Changes highlighted in italics:
- Instance rules apply.
- [New] Be reasonable, constructive, and conductive to discussion.
- [Updated] Stay on-topic, specially for more divisive subjects. Avoid unnecessarily mentioning topics and individuals prone to derail the discussion.
- [Updated] Post sources whenever reasonable to do so. And when sharing links to paywalled content, provide either a short summary of the content or a freely accessible archive link.
- Avoid crack theories and pseudoscientific claims.
- Have fun!
What I’m looking for is constructive criticism for those rules. In special for the updated rule #3.
Thank you!
EDIT: feedback seems overwhelmingly positive, so I’m implementing the changes now. Feel free to use this thread for any sort of metadiscussion you want. Thank you all for the feedback!
Are comedic posts still going to be allowed? I looked through the community and saw a couple. I suppose they are covered by rule 5?
You mean stuff like this, right?
This sort of stuff is mildly discouraged. People are probably better off sharing it in !linguistics_humor@sh.itjust.works instead. But as long as there’s some room for genuine discussion or info sharing about language, I won’t remove it. Because, yes, rule 5 (nobody likes “stop having fun!!1one” style e-jannies).
Note that neither @fossilesque@mander.xyz nor me are too strict on the rules. For example I’d rather tell users “don’t do this” than to temp-ban users.
Thank you for bringing this up!
Avoid crack theories and pseudoscientific claims.
Aww but I love talking about Altaic!
Nowadays Altaic is a discredited hypothesis, but I wouldn’t consider it a crack theory or pseudoscience. So there’s still some room to talk about it, within discretion.
If I said the variant of the Altaic hypothesis that includes Korean, can it be classed as a crack theory?
Okay Starostin, now you’re going too far. :)
I’m joking. Seriously, it depends a lot on how you approach it. Macro-Altaic is heavily controversial, not supported by linguistic and/or genetic evidence, but it is not blatantly false. So it should be fine to talk about it, or even propose that it might be true, as long as there’s no attempt to disguise it as incontestable truth or scientific consensus.
Here’s some examples of things I’d consider crack theories, and remove accordingly:
- Obnoxious and insistent claims that English is Romance, Romanian is Slavic, Japanese is Sinitic etc., even in the light of evidence contrariwise
- Claims that all languages are a degenerated version of Hebrew, Sanskrit or ULTRAFRENCH
- Crappy Proto-World reconstructions that make no attempt whatsoever to use the comparative method correctly
The problem of those isn’t just that they’re discredited; they’re blatantly false and/or grossly disregard proper scientific methodology.
