a positive, informative way. It's reasonable to imagine that a completely conflict-free community might be seen as fake and antiseptic. If you can identify and mine those types of interactions, it might lead to better understanding of how to generate useful interactions outside of an environment of total support and acceptance.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the above comments that it is usually in the nature of INFPs to avoid conflict and to actually be skilled in diffusing such situations. I looked it up, and one site states that INFPs tend to stand back a little to observe a conflict first, to see all sides of the issue, before intervening to get at the root of it. It is interesting to look at the M-B types under stress, there should be tons of stuff out there on this topic; sometimes I see it as the strongest indicator of one's own type.
ReplyDeleteI really like the unwritten rules that you made. They could and should be applied to all forums to promote a good environment for all of the users. The only exception to this would be a site like 4chan. Your 3rd example was interesting because I have seen this type of issue always dealt with correctly in other forums. Perhaps the admins just didn't see the message, as you mentioned, or there just isn't enough admins to monitor the forum.
ReplyDeleteIt’s very good to know that you picked a possible reason for moderators rarely removing posts causing serious violations, but most of them are removed for being off-topic because of the unique characteristics of users of the INFP forum. I think the moderators should understand their users and create features to control the forum appropriately. Since many users in the INFP forum behave politely, I also agree that peer oversight can deal with users who post off-topic comments or feedback, rather than enforcement such as removing posts without notice.
ReplyDelete> First of all, I think the most obvious unwritten rule is that any message that is not related to the topic of being an INFP personality will be inappropriate for the INFP forum, and this rule is applicable to the ENTP Forum, ISFJ Forum, or ESFP Forum as well.
ReplyDeleteI included the first unwritten rule of yours in my post as well: any unrelated threads are tend to be removed. I notice that popular OCs are inclined to impose this rule more straightly since they can afford a large deduction of threads. For not-so-popular OCs, however, they might be more concerned about hurting the feels of their users and hence tolerant these activities. Another reason could be a lack of administration.