# Does civilized discourse entail tone policing?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-civilized-discourse-entail-tone-policing/50039
**Category:** Community Building
**Created:** [12 سبتمبر 2016، 9:22م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-civilized-discourse-entail-tone-policing/50039 "2016-09-12T21:22:37Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Mittineague](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mittineague)
#### Post date: [13 سبتمبر 2016، 4:57م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-civilized-discourse-entail-tone-policing/50039/21 "2016-09-13T16:57:06Z")
> [@Rob\_Nicholson](#):
>
> Is this an example of where tone policing was used to shutdown a heated debate
My take is the topic was _not_ much of a debate. IMHO if the discussion contained posts suggesting improvements, how to use a plugin to enhance the editor, or maybe a PR on how to replace it, then the topic would have some merit. But the “discussion” devolved into a series of complaints without anything constructive being offered.
Ultimately it is up to a forums Admins to decide what kind of Community they want. Personally I have no problem with topic discussions that are going nowhere being Closed either here or in other forums. I also feel that the ideal place for people to “vent” is on their blog not a forum.
---
### Author:  [@Rob\_Nicholson](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Rob_Nicholson)
#### Post date: [13 سبتمبر 2016، 5:18م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-civilized-discourse-entail-tone-policing/50039/22 "2016-09-13T17:18:46Z")
> [@Mittineague](#):
>
> But the “discussion” devolved into a series of complaints without anything constructive being offered.
But isn’t that what the criticism about tone policing is about? Complaints are often associated with anger? There was no attempt made to try and turn it into a debate or to try to understand _why_ there is so much emotion? This phrase is new to me entirely and we use the exact wording about keeping it civil in our Facebook T&C - first time I’ve thought that anger in a post shouldn’t be suppressed.
---
### Author:  [@Mittineague](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mittineague)
#### Post date: [13 سبتمبر 2016، 5:31م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-civilized-discourse-entail-tone-policing/50039/23 "2016-09-13T17:31:16Z")
> [@Rob\_Nicholson](#):
>
> There was no attempt made to try and turn it into a debate
You missed this in the last post?
> Flag to reopen after festivus is over.
If anyone feels the discussion can be resumed the option to do so is there.
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [13 سبتمبر 2016، 9:53م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-civilized-discourse-entail-tone-policing/50039/24 "2016-09-13T21:53:06Z")
> [@Rob\_Nicholson](#):
>
> The four moderators usually have a chat via private message about what to do with the thread.
A good plan. It is healthy to make team decisions on moderation, [as I covered here](https://meta.discourse.org/t/some-recommendations-for-difficult-moderator-situations/47574).
As for your other example, there are things that for both technical and philosophical reasons, we don’t want to do in Discourse. For example, people frequently request a “let me spam blast email everyone who signed up on the forum” feature, and we won’t build it. If they are unhappy with that decision, this is 100% free open source software, so they are free to fork the project or build a plugin – but it doesn’t mean we need to host the discussion for that fork / plugin, either 😉
[Previous page](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-civilized-discourse-entail-tone-policing/50039.md?page=1)