Subject:
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Re: The Friendliest Site On The Internet. (Was Re: A little self examination?)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sun, 22 Oct 2000 09:01:40 GMT
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Paul Baulch writes:
> Sorry, but it was NOT all Matthew by any stretch of the imagination. If
> people had admonished Matthew using a friendlier tone the flame war would
> never have happened. Go back and look at the thread in .space, it's plainly
> obvious that people were distinctly unfriendly, and at times, even more
> childish than Matthew was. It was very, very disappointing to see.
> The real surprise was that these people, Matthew included, were much, much
> friendlier, more reasonable and conciliatory when responding to me in
> private emails. When I look back at it, it's obvious why - it's because I,
> personally, was polite to _them_!
> Can you imagine how quickly and quietly Matthew's original comment would
> have blown over if more people had been like this? The mind boggles!
Disagree. I have reviewed more of that unpleasant thread and looking at the
direct replies to the first post, none of them are anywhere near the level of
unfriendliness that MM ended up at. If anything, most of them were friendlier
than MMs first post and the "attached/embedded" site. At least that is my read.
When a wolf sneaks into the sheep herd, how many sheep are supposed to
docilely turn the other cheek and take injury before the wolf is expelled,
exactly?
Plus, I already tried it your way, a year ago. I know that I myself knew what
to expect from the thread, unless MM had changed his ways from the Mad Hatter
scansite incident, there was going to be a lot of nastiness from him and a lot
of circular reasoning, factual errors, deliberate misstatements, inappropriate
amplifications, etc. He hadn't changed, and all that came to pass. That's why
I urged ignoring. Responding in a friendly manner wasn't going to do any good,
it just fed the fire. That was my experience the last time I had a run in with
this character. I was polite to him, he wasn't polite back. I could find you a
half dozen other people who had the same experience.
I think you might be in the cultural relativism trap, unable to say that some
people are twisted enough that there is no rational dealing with them because
they don't have the same premises you do, don't acknowledge reason as a
mechanism, and don't conform to behavioural norms. You may think that
appeasement and prevarication will somehow work to integrate them in. Didn't
work for Neville Chamberlain. Won't work here.
LUGNET is the friendliest place on the internet. One way to keep it that way
is to exclude the deliberately and irretrievably unfriendly, by enforcing the
ToS. LUGNET is not a psychotherapy club and it's not the members job to
resolve festering issues in those that cannot confirm by trying to be nice to
them even when they spit in your face.
That said, I still do think there is a lot of merit in keeping discussion
dispassionate, in trying to include those with less experience and knowledge,
in making sure that we don't alienate valuable contributors, etc. A lot of
that can be accomplished by two simple expedients. Publicly ignore
troublemakers so brawls don't start and privately call for ToS enforcement.
But that's not all that needs doing. Rather than talking about MM in this
thread, I'd rather identify the other things to do that will help LUGNET be
more inclusionary.
++Lar
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