shokwave comments on Narrow your answer space - Less Wrong
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I'd support that. I think I once suggested something similar, adding a Crocker's Rules bit. What I'm wondering, though, is what levels of politeness would then become expected toward people who choose not to set the "I can handle criticism"/Crocker's Rules bit. Right now, any such norms are informal and implicit, to the extent that they exist at all, but if we added an option allowing people to explicitly accept bluntness, it seems like we'd need to clarify what the norm should be for people who don't enable that option: whether not setting that bit should be taken as "please do not be blunt to this person", or "please be polite to this person unless it's seriously impeding communication", or "just use normal social discretion, if you have any", etc.
If the option was left in the preferences menu (roughly where the anti-kibitzer is kept) I expect a small minority (about one in ten posters) to actually flip the Crocker bit. I actually think the level of politeness expected towards people who do turn on Crocker's Rules will be more interesting: there is a mentality that translates "politeness required: 0" into "politeness required: arbitrarily large negative number" ("no need to be polite" -> "be extremely rude"), and I think there's a nonzero chance of that mentality being present on LW.
Yeah, I've thought of that. If such a feature were to be added, it would probably be good to try to preempt that effect (and other possible problems) with a "The proper use of Crocker's Rules" post, so people will at least be mindful of those pitfalls in advance.