Anyone ever heard of, or follow, Crocker's Rules?

Tyber · Apr 11, 2023

I had never heard of this until recently.

Quote:
Declaring yourself to be operating by "Crocker's Rules" means that other people are allowed to optimize their messages for information, not for being nice to you. Crocker's Rules means that you have accepted full responsibility for the operation of your own mind — if you're offended, it's your fault. Anyone is allowed to call you a moron and claim to be doing you a favor. (Which, in point of fact, they would be. One of the big problems with this culture is that everyone's afraid to tell you you're wrong, or they think they have to dance around it.) Two people using Crocker's Rules should be able to communicate all relevant information in the minimum amount of time, without paraphrasing or social formatting. Obviously, don't declare yourself to be operating by Crocker's Rules unless you have that kind of mental discipline.
Note that Crocker's Rules does not mean you can insult people; it means that other people don't have to worry about whether they are insulting you. Crocker's Rules are a discipline, not a privilege. Furthermore, taking advantage of Crocker's Rules does not imply reciprocity. How could it? Crocker's Rules are something you do for yourself, to maximize information received — not something you grit your teeth over and do as a favor.

The guy that came up with it, Lee Daniel Crocker, is a very interesting dude.

Lee Daniel Crocker (born 3 July 1963) is an American computer programmer and poker player, most famous for rewriting the software upon which Wikipedia runs to address scalability problems; originally known as "Phase III" this became the foundation of what is now called MediaWiki.

He was involved in the creation of the GIF, JPEG, and PNG image file formats, and appears as a co-author of the PNG specification.

This type of guy is why America is awesome. He could be a programmer in Russia, but not a free thinker. He probably couldn't even exist in China.

More interesting info about him at links below. He's into some interesting stuff.

Lee Daniel Crocker - Wikiquote

en.wikiquote.org