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Is something wrong with Barbelith?

  
  

Page: 123(4)56789... 24

 
 
Jack Fear
15:43 / 19.10.05
You know what? I'm gonna get ad hominem on Hiccups, because frankly I think it's the only appropriate response. Because the problem, Hiccups, is not that your views are beyond the pale: it's that you, Hiccups, are being a jerk.

Behold:

"Germaine Greer's influence probably done more harm than good to women, because even the best of intentions can't undo half-a-million years of biological programming for both women and men, and long-standing social dynamics simply don't change overnight." That's a frank expression of an opinion. It might draw some disagreement, but it's the kind of statement that people can hash over in a reasonable fashion and uin a spirit of good will.

"Germaine Greer is a slapper and needs a good kicking," on the other hand, is something a jerk would say. And if you're going to act like a jerk, you mustn't get all wounded when people treat you like a jerk. Because it's your own fucking fault.

You screwed up, sunshine, and all your spluttering defenses are only digging the hole deeper. Put down the spade and walk away.

It's okay to have opinions. It's not okay to be an asshole. And that's the problem here—your behavior, not your opinions.

For the record, I domn't necessarily think you are an asshole—you're just acting like one. Whether you can grow beyond that, the jury's still out. Keep trying, though.

Everybody else: Try to remember what you were like at nineteen years old, and think tenderly towards our erring friend.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:48 / 19.10.05
I think it might be worth starting to spin off threads from this - I'd suggest "Dealing with offensive language/behaviour" as one, "Terms and Conditions" as another.
 
 
babazuf
15:51 / 19.10.05
It was a flippant answer to a flippant question in a flippant thread, so I'm still rather amazed at what a shitstorm those isolated comments started, to be absolutely honest. I'm not going to lie and pretend that I don't think Barbelith as a whole is being overly thin-skinned about this whole affair, but I did fuck up.

I'm not going to try and get out of that one.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:54 / 19.10.05

Political correctness seems to be the often-necessary linguistic effort to acknowledge and right old wrongs. And yet, how effective is it if un-PC opinions and groups are marginalised instead?

Quite effective, really. See Holocaust Denial over the page. And read the thread.

A suggestion, riding. Stop trying to defend your actions in terms of political correctness. If you want to do this, have a better understanding of what use of the terms means - in this case, that you have no idea of what you are talking about. Being in the sixth form does not in itself necessitate sixth-form arguments.
 
 
babazuf
15:57 / 19.10.05
Yeah. Okay, so, ignorance of existing power relations, willful or otherwise, check. Could you tell me which feminist writers you are a fan of - the ones you'd like to make a nice dinner for, rather than kick the shit out of, metaphorically speaking?

I quite like Donna Haraway, from what I've read. The Cyborg Manifesto was a good read.
 
 
Harrison Ford, in a battle suit, wheels for feet, knives and guns
16:04 / 19.10.05
It was a flippant answer to a flippant question in a flippant thread, so I'm still rather amazed at what a shitstorm those isolated comments started, to be absolutely honest. I'm not going to lie and pretend that I don't think Barbelith as a whole is being overly thin-skinned about this whole affair, but I did fuck up.

I'm not going to try and get out of that one.

To be honest hiccups, I think an amount of your posts in this thread have blown the issue up. There are other issues to discuss here, so please stop going over & over old ground.
 
 
babazuf
16:05 / 19.10.05
Quite effective, really. See Holocaust Denial over the page. And read the thread.

I don't actually have a problem with people attempting to deny the Holocaust. No amount of rhetoric can vanish away the evidence that seven million Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews perished. The evidence speaks for itself - let the revisionist fuckwits have their fun.

And yes, Harrison (may I call you Indiana?)
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
16:46 / 19.10.05
For what it's worth, I think too much weight is being placed on RAOH's original post. However, I think ze's attitude in 'defending' hirself leaves a lot to be desired.

riding astride on hiccups But frankly, posting that I am advocating misogyny and sexism without asking me to explain why I said what I did, in a thread that I am not even part of, seems a smidgeon counterproductive. How am I supposed to defend and explain myself if I don't even know I am being criticised? How are you propagating an open and critical environment of discussion if the argument is inherently one-sided?

Because, if you've joined a board, it's going to be assumed automatically that you read the board. And also, Petey wasn't challenging you to a duel to the death with your best Pokemon, he was using you as an example of something or other. Another difference you seem oblivious to.

And yet, how effective is it if un-PC opinions and groups are marginalised instead?

What, you mean if racists were lead to think they couldn't broadcast their views in public, or homophobes felt unable to pass those values of hate on to their children? Why, that would be a disaster!

I'm not going to lie and pretend that I don't think Barbelith as a whole is being overly thin-skinned about this whole affair, but I did fuck up.

A number of people. Most of Barbelith obviously doesn't give a fuck about you, or this thread. Which is sad in a different way.

I also wonder quite why you walked in thinking Barbelith was somewhere where you could post any manner of offensive rubbish. Or how you managed to last ten seconds without having that notion knocked out of you. Have you genuinely not looked at any part of the board that isn't part of a conversation you're taking part in?
 
 
sleazenation
16:48 / 19.10.05
No. Sorry. Revisionists must be challenged.
 
 
Bed Head
16:55 / 19.10.05
Challenged? Why not simply removed? That doesn’t necessarily stop you from going and challenging them, but it does keep barbelith tidier.

Agree with putting things like a link to the Political Correctness thread in the FAQ - this old Policy thread about having ‘entry level concepts’ or ‘recurring debates’ collected somewhere might be relevant. Deva sets up what seems to be a pretty good model for this sort of thing in hir first post, with, if I understand, wiki pages that have particularly spectacular quotes from /and links back to important threads.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
17:26 / 19.10.05
OK - can we now stop talking about ROAH and political correctness, unless it adds something to the thread? Every argument he has advanced so far has already been covered in the Political Correctness thread which we have linked to a number of times, and none of it is really very profitable to this discussion.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
01:41 / 20.10.05
Meh, I tend to feel that people are tending towards thinking that if they find the right form of words in the wiki then everything will be all right, because at least the wiki is something we can change. Yet the fact that it seems that every few months we have yet another person asking how to search on Barbelith when it's clearly linked from the first page of the wiki suggests that it's not being used much, although I'll admit that we have no way of knowing how many threads about how to search Barbelith we've not seen because someone did think to check the wiki.

Looking back over this thread I notice that Tom has posted in it, but only twice and only in relation to what I assume was a emergence of another Knodge suit. Whilst I realise from his blog that he's always ever-busy as most of us are, it would be nice if he could find some time to talk through some of the other issues around the board that have come up in recent days.
 
 
*
02:17 / 20.10.05
You know what? I was just at a class for museum students like myself about basic non-profit management skills, and I learned something which might be applicable to Barbelith. It's called Founders' Syndrome.

Founders' Syndrome occurs when an organization owes its existence to a central individual or small group of people, whose personality/ies and decisions dominate the organization even after such a centralized system of organizing no longer serves its purpose. Founders' Syndrome is characterized by the decisions being in the hands of one indispensible individual who is supported by a board (let's say the moderators, or the Elders of the Lith) whose role is to make suggestions and approve of the decisions of the founder.

The organization becomes reactive, rather than proactive, the board looks less to the mission statement (do we have one? maybe we could use one?) than to the personality at the center of the organization, there is little room for change and the phrase "That's not how we do things here" can be heard. I think this is a situation which has formed here not just around Tom, but all of the Elders in a way. I feel like Barbelith is Tom's board, and in a different way it's Ganesh and Xoc and Flowers and Haus and other Elders' board. Maybe because I've been around for a year or two it's starting to fit me as well. But it's not my board, and I'm sure new people coming in feel like they'll be hit with sticks and shouted "What are you doing, intern?!" at, because that's how I felt when I first got here and how I still feel to some extent.

I think the distributed moderation system helps to make the boards in fact less centralized, but since this system is largely invisible to new folks (an indication of how well it works, IMO) it doesn't contribute much to the feeling of participation in the organization of the board.

This is not to say that we shouldn't have a vision for what we want the board to be like and a plan to keep it headed in that direction. A non-profit would have a mission statement and a strategic plan that would guide policy decisions and even day-to-day actions, to keep the organization focused on what it is supposed to be accomplishing. But there would also be flexibility in how the mission is accomplished, and even room to renegotiate the mission statement if it is becoming too rigid or outdated.

I'm not suggesting that the board go to some kind of stodgy and formal model of governance, but come to think of it, it is a nonprofit organization of sorts, and it might be helpful if we think of it in those terms just a little. Maybe this was obvious to everyone but me, but it felt like an epiphany and took my mind off of non-profit accounting for a good fifteen minutes this afternoon, so yay for that.
 
 
Loomis
08:07 / 20.10.05
All this talk about terms and conditions, and rooting out racism, etc. is all well and good, but I'm not really sure how it applies to the topic. If we're trying to ascertain if Barbelith used to be better, and if so then why that was so, does anyone really think that it's the rare instances of racism or homophobia that have changed the board?

If there was a golden age in my experience then it was 01/02 and I suspect that would be the same for many of the Elders, many of whom now have less time and inclinaction to post. And though my memory may be rusty, i don't see any other difference except for the amount of posts. There have always been occasional instances of racism or sexism and they have always been jumped on. No change there. There have always been occasional trolls and they have always been ridiculed to death and occasionally banned. We have alwyas had plenty of nonsense threads.

None of these things have got worse as far as I can tell. And while it is always worthwhile to examine how we can sharpen up our mechanisms for dealing with these things, it's not going to make a lick of difference to the way most users experience the board.

Back in 01/02, I used to come into work and it would often take an hour or two to read all the new posts. And by the time I had done that and replied to a couple, they had all been posted to and I would have to read those. It was often hard to keep up. Now I log on in the morning and I can catch up in five minutes, then I go elsewhere. In my opinion the only reason the occasional dodgy remark seems more noticeable is because the traffic is so slow that they stand out. Many of us probably never would have even read the snide comment thread but when only three convo threads have been posted to in eight hours then you end up reading everything just for the sake of it.

The only way to reinvigorate the board is to create more activity. And as much as I'd love more new members, we're not exactly short. We all need to take responsibility and try to start a couple of decent threads each week.
 
 
Harrison Ford, in a battle suit, wheels for feet, knives and guns
08:31 / 20.10.05
You make a very good point, that i find hard to disagree with. However i do feel that the only way that Barbelith is going to become a more thriving environment is to re-open the board, fresh blood might even encourage older posters to engage with the board more regularly.
Aside from the obvious issues of organising a system whereby moderators have the ability to immediatly prevent abusive suits & spammers posting, temporarily or otherwise; i find it very difficult to find a reson not to open the gates.
The movement of most of the forums is so slow at present, since this thread emerged i've been keeping an eye on the traffic & i'm astounded; the music forum is almost at a stand still!
 
 
Jack Vincennes
08:34 / 20.10.05
Something I think is worth asking, which has come out of what Ganesh and Loomis have been saying about various things; does anyone think that people are excessively worried about the 'quality' of their posts? I'm thinking particularly about the Spectacle fora here, and in relation to what Ganesh said about early Barbelith being a bit remiscent of TMO. On TMO, the "Media Junkies" (Books, FTV&T and G&G, basically) forum seems to be used a lot more for chatting that the Spectacle forums are here; it's on-topic, but there are a lot more throwaway comments, which themselves seem to encourage rather than discourage longer posts. I think that a point of comparison on Barbelith might be the Big Brother thread which, whilst in TV, got 'Late Shift' type interest / posting levels, lots of offhand commentary and lots of posts which were long and well thought through. I'm not saying that less quality would be good -I hope that's clear -but I think that less worrying about quality might be beneficial.
 
 
Ganesh
09:12 / 20.10.05
I think that a point of comparison on Barbelith might be the Big Brother thread which, whilst in TV, got 'Late Shift' type interest / posting levels, lots of offhand commentary and lots of posts which were long and well thought through. I'm not saying that less quality would be good -I hope that's clear -but I think that less worrying about quality might be beneficial.

It's interesting that you should cite the Big Brother thread, Vincennes, because I was going to mention it in Part 2 of my JR Hartley rambleathon (on its way), as perhaps the regular feature of Barbelith to which I, personally, most enjoy contributing. It's partly because I still find the show itself fascinating, of course, but when I'm able to watch Big Brother but not post about it on Barbelith (as happened when we briefly crashed this year), I feel twitchy and irritated, like it's half the total BB experience. For me, a large part of the viewing pleasure is being able to chew over the programme here, with intelligent, articulate people who're able to combine analysis and throwaway fluffiness, ontopica with a degree of personal anecdote and pleasant meandering. No forum anywhere discusses BB in the same way as Barbelith, and I feel that, when that thread gets on a roll, it can be the perfect fusion of theory and gossip.

I'm not sure why, exactly. Perhaps we're more relaxed because the show itself is viewed by many as disposable trash (and indeed, I rarely revisit the BB threads myself, after each year's run draws to a close), but is enough of a microcosm to allow us to touch on broader cultural issues. Maybe we all transiently overexcited on the televisual tartrazine of it all. Whatever, I see it as a gorgeous flowering summer annual rather than a hardy perennial. I do wish there was a little more of it in our herbaceous border, though.
 
 
Loomis
09:20 / 20.10.05
I think that's a valid point Vincennes. And more of an issue than not posting something that might be considered not serious enough is not posting a topic for the same reason. I would personally like to start more threads in Books but I often don't have much to say to start off with and am hesitant to start a thread about a book/film/band without something deep and meaningful to say about it. Sometimes you just want to start off with "anyone else like this?" and let it build from there but I often feel hesitant to do so. Which could of course be my own problem, but there you go.
 
 
Cat Chant
09:39 / 20.10.05
the perfect fusion of theory and gossip

Can we have that as our mission statement, please?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
09:44 / 20.10.05
Loomis - I've definitely had to force myself to overcome that with regard to the Music forum - dunno if it's noticeable, but I've been trying to start new threads on bands/acts and bump existing threads on bands/acts as I listen to them or they release new stuff. At the moment the Music forum seems to lack the critical mass needed to guarantee the support these threads on individual acts need. I suppose one reason for this is that Barbelith doesn't really have obvious musical touchstones in the way it has obvious (although not unanimous) comics touchstones, for example. (I don't know what can be done about any of this, or even whether these are bad things exactly, I'm just brainstorming.) But this is still surprising in a way, to me - maybe one way of dealing with it would be for people to post more links to MP3s via YouSendIt, or link to sites which provide MP3s... Can be tricky for people who use Barbelith at work, though.

Providing MP3s might also be a boost to the 'What are you listening to?' type threads, which are fine for what they are, except that they do tend to encourage lists and one line posts in which people just name a song, artist or album. Personally, my favourite parts of those threads are when a mini-discussion starts about a particular artist or genre. Now, what I would like to see instead is that discussion as a thread in itself: the whole forum could almost be called 'What are you listening to?'. Maybe the reason people post to that thread rather than bump or start a new Boards of Canada thread is that feeling of "needing to say something substantial" as described above, but it would still be my preference, so I'd like to encourage people to do that more.

The general threads about ideas about music have been marred of late by becoming dominated by one person who holds very strong views not shared by anybody else, and articulates those views in a, ah, idiosyncratic way (zenfroglet, Bruno). Again, that's not always a bad thing - those threads go on for a while, and they're often fun for just slightly less long than their duration - but I think what would be more ideal would be if we had threads about those kind of ideas in which people who were broadly in agreement discussed the nuances of their position. If that makes any sense.

(I'm aware we've moved on to a whole new area here - if people want to talk about the Music forum specifically, we could always bump the 'Why don't you want to talk about music?' thread...)
 
 
Ganesh
09:53 / 20.10.05
The organization becomes reactive, rather than proactive, the board looks less to the mission statement (do we have one? maybe we could use one?) than to the personality at the center of the organization, there is little room for change and the phrase "That's not how we do things here" can be heard. I think this is a situation which has formed here not just around Tom, but all of the Elders in a way. I feel like Barbelith is Tom's board, and in a different way it's Ganesh and Xoc and Flowers and Haus and other Elders' board. Maybe because I've been around for a year or two it's starting to fit me as well. But it's not my board, and I'm sure new people coming in feel like they'll be hit with sticks and shouted "What are you doing, intern?!" at, because that's how I felt when I first got here and how I still feel to some extent.

I can recognise that, to a certain extent, and I think it's inevitable that personalities do shape the way a board operates over time. It stands to reason also that those who've maintained the most sustained, enduring engagement with a community are likely to have the most influence over its development and operation. On Barbelith, I think this happens even outwith the formal moderator structure (of the posters you mentioned, Entity, I'm no longer a moderator and Xoc's never been one), as certain responses and behaviours, associated with particular posters, become formalised to the extent that they're seen as 'part of the system'. For example, it's likely that an Is Psychiatry Dying? thread will elicit a certain response from me, or a thread on musical "sell-outs" will attract Flyboy's ire. The longer one has been here, the more readily one can anticipate the likely reaction of other long-time posters - and this is perhaps a) stultifying (I probably avoid making a thread about X because I know poster Y will get medieval on my buttocks), and b) bruising/intimidating (newbies don't know to avoid making a thread about X, and poster Y gets medieval on their buttocks).

I'm not sure what the answer is, or even if there should be an answer as such. I've already mentioned the non-registration 'guests' area' which used to exist on a previous incarnation of the board. As well as being a place for general tomfoolery, I think it fulfilled a purpose as a sort of 'shallow end' of the board, an area where water-winged newbies could lark about, ask daft questions and generally get a feel for the wider board. Maybe it's worth considering an open-to-the-non-registered forum again?
 
 
Harrison Ford, in a battle suit, wheels for feet, knives and guns
10:12 / 20.10.05
I'm not sure what the answer is, or even if there should be an answer as such. I've already mentioned the non-registration 'guests' area' which used to exist on a previous incarnation of the board. As well as being a place for general tomfoolery, I think it fulfilled a purpose as a sort of 'shallow end' of the board, an area where water-winged newbies could lark about, ask daft questions and generally get a feel for the wider board. Maybe it's worth considering an open-to-the-non-registered forum again?

Ganesh this is a fantastic idea & would also act as a relatively good filter for assessing applicants for full membership. You've got my vote.
 
 
Loomis
10:13 / 20.10.05
How much of it would simply be older members dicking around though? Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.
 
 
Ganesh
10:15 / 20.10.05
We've no way of knowing, really, Loomis. Until we try it...
 
 
Saveloy
10:25 / 20.10.05
Mask De Vincennes:

"does anyone think that people are excessively worried about the 'quality' of their posts?"

I don't know if it's excessive or simply right-and-proper, but I definitely worry about the quality of my posts a lot more than I used to. Ironically, this means I post mostly fluff, and mostly in the Convo, since I feel I can get away with being a bit crap in an obviously fluffy context but I don't feel I can get away with being wobbly in one of the more 'demanding' sections.

I haven't been around as long as Ganesh, but his comments about Barbelith being more relaxed and agreeable in the past ring true [is that the right phrase?] with me. But I can't figure out if that's because the forums were less strictly defined (I much preferred the pre-Headshop 'Revolution', which seemed to encourage a nice mix of theory and creative play, or at least that's how I remember it) or because it was happening in a time before the over-familiarity that id entity and 'nesh describe set in. Or both.
 
 
Jack Vincennes
10:26 / 20.10.05
I would personally like to start more threads in Books but I often don't have much to say to start off with and am hesitant to start a thread about a book/film/band without something deep and meaningful to say about it. Sometimes you just want to start off with "anyone else like this?" and let it build from there

Loomis, to be honest I'd say go for it. I'll try to take my own advice there too... I think that the Music forum has been more active of late, and I think that's at least in part due to Petey and Money $hot's enthusiastic smothering of the 'sell-out' thread. If anyone else likes the thing you like, or if they hate it, chances are a discussion can come out of it -this thread, for example, didn't start with piles of detail but is into two pages with (what looks like, for someone who knows nothing of the subject matter) lots of interesting chat...
 
 
Evil Scientist
10:31 / 20.10.05
This sounds like a worthwhile idea. It'd give newcomers a chance to interact with the board and, theoretically, reduce trolling (unless they're really dedicated). Perhaps it could be suggested to potential Barbeloids that they actively get involved in a variety of guest-room threads.

But would it require the development of a new area? Why not just have Conversation as the default guest room, if such a thing came into play?
 
 
Jack Vincennes
10:31 / 20.10.05
Ironically, this means I post mostly fluff, and mostly in the Convo, since I feel I can get away with being a bit crap in an obviously fluffy context

That's exactly the kind of situation I'm thinking of -I think the Spectacle could well use a little fluff, the worst I at least would do would be to ask you to explain something a bit further and that might spark something else interesting even if you don't feel like doing that.
 
 
Ganesh
11:13 / 20.10.05
Okay, Jumpers For Goalposts Pt.2.

Despite the title of this thread, I'm actually finding it more helpful to think about the things I really liked about different incarnations of Barbelith, the things that worked well for me, focussing in on why I liked and/or miss them. As previously stated, a certain amount of this is necessarily nostalgic because over the years I've changed, and the degree and nature of my interface with Barbelith has changed - and, to a certain extent, the Internet's changed.

A prime example of all three would be my own previous use of Barbelith in quite a personal 'confessional' capacity, a sort of sounding board for conflicts, dilemmas and doubts, around work and family. I remember a long, angsty 'career crossroads' piece about my thoughts of giving up psychiatry and walking away from the medical profession. More recently, there was another (What you do, it's like... well, it's like murder) about the emotional frustrations of trying to communicate my homosexuality to my verging-on-fundamentalist aunt. These were useful experiences for me in terms of venting, and the feedback, whether serious or piss-taking, was appreciated.

These days, however, I would hesitate before being quite so unguarded on the open board. Some of this is because Barbelith's been troubled by waves of trolls, some of whom have got cyber-stalky with me; I'm therefore aware of how unpleasant harrassment can be, and am warier of making myself vulnerable to it. My situation's changed, in that I now live in London and am probably more accessible for Real Life stalking. Thirdly, as I previously mentioned, Barbelith's being spidered by Google has eroded the comforting illusion of the intimate confessional space. I'm now acutely aware that things I post here are more widely read, and the likelihood of attracting malign attention is increased.

So... we're more public now. That makes a very definite difference in terms of what people will divulge of themselves.
 
 
Cat Chant
12:16 / 20.10.05
It makes a difference in terms of the way we think about a lot of things, I think. There's a feeling that threads should be more on-topic and that posts should be of a certain quality - thinking of threads as public leads to an awareness not only of the function of posts and threads as conversation, but of their "metafunction": "representing Barbelith" to lurkers and Googlers. (Similarly, I think post-Google debates about unacceptable behaviour have focussed more sharply on what people will think of "us" if they find that racist language is allowed to stand.)

Is it helpful to distinguish between Barbelith as an immanent community, and Barbelith as a representation of... what? Debate? Intelligent conversation? Theorybitchfanwankgossip? Not that we can distinguish those things in practice, but maybe we can distinguish between those functions of increased publicity...
 
 
Ganesh
12:21 / 20.10.05
Mmm. We have eaten of the Tree of Google, see that we are naked and are ashamed...
 
 
Cat Chant
12:37 / 20.10.05
You might be naked. I'm wearing a really great coat.
 
 
Smoothly
12:41 / 20.10.05
I was wondering the very same thing about the Google spidering. Would anyone object to the board going stealth again? Have we *gained* much by being Googlable?
 
 
Axolotl
12:45 / 20.10.05
I don't know how much it amounts to but doesn't Tom get some money from the Google-Ads?
The other thing is do we rely on being Googlable for fresh blood, or do our newbies arrive through other means?
 
 
Ganesh
12:48 / 20.10.05
If such a thing is possible, I wouldn't object in the slightest. Being Googleable has caused me a certain amount of I-Googled-your-post-you-cunt PM hassle, as well as pulling away the velvet curtain of illusory intimacy (from my really great penis).
 
  

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