[tpeo]

I did read the article, thank you.

What I meant is that I find it unlikely that in such a group there would even be a strong moral reaction to any issue in the first place. I don't know about the extropian mailing list, but take LessWrong members, for instance. They are quite shameless about the topics they choose. And they're not much given to non-cognitive criticism either (e.g. calling someone an ass). So calling on "Crocker's rules" would be just redundant.

What is the point of ignoring something that doesn't happen?

Edit: On the other hand, it relies on the assumption that there's a trade-off between civility and informativeness which just might not be there.

[inimino]

There's a spectrum of people and opinions in any discussion. Why would you think it doesn't happen?

Second, your use of charged language (amoral, appalling, shameless) demonstrates why rational discussions can be difficult on sensitive topics.

Just talking about talking about them you are already sounding rather judgmental.

[Taek]

Establishing a culture of following those rules is important to getting mailing lists that can sustain such discussion productively.

Calling Crocker's Rules exposes people to the expectations and reminds them what are striving to achieve, assuming that they are indeed trying follow the rules but got caught in the moment, which happens to most of us.