Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007
Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: JanahX
Anyone want to chime in?
Yeah.
I make an effort not to come down on newbies unless they pick a fight with me, or absolutely trash someone that hasn't come down on them. I also try not to get too rough with the regulars, unless they're in the habit of playing rough or have picked a fight. That's cause I would like to keep a certain tone on the boards, and it won't happen through mod efforts, but rather through a community effort. Since I returned from my previous hiatus, I note the tone is substantially worse than when I started out here, which has been part of the ongoing evaluation of whether this place is worth what I put into it.
RemoteUser used the phrase «any hope of mutual understanding», which is what I've tried to fix sometimes, and it tends to get drowned out by snark and hostility, so I no longer bother to build bridges most of the time. One of the things I've learned over the years is that it is important to have education. It's also important to educate. Mutual understanding is where that starts, and building bridges is how one gets to mutual understanding. Instead, people choose to piss in the waterhole, choose to have conflict, and choose to support stupidity and ignorance around the world. That is hardly a surprise, and hardly confined to CM, but it gets my hackles up when people do it in a community I would like to see healthy and flourishing.
The idiot of today can be the voice of reason tomorrow. If people don't have anything sensible to say, it's cause they haven't picked up anything useful yet. Setting them on the path to picking up something useful tends to cause them to come back with something sensible and interesting to share. But like all of this, it takes some effort. And, for the effort to make a difference, enough people in a community must do it. Or else the community goes down the drain and eventually fades away, or becomes a very stagnant clique. At the very least, one ends up with meltdowns like the Arpig incident (he was the least responsible party in that meltdown; ponder that), and the community fractures (Fetlife, anyone?).
Assholes like you (yes, you, Jahna, and you hopefully realize I'm at least somewhat affectionate in my use of that term), or those that are even worse, spewing shit all over the place, that is an infectious thing. It leads to others becoming less constructive, less willing to be part of making this place all it can be, less willing to make the effort to be decent human beings online. It's already been infectious enough for me not to care enough to make a serious effort myself. Many people I enjoyed having on the boards have left because of mod squabbles that really come down to the toxic atmosphere itself, without which the mods wouldn't have been forced to act in the manner those people disagreed with. I've pondered leaving myself, and the changes in the atmosphere here are among the weightiest factors.
I've considered having a TOS-compliant snarkfest week to illustrate, but I'm fairly confident I would lose the respect of at least half those posters I enjoy talking to around here if I were to do so, and it would probably be detrimental to the boards in the short and long term (in particular because it's unlikely anyone would actually take a hint and start shouldering their share anyway).
As you say, I'm not your mother, your father, your partner or whatever.
I'm your fellow CollarMe citizen, and I'm concerned by your littering.
Yeah, I want to chime in, but out of respect for the TOS, I won't.
IWYW,
— Aswad.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: So are we a bunch of meanies? - 
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