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In context of this community, I personally feel it's intentionally-basic ground rule to keep healthy relationships with other people over the argument
I feel admins don't want to be overly prescriptive how you "suppose to" act but in every heated/controversial discussion they will try to keep peace/civility at the expense of "the truth"
Of course, this approach has its cons but one can always stroll to the instances with fewer/no ground rules while keeping your beehome clean and friendly
I agree and what I think is specifically meant with being nice is that you should to be respectful to each other. Anything else will get us nowhere in life.
Folks might benefit from a more nuanced view of various religious views of "be(e) nice," aka the Golden Rule...
http://livingpeaceinternational.org/en/the-project/regola-d-oro-2.html
In Buddhism, for example, the view of what accumulates karma differs depending on lineage. Even "good" karma can cause you to be reborn (in the god realm), so being "nice" is also to be avoided, just as is being "mean." Of course, being "nice" and being "kind" are actually different things -- one is selfish (I'm being nice to get what I want) and the other is selfless. Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa%E1%B9%83s%C4%81ra_(Buddhism) for more
So complex, right?
Quite interesting
There is no one definition of nice, and I think that is nicely captured with this itemized list of ideas on niceness. The rule is purposefully ambiguous, because no two humans are exactly the same. We need to arrive at a space where most people feel comfortable in the space and do our best to eliminate discomfort that can arise from differences of opinion, differences in how people want to be treated, and differences in use of language.
I talk a bit about why we have chosen to avoid long itemized lists of how to be(e)have and what the spirit behind the singular rule is in the linked post. It's also on our sidebar along with one other post with a few additional points worth exploring. Hopefully these links and the discussion present in this post is enough to give you an idea of how to act. We certainly aren't in the habit of banning people immediately and without a discussion unless they really heinously cross certain lines (openly advocating for violence on minorities, for example), so as long as you strive to do the behavior you think aligns with being nice the worst thing that might happen is that we might engage with you to have a discussion about behavior if it ever strays into a gray area worthy of discussion.