It may be uncomfortable, but it's the only way to make cultural progress.
You should especially take care of that if you have any major position in a larger group, not matter if it is a company department, an open-source project or a user-group.
If nobody cares visibly about social behaviour, that group is either doomed and won't achieve anything in the long run. Or it reduces a very low number of active participants - usually just one.
"Prevent all potentially offensive behaviour" is not a valid solution. What constitutes offense is subjective, and furthermore the topic at hand is sexism.
The issue at hand is an example for precisely the opposite. Everybody agrees that the moderator's behaviour was inappropriate, the discussion is mostly about how bad it was (what should the consequences be?) and the label (sexism or not?).
More general, regarding subjectivity: Although the individual members of a group or society have different subjective standards, they can still find some common ground on what behaviour they accept or don't accept. You'll find such emerging consent not just in informal rules about social behaviour, but also in formal rules which we call "laws".
You're using a different definition of 'offensive' than I am. Also, note that no societies we regard highly have outlawed talking over people. Unless your plan is to modify institutions to reduce offensive behaviour you won't have much luck.
Yes you did, but then you said that the solution is to reform society so that informal social rules are never broken. And I'm saying that unless you want to make those rules into laws, or something like laws, it's not doable.
I still don't get it. Who said that informal social rules shall never never broken? Who talked about reforming society?
I was just talking about making cultural progress. All I said is that informal rules are established (almost by definition) by reacting to those who break them. Doing so reduces the chances that these are broken again, which is just another way of saying that these informal rules are established. And if a good climate within a group is important to you (in a leading position it usually is), then you need to be part of establishing those. Otherwise you risk that your group becomes a hostile place.
The strategy I described does work, and is generally recommended, so I'm not sure what you are arguing against.
I've seen it working in various groups. If shitty behaviour is criticized as such, people become more aware and more careful. As long as the criticism itself is in an appropriate place and reflects the group's values, this is a very healthy thing to do. If the criticized person refuses to adjust their behaviour, they usually leave the group on their own, which is also healthy. In the worst case there's to way but to throw them out, but that is surprisingly seldom. Either way, these people either have to find a group that is okay with their behaviour (good luck!), or they need to change their behaviour in order to engage in groups.
"Are you saying we should fix when people geek out about a topic and ramble?"
"It may be uncomfortable, but it's the only way to make cultural progress."
And you've really only explained what tacit rules are and how they're enforced, but we knew that already so bully, I guess? The guy talked over her because he was excited and therefore not thinking about the consequences.
You should especially take care of that if you have any major position in a larger group, not matter if it is a company department, an open-source project or a user-group.
If nobody cares visibly about social behaviour, that group is either doomed and won't achieve anything in the long run. Or it reduces a very low number of active participants - usually just one.