Perhaps we need a numerical scale of politeness, from +10 to -10. Up at +10 the speaker sometimes fails at being a good friend by not speaking up when they should, for fear of being rude, and other times fails at speaking up because their necessary disapproval is phrased in such excruciating polite terms that it is mistaken for approval. Meanwhile -10 is the kind of vulgar abuse whose real aim is to sever a social connection that is no longer desired. Zero is an all-business neutrality, poised between being cold and brusque (at -1) and respectful of the listener's lack of time and need for boiled-down, to-the-point critique (at +1)
If "Hey, this is pretty good!" is a lie (the speaker thinks it pretty bad, but is trying hard to be polite) then a = +8
b = +4
If "It's badly written." is understood as including some actionable hints on how to improve the writing c = +2. If negative judgments lack the kind of explanations that point to how to improve the writing c = -2
d = -9
My thought is that when some-one declares Crocker's rules the outcome that they are hoping for is that politeness gets dialed down from +9 to +3. I think it would be rude to ignore this and carry on at +9.
Perhaps when jmmcd writes "I'm still going to attempt to be polite." his main point is that it is important to keep ones sharp tongue in its scabbard and not go negative. And since it is easy to come across as 3 points less polite than one intends his practical advice is to respond to Crocker's rules but still stay above +3, to avoid accidentally going negative.
We might be in complete agreement.
It's worth noting explicitly here that the zero-point isn't global.
That is, if you are operating at +10 politeness relative to my baseline as a listener, I may be unable to figure out that your "excruciating polite" disapproval is actually disapproval; but the exact same behavior might communicate perfectly clearly to someone else whose baseline is 8 (relative to whom you would be operating at +2) and might be so rude as to inhibit clear communication for Sam down the street, whose baseline is 17 (relative to whom you would be operating at -7).
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?