Personal Mantra- De-escalate (just passed 700 witness votes)

The Minnow Support Project is exceptionally awesome. We've had intense growth, a ton of projects, and I'm literally listening to msp-waves radio right now. WE HAVE OUR OWN RADIO STATION!!! That's amazing!

It isn't all amazing

So, there have been a handful of occasions where I've publicly intervened in a conversation in general to help squash troll like behavior. The Discord Channel is called Peace, Abundance, and Liberty. We don't have a lot of rules. Keep General pretty cool. No porn. Don't flame or doxx people. Pretty simple

Some people just want to watch the world burn

You know with 4000 people we haven't really seen that many trolls. I can count them on one hand still. One is now pretty good active community members. I get some people that tell me PALnet is the best internet community they've been on. I have others that say they dealt with trolls in their community every day. We've been extremely fortunate to be this big and have this few trolls. So, what do you do when you have someone that basically just wants to pick a fight? My suggestion is to de-escalate the situation.

In all things, from moderating the channel, to working on steemit, to business, to family, and marriage, I tend to think the answer is to de-escalate. It's a commitment to it really. In all things deescalate. Usually it involves a customer service voice.

Thank you for registering your complaint. I'm sorry you experienced that. yes, I hear your concern. That's very sad and thank you for sharing. By the way, we have community standards around here. Everyone in the community is welcome here, but they have to abide by some very low guidelines. Can you agree to abide by these?

That's it. Then dead silence. I've even been known to remove posts that "break the ice" because I want the ice. Anything that represents a potential acknowledgement is usually enough to get going again and get life back on track. I've tried escalation in another approach, and almost immediately regretted it. I don't think that's the way to go. Peace and de-escalation. Those are the options that I think work in this platform and in life in general.

If people aren't able to agree to general terms and state that publicly then it's pretty easy to ask them to leave at that point. they've admitted they won't follow the rules, which are very low bar, so it's on them to realize that's why they aren't welcome. So, far it seems to be working.

So, for MSP mods and community members

Here's my suggestion to create peace. Whenever given the choice between escalating a conflict and de-escalating a conflict do everything in your power to de-escalate while holding your ground.