BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Debating non-debate

 
  

Page: 1(2)

 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
17:22 / 30.12.02
As far as I can tell, that's what we *are* doing - there are NDTs in the Head Shop on Memory and Process and and on Creativity and Feminism in progress at the moment.
 
 
Lurid Archive
18:35 / 30.12.02
True, but I was referring more to the technical questions you want answered. I share your concerns but I think it might be best to deal with things on a case by case basis at first just to see how things work. (As far as I'm aware, there have been no specifically NDT moderation issues so far. I'm relying on the mods transparency, of course, but I trust them to bring these sorts of issues to our attention.)
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
18:38 / 30.12.02
in which case, in answer to your technical queries, why not use these as test cases, and *if* situations analogous to your examples arise, you and the other H.S. moderators can work on a case-by-case basis.

As has happened with 'debate' threads. And in fact most of the more involved threads and moderator decisions on Barbelith. That's how Barbelith moderation tends to work, there *is* no agenda...

Re this:

Or, if somebody says something along the lines of "Well, it's been medically proven that black people/jews/homosexuals/the Chinese are mentally deficient and prone to violence", since one cannot disagree, what's the correct thing to do? Ignore it and thus tacitly allow the unchallenged statement? Start a new thread about it? Ask a moderator to delete it? And what should the moderator do if he or she receives such a request?

I don't really see what the problem is. NDTs are still placed in a Barbelith forum, and are presumably subject to the same criteria as any other thread. Do what you'd do with any other thread.

BB hasn't declared a TAZ in hir thread, as far as I can tell.
 
 
Tom Coates
13:36 / 03.01.03
Just a quick aside - I find the medium often defines the kind of discourse and I'm really interested in the constructive aspects of Wikis at the moment. Maybe a non-debate oriented kind of social project would be a useful complement to Barbelith?
 
 
Persephone
14:03 / 03.01.03
I'm been thinking about this, and it seems to me that the desideratum is more the idea of "constructive" or "generative" rather than "non-debate." A wikispace would be neat because the medium, as you say, almost defines the discourse as work-in-process, which is really what I want for the C/P/F thread.

I have two wishes that may seem trivial. One, I'd like to be able to toggle quickly between Barbelith proper and the wikispace. Two... embarrassed I'd like for the wikispace to be pretty, do you know what I mean? I'd want the digs to be as nice as around here. I know all that stuff takes time, so this isn't a demand...
 
 
No star here laces
14:30 / 03.01.03
I don't know much about Wikis, but that sounds like a great idea.

Haus, to directly answer your questions: in both those cases I would suggest that you move the post to the appropriate "debating" thread and insert a link in the NDT so that people know an objection was raised and that they can read it if they want to...

That ought to satisfy, no?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
00:23 / 04.01.03
To quote:

Frankly my first assumption is that it's very easy for someone to create a new kind of thread that requires a different kind or style of moderation - particularly when they themselves aren't able to moderate it. It's all very well explaining how these threads should be managed, but frankly it's not the job of the moderator to read absolutely everything in their forum and spend hours working out what's appropriate.

I will, of course, do what I can, as will the other moderators, but special pleading is a tricky thing.

A good start might be to define ""debate" and "adversarial", beyond "what we don't like" and "a handy and loaded term to describe what we don't like".

(Moderator hat - this thread appears to mimic precisely the rather sophomoric thread outwith the Head Shop. Any good reason not to move it to the Policy?)
 
  

Page: 1(2)

 
  
Add Your Reply