As I understand it, Crocker's rules is not supposed to be a moral code or a way of life, but is a standard of etiquette. It's a protocol. Humans are great at inventing and applying (and also subverting) social protocols, but you have to choose the right tool for the job.
Further data points: a few centuries ago, it was the convention particularly in written communication to use what would now be regarded as ridiculously flowery language. But, as Samuel Johnson said:
My dear friend, clear your mind of cant. You may talk as other people do: you may say to a man, 'Sir, I am your most humble servant. You are not his most humble servant. You may say, 'These are sad times; it is a melancholy thing to be reserved to such times." You don't mind the times. You tell a man, "I am sorry you had such bad weather the last day of your journey, and were so much wet." You don't care six-pence whether he was wet or dry. You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in Society; but don't think foolishly.
Within rigid conventions of extreme politeness, people can still figure out ways to be extremely rude when they want to be. At least one writer has suggested that Isaac Newton's famous quote about seeing further than other men "by standing on the shoulders of giants" was a veiled attack on Robert Hooke for being short. These days, British MPs are capable of expressing extreme contempt about Right Honourable Gentlemen in the opposition.
On the other side of the spectrum, Tom Wolfe has written that one of the main features of the secret Skull and Bones society at Yale was to engage in criticism sessions that were somewhere between Crocker's rules and hazing:
At Yale the students on the outside wondered for 80 years what went on inside the fabled secret senior societies, such as Skull and Bones. On Thursday nights one would see the secret society members walking silently and single file, in black flannel suits, white shirts, and black knit ties with gold pins on them, toward their great Greek Revival temples on the campus, buildings whose mystery was doubled by the fact that they had no windows. What in the name of God or Mammon went on in those 30-odd Thursday nights during the senior years of these happy few? What went on was... lemon sessions!—a regularly scheduled series of lemon sessions, just like the ones that occurred informally in girls' finishing schools.
In the girls' schools these lemon sessions tended to take place at random in nights when a dozen or so girls might end up in someone's dormitory room. One girl would become "it," and the others would light into her personality, pulling it to pieces to analyze every defect... her spitefulness, her awkwardness, her bad breath, embarrassing clothes, ridiculous laugh, her suck-up fawning, latent lesbianism, or whatever. The poor creature might be reduced to tears. She might blurt out the most terrible confessions, hatreds, and primordial fears. But, it was presumed, she would be the stronger for it afterward. She would be on her way toward a new personality. Likewise, in the secret societies: They held lemon sessions for boys. Is masturbation your problem? Out with the truth, you weenie! And Thursday night after Thursday night the awful truths would out, as he who was It stood up before them and answered the most horrible questions. Yes! I do it! I whack whack whack it! I'm afraid of women! I'm afraid of you! And I get my shirts at Rosenberg's instead of Press! (Oh, you dreary turkey, you wet smack, you little shit!)... But out of the fire and the heap of ashes would come a better man, a brother, of good blood and good bone, for the American race guerrière.
At least one writer has suggested that Isaac Newton's famous quote about seeing further than other men "by standing on the shoulders of giants" was a veiled attack on Robert Hooke for being short.
Seems unlikely. Wikipedia says that the famous quote was in a letter to Hooke himself, and with the full context it sounds like a true compliment:
..."What Des-Cartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, & especially in taking ye colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen further it is by standing
Recently I've been considering declaring Crocker's Rules. The wiki page and source document don't suggest any particular time limit or training period, and also don't provide any empirical results of testing it, positive or negative. It sounds good in theory, but how does it affect people in the real world?
It seems like an "obviously cool" idea but the risk to one's reputation is worth taking into consideration. If it is clear that the risk is low, and if the value to be gained is clearly very high, we should probably be doing more to encourage it as an explicit norm.
On the other hand, if it is just one of those ideas that sounds better in theory than it is in practice (because the theory does not correctly model reality), or is just yet another signaling game with a net negative value, that is worth knowing as well.
I haven't seen anyone argue against Crocker's Rules or claim it ruined their life, so my estimation is that the risk is low (although there is a small sample size to start with). Also, I have seen at least one statement from lukeprog implying that it has been instrumental in triggering updates during live conversations he has observed, indicating that the value is high (though its causal role is not firmly established in that example).
Does anyone have further data points to add?