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Aswad -> RE: No name calling . . . but racism and mocking dead friends is OK. (9/23/2012 5:27:42 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess
I do think free speech means that occasionally we will read things that we find offensive.
In a country, free speech is a valuable asset, because countries are not communities in the same sense as a forum. Forums are more in the domain of free association, and indeed close to practical libertarianism in that sense. The health of a community depends a lot on how people interact, and on maintaining healthy participation by key figures in the community, and the format of an online forum divorces it from a number of regulatory mechanisms and potential consequences that exist in offline communities, to say nothing of countries.
If you suppress free speech in a country, you leave violence as the only recourse. It's about people being able to coexist when they have no place to go. An incidental benefit is the ability to create social change. On a forum, the recourse is leaving for greener pastures, and a lot of those do exist. Many people have left for fetlife, for instance. There is less need for the safety valve, quite simply put. I still think it is a good idea to avoid limiting speech online, but it's firmly into the domain of "my house, my rules", rather than the public domain that a country necessarily has by its very nature.
There are firm restrictions on freedom of speech on CM already, most of them entirely constructive in nature, and they are enforced with a fair level of diligence and generally in a rather discerning manner. For instance, I've debated the question of age of consent on a recent thread, which was deemed acceptable (something that it wasn't back in the days when every parent here had UM in their vocabulary). It's also clearly constructive that we've been told to avoid personal attacks, which is why I try to be diligent about confining what I say about other posters to what I believe to be in a constructive domain and founded on the objective content of their posting. MM has strayed, at times, to the far side of that line. KY has, in my view, stayed on the right side in the post in question, but only on a technicality (i.e. I'm of the opinion that he's on the far side as far as intent is concerned). My view on that point, though, is immaterial and possibly biased.
Discretionary exercise of the rules of a board is a risky proposition, as is wording those rules in a manner that gives discretion a wide berth. The moderators have been careful to try to uphold the rules in an impartial manner. I'm fairly confident they've succeeded in the case of the threads in question. The outcome, however, is obviously unfortunate to those of us that were able to find good content in what MM posted here, and- as you suggest- dealt successfully with the occasional offense.
I'll admit I was partial to XI on the point of moderation, but VAA has been more even-handed and impartial in upholding the rules, and my preference was formed at a time when the general atmosphere of the board was different from what it is now. MM seems to have had a gripe with the moderators, which I do not. I do, however, have a gripe with the circumstances and outcome, and perhaps with the underlying moderation policy (which, as VAA points out, the moderators have no say in). I've not tried to analyze it in detail, though. It's not my job, and not my house. I just point out the parties are less fun.
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I do believe in the marketplace of ideas, and that when an offensive idea (by someone's standard) is put out there, that we, as a community, rely on others to point out the offensiveness.
In this case, the offensiveness has been pointed out by several posters, so that part of it has worked as intended.
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And when it comes to humor, in particular, there is so much humor that is offensive, depending on the lens through which it is perceived.
Certainly. But am I the only one to have apologized for a poorly received joke on occasion?
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But sanitizing the message boards does not strike me as a legitimate goal if the purpose of the boards is to have meaningful dialogue.
Actually, I'm going to say something potentially offensive here: 90% of the meaningful dialogue is from 10% of the posters. If that 10% leaves, the remaining dialogue will be literally an order of magnitude less meaningful. Critical mass is a crucial concept in building online communities, and the easiest to understand.
Chaotic functions, less so, but fairly easy to explain.
As anyone knows, it takes more effort to remain constructive and disciplined in posting than to simply say the first thing that comes to one's mind. Back when I was posting more, I would sometimes write two or three drafts, edit the best draft, run it by some sensible person off the boards for feedback, edit it again, and then post. I still edit my posts, run some of them by others, and at times write several drafts, but I don't have the time and energy to spare to be as thorough as I would like to be. In fact, stream of consciousness with a quick edit is the norm for me now, particularly for longer posts. How the effort is responded to is crucial in maintaining the energy and focus to be disciplined in posting, and in making it worthwhile to continue.
When the perceived cost of remaining invested is less than the perceived benefit, people either degrade the effort as I have, or divest entirely as MM has. Over time, the result of this is that the benefit to other posters will drop, while those other posters generally also see an increase in cost. That leads to those other posters devolving in the same way. By recursion, this propagates, starting with the posters that have the highest investment. In essence, the most desireable posters are generally lost first, and the result is that the net value of the community plummets for everyone.
I don't think I need to explain how this process is self-accelerating, or how it has a tipping point and a point of no return. However, I will point out that it's been extensively studied since the beginning of the Internet, by academics and statisticians who have seen it happen again and again and been curious as to the underlying mechanisms that have lead to the loss of communities they've been invested in. Just as there is research on management of countries, corporations and families, there is research on management of online communities. Some of it is pretty damn solid.
We can, of course, go with the notion that everyone's opinion is equally valid and equally important, and that a forum is analogous to a public space and thus a place where free speech applies in a principled manner, rather than as an aesthetic and perhaps a guideline. And I'm inclined to laud any effort to defy gravity. But I feel it is important to be aware that such is what it entails. It may even be futile, and one should know that before setting out. Leonidas knew it wouldn't end well, but he also knew Thermopylæ was worth it, so people will clearly- and fortunately- stand up for what matters to them, even when what matters is doomed. Being informed, though, is as important for that as for consent.
Sometimes, I'll read something that one of the posters I value has written, and it'll remind me that CM is a community worth being a part of. That's important. Because, to borrow a turn of phrase from Firefly, the room itself is just a space until people imbue it with something more. And, just to be clear, I sometimes have the same experience with people I've never seen before, or even people I've dismissed. It happens a lot more often with the posters I truly value, however. Or, to put the horse before the cart, that is why I value posters.
When I say I'll miss Tim, it's not cause he's the person here I'd most like to spend time with, or even in the top ten. It's cause, all in all, he beats the average on how often his posts reinforce my commitment to this community, compared to how often they weaken that same commitment. And seeing as Tim has more or less singlehandedly made me take a break once in the past, I think it's fair to say I'm aware of a potential for improvement and not exclusively biased in a single direction on this point. I would rather groan at him over that, though, than lament his leaving.
Which brings me back to why I have a problem with the typical response of a shrug and a "don't let the door hit you on the way out". It's that sort of thing that either evidences a lack of investment that marks a person as someone not important to maintaining the community and its health, or evidences a lack of awareness of the dynamic of a community, or several other possibilities I'll not go into. When people leave here, people who have tried to contribute, it impoverishes us all as a community and takes away something we need as humans to stay in a mode where we collaborate and uphold that community.
It's worth noting that I was not at all surprised to see which posters expressed a sadness at Tim leaving, and that they're all posters I'd be sad to see leaving themselves. To be clear: I'm not implying anything about the rest in stating this, nor do I want to imply anything. This was exclusively meant as a positive statement about the referenced posters.
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p.s. by offensive I mean broadly speaking, ideas that are offensive - obviously dialogue that simply reduces to personal attack of particular members is something different (and does not, in my mind, further dialogue).
I don't know how I missed this when I first started replying (that stream thing), and so I'm going to have to note that we agree on this point, completely, and that the rest of my reply is thus going to have to be seen as more disconnected commentary on the subject, as the applicability is sort of reduced now that I'm rereading this. I think some of the commentary is potentially worth posting anyway, however, as an elaboration on what I've said earlier here, even if it ends up being more obliquely tangential as a reply.
So, please, just feel used by a pontificating, pompous asshole, rather than replied to. [:D]
IWYW,
— Aswad.
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