A couple of thoughts:
1) How about, in addition to a 'like' button, a 'disagree ... but moving on' button?
I think in many cases it is felt that to not reply to critique or misrepresentation is to risk creating an impression that you've conceded the point.
2) Perhaps there could be a mechanism to flag a thread as teetering on the edge of descend into toxicity. Instead of taking it down, when someone navigates to it a such a thread, they might see a fullscreen:
'WARNING: moderators have flagged that this thread may not represent the community's ideals of 'musicians helping musicians' at their best. Do you still wish to proceed?"
In less extreme case, maybe require all posters to check a box reading "I have read and understand the ideal of 'musician helping musicians' of this forum. In more extreme cases perhaps a moderator could make it mandatory to watch a certain Britney Spears video before every post.
3) I wonder if it would be possible to build into the community standards a principle of:
'prioritize the substantive over the combative'
The problem with certain recent threads isn't that they were worthless and toxic, but rather that ~20% of the content actually was extremely valuable (not least, ~80% exchanges between Hans and Daniel). If it were merely toxic threads, I would have happily ignored it and thought no more about it. But there was really, really good stuff there.
(Although, if I might respectfully disagree with Daniel, I think that, on certain recent threads, if you take all the mean things people were saying about Daniel alone, then this absolutely falls into what I consider "toxic.")
I see a dynamic that contributes to creating these 'death spirals of combativeness' as going something like this:
Suppose someone says something with potential for, lets say, strong disagreement. You might reasonably expect to get, say, 5 responses and while 4 of them might be substantive, one will be inevitably be combative.
But it's the combative one - disproportionally - that gets responded to first, while all substantive ones get - disproportionately - ignored. Perhaps this is because reputation is the currency of the internet, or perhaps its something endemic to human discourse as a whole. But not only does it happen, but rewards people who write combatively in that they get responded to more often.
And there is clearly a dynamic where combative exchanges multiply more quickly that the substantive ones (And there's something like a principle of entropy at work here somewhere, in the sense that its always easier to burn a something down than to construct it).
So here is one place where I wonder if a 'disagree ... but moving on' button (or some similar mechanism) might mitigate the need for excessive defensive replies, and maybe even disincentivize combative posts in the first place.
The general principle underlying all of this is that by introducing a number of small speed bumps working to slow the dynamics of the 'death spiral of combativeness', you might, in aggregate, encourage a more substantive and less combative environment.
On most of the internet I'd say that such ideas are hopelessly naive. But as has been pointed out, this is *far* from the most toxic corner of the internet.
4) I'd also like to just put it out there that if you take a slightly more theoretical view of the nature of the medium we're talking about here, there's a good argument that given the dynamics of the evolution of the internet, we should expect that the pressures towards toxicity are only going intensify in the foreseeable future.
The war on toxicity in new media has been an arms race raging already for some decades. And it's an arms race that I'd argue, we, as a society, are collectively loosing rather badly.
So its worth taking the topic seriously. And there's a significant literature on the phenomenon throughout the disciplines of media studies, literary studies, interaction design, human computer interaction, sociology, social psychology - and I've even seen reference to work in psychiatry that sounds perfectly relevant our current situation.
For instance, a touch of media/literary theory: I've been trying to argue (although at too great a length for anyone to actually read, I do realize) that a significant part of the dynamic of recent death spirals comes not from any individual, but in misunderstandings and tensions emerging between the traditional 'forum discussion' and the inherently more chaotic medium of youtube videos.
I really think a lot of recent unpleasantness came from people on both sides interpreting content from one medium and/or genre through the social conventions of another.
5) New rule:
@Rctec is allowed to call anyone he wants a twat. Personally, I'd love to be able to say Hans Zimmer called me a twat. I just don't see any downside in allowing this. I'd also like to extend the same courtesy to John Williams, if he happens to be around.
