Can we please correct the "bad words" mistake in policy?

Question

I do not find this to be helpful at all, and it is the direct result of Bad Policy having bad side effects. Here is the commment chain.

I've edited out "frame challenge" because policy is not to signal that since it is too jargony. – Rubiksmoose 5 hours ago

@Rubiksmoose - Good to know. In general should I still be indicating that I'm breaking away from the premise, or are we just dropping that habit altogether? – Alex 5 hours ago

Excellent question, I think that the best policy is just to signal it with more colloquial language, but signalling itself still is good. (That is just my impression so I could be wrong) – Rubiksmoose 5 hours ago

If the real world, in real life, and in real work places, when you make bad 'policy' you open the door for petty bureaucrats and poor mid-level managers to use it as a hammer for no good reason, because it happens to be there lying around. I think most of us have run into this at least once in our real lives.

That is the dynamic that is going on here with the ill-advised "initiative" to try to ban the perfectly useful term, frame challenge, which has in fact a meta to define it. In this case, a sincere and helpful user is falling into the trap that mid-level managers and bureaucrats fall into time and again with "it's that rules ... really" when in fact is was bad policy to begin with. It can happen to any of us, and IMO this user was set up by Bad Policy to be moved to make this comment.

There is no value added in exchanges like this. Can we please not villify the use of the term frame challenge? I objected to the policy then, and I am objecting to it again. The term is useful, and we have a meta that explains what it is.

Answer 1

It is not policy to avoid the term "frame challenge" on mainsite. At most it's a mild recommendation to avoid it for the sake of quality, since it's jargon opaque to the reader, and a crutch for the writer that helps them avoid remembering to make their full case for challenging the/an assumption of the question.

I'd be the first to recommend avoiding the term in a mainsite answer, but also the first to remind that avoidance is not policy.

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I also agree that we generally don't need yet more rules.

Since it's human to err, we'll always have instances of misinterpretations, especially among newer users. Giving guidance and mentorship is part of the role more longer-term users can serve on the site. Especially with newer users who are engaged with meta discussions enough that they can err on advice or policy details, it's good to recognise that the impulse behind it is wanting to help. If we can offer correction while encouraging that impulse, that's ideal.

There isn't anything we can really do to ensure perfect understanding across the whole userbase, so that community effort to guide each other is the most effective real solution to misunderstandings.

We can also amend meta posts when there are misunderstandings. I think that my answer about avoiding using “frame challenge” on mainsite was clear enough on being a recommendation, but evidence to the contrary, so I'm going to amend it to say explicitly that the answer isn't anywhere saying that a ban is useful.

Answer 2

I think that nothing needs to be changed from the way it is concerning the treatment of "frame challenge" terminology.

SevenSidedDie's post correctly explains that the post in question does not say, nor is there any site policy that says that "frame challenge" is not allowed.

So, obviously I made a mistake in making the edit and in how I interpreted and instructed others in the issue. I don't feel like anybody is blaming me or anything but I wanted to briefly address how that mistake happened and why that leads me to think that nothing needs to be changed.

"I've made a huge mistake"

I was told at some point by another user not to use the term (I honestly don't remember when, where, or in what way it was phrased) and linked to the meta, which I did indeed read. However, I filed that away mistakenly in my brain as "site policy says this is bad" without actually questioning whether that was, in fact, true (even after reading the meta article several times after). I'll chalk it up to reading it with preconceived notions.

I've been learning a lot about the way the site functions the last 3 months that I've been active and, in an effort to help, have started to try to help and to educate newer users to learn the things that I have learned.

However, I obviously overstepped what I actually knew and ended up being called out and corrected by more experienced members.

Educating new users

I don't see that as a mistake or a problem with the meta post talking about "frame challenge" terminology or the mods or site policy or anything/anybody else. In fact, I see this as a case where the site is operating correctly. I did something that was incorrect, and more experienced members called me out and helped me understand my mistake.

I'm not sure there is any way the site could have preempted my error because it was a case of preconceived notions on my part; I did not know what I did not know. It takes an instance of actually making a mistake and getting corrected to learn it correctly. And so I have.

In the same way, I learned how to correctly format headers by having mods correct my first several answers. I'm still learning and observing how duplicate questions are handled from more experienced people.

So, I think things are fine just the way they are. Or, at least, I cannot think of any way in which they could be improved at this point.