As I recall, "Crocker's rules" originated in an email Lee Daniel Crocker posted on the old Extropians mailing list in the 1990s. He simply declared in an email, during some contentious or heated discussion (as was the norm for that list), that he wanted people to communicate with him without any regard for whether they might offend him, valuing bluntness, honesty, and authenticity over social nicety, pleasantness, and diplomatic protocol.
The rules were never a formalized thing. A person that declares Crocker's rules is basically saying that they (1) want people to not filter their communication with them in any way for the sake of pleasantness and (2) take full responsibility for and ownership of their reaction to that unfiltered communication.
(The article references a source on the SL4 mailing list, but that is not the origin. SL4 post-dates Crocker's Rules, and the people that moderated and ran SL4 were all on the old Extropians mailing list.)
Huh, no wonder it's obscure. If someone wants to see this become popular, there needs to be a clear statement that you can link to. (It should make a clear distinction between the rule and the commentary/justification for the rule.)
I don't think it is trying to become popular, it is just a cultural artifact of the Internet as it existed in the 1990s. Enough influential people in tech today were on that mailing list at the time that the reference and idea is still known to some people even though the mailing list is long gone. The only reason I know about it is that I was there (virtually) when it happened.
It's not about making something popular. It's about improving your own life. If you think someone's not telling you something because they're afraid you'll react emotionally, then by declaring your intention not to do so, you give them free reign to tell you things.
You don't need this to be popular. In fact, the lack of the idea's popularity may be advantageous. You get a chance to extract marginal information over what other people will get from the same person.
The rules were never a formalized thing. A person that declares Crocker's rules is basically saying that they (1) want people to not filter their communication with them in any way for the sake of pleasantness and (2) take full responsibility for and ownership of their reaction to that unfiltered communication.
(The article references a source on the SL4 mailing list, but that is not the origin. SL4 post-dates Crocker's Rules, and the people that moderated and ran SL4 were all on the old Extropians mailing list.)