Toward a comprehensive set of expectations for commenters

I made a joke on Twitter earlier about how a lot of Internet commenters might fail a Turing test.

Ha ha, but there’s a a sad truth in the joke. I’ve written about comments before, but one thing I’ve been trying to figure out is what expectations we should have for our commenters. I’m not talking rules here: most sites already have plenty of rules about what we will and won’t allow. Rather, I’m talking about the kind of behavior we WANT our commenters to engage in, rather than the behavior we DON’T WANT them to engage in.

Clay Shirky talks about this at length in his essay: A Group is its Own Worst Enemy.

And we do need to empower members of the community to create their own standards; this isn’t just our community. But it is useful to set a baseline. How about:

• Be civil. Don’t say things to someone or about someone that you wouldn’t say in their presence.
• Be honest. That means more than just not lying, it also covers half-truths and evasions.
• Be yourself. If you post as an anonymous coward then we won’t take you nearly as seriously as if you’re clearly a real person.
• Add value to the comment threads you take part in. Look at blogs like Gizmodo and Jalopnik. They have well-informed, generally useful comments. There’s some level of idiocy, and that’s OK. Sometimes it’s even entertaining. But it’s not nearly as bad as it would be on, say, Digg. One of the reason the commenters behave is the judicious use of the ban hammer and that might not be the model we want to use, but it does work.
• When you’re being provocative, do it for reason. Rather than writing things for shock value, try to enlighten and inform your fellow commentariat.
• Tread lightly. Some threads feel like a barroom, while others feel like a church. Be mindful of those tones, and don’t disrupt them needlessly.
• Lastly, another don’t: Don’t be a troll. Nuff said.

So what would you add to these expectations? Am I being overzealous on some of these?