The Application of Forgiveness in Social System Design

Summary:
Asimina Vasalou, Adam Joinson (both University of Bath), and Jens Riegelsberger (Google, Ltd., U.K.) are interested in applying the concept of "forgiveness" to social systems. Online communities offer many ways to control bad users, such as bans, ratings, and filters. The problem arises when good users have a lapse in judgement or make an honest mistake, and are reprimanded for it just like intentional abusers of the community. To prevent lasting harm, the authors suggest a system for social networks and communities that promotes forgiveness for people who would normally have a high record or popularity.

The authors define forgiveness as follows:

"Forgiveness is the victim’s prosocial change towards the offender as s/he replaces these initial negative motivations with positive motivations."

They then list and briefly detail seven factors that can help victims move beyond an offense (I won't go into detail, but you can read about it!). These factors are Offense Severity, Intent, Apology, Reparative Actions, Non-verbal Expressions, Dyadic History, and History in the Community. As is true in real life (aka life outside of computers), forgiveness is not a guarantee. To mirror this, the authors suggest that any social system choosing to implement forgiveness should consider three key things (they apparently love lists): forgiveness isn't mandatory or unconditional, and it doesn't repair trust or remove accountability. They stress that incorporating forgiveness allows online communities to instill a sense of empathy in members, and that both offenders and victims are given the chance to recover their community status. If communities incorporate a system of forgiveness as well as they have systems of punishment (referred to as 'reparative design'), then authors think everyone wins.

Discussion:
After reading this paper, I'm surprised that communities don't already incorporate reparative design. While playing Counter-Strike:Source with friends on the PC, I often see players banned after first offenses. When I was an Admin for a server, I noticed that there weren't any warnings except temporary bans. Sometimes people really get into things, and will accidentally break a rule (such as no cursing). Do servers forgive them? Nope. They own them. Then the offender is mad, the victims could care less, and the lesson learned is that the server or community sucks. I think that future work could study the application of reparative design in certain forums or servers. It's one thing to propose an idea; it's another to see if people will use it.