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OK, Mordant - so that's progress. You felt that the situations were actually not the same - so the answer to:
Okay. I'm not trying to make anything law, I'm asking why one poster was told it was unacceptable to post a thing that another poster passed off succesfully as a joke.
Is that the they are not actually the same thing.
Next up, I think we'll need to ask id entity about the reasons for commenting on .trampetunia's comment but not Mister Disco's.
I also don't get the acceptable/unacceptable thing that keeps coming up. I don't think we reached any kind of policy decision last time round. Some members found .trampetunia's metaphor worthy of comment - favourable and unfavourable - for various reasons. If Mister Disco's metaphor was the same thing, then it would arguably be inconsistent of those people not to comment on it in the same way, all else being equal. If it is not the same thing, then it would not be, and it would therefore be unfair to expect that they would do so, and judge them as if they had failed to comply with what was not their understanding of the status of these two "things" (three things, really) as actually the same one thing.
The other issue, I guess, is with whether all things can be said to be equal apart from the status of those things (multiple) as thing (single), but I think that's a subsidiary question.
Soooo... Let's think about how different this might have been if, Lula, you had started by saying something like:
Hang on - isn't what Mister Disco just did rather like what .trampetunia did [either with link or request for reference]? And wasn't that agreed to be unacceptable behaviour at the time?
At which point we could have discussed a) whether what Mister Disco had done was like what .trampetunia did and b) whether what .trampetunia did (and by extension, if it was the same as what MD had just done) was judged unacceptable by Barbelith.
But this didn't happen. We got:
Somewhere, I forget where, Flowers and Trampetunia were quite harshly pulled up about suggesting that two men fighting meant they were having sexual feelings for one another.
That's a simple statement of fact - unfortunately, it's also factually incorrect, even before you start discussing what constitutes "harshly" - a word which I ask Lula to exemplify in another context later in the thread, which request goes unanswered. I provide context and correct the factual errors, without commenting on the editorial of "quite harshly". Lula responds:
Regarding Trampetunia and Flowers, I think Trampetunia was fairly well told it was unacceptable. Don't you think? And if that's the case it shouldn't be acceptable from anyone. Should it?
Despite my having given the names of the two threads in which this entire discussion took place by this point, it is apparently still later my fault that I didn't reference the rest, the really important bits until after [she] had commented. I have no idea what that actually refers to.
But anyway. Lula has interpreted my suggestion that it might be wise to read the threads in question as ignoring her question. That is a shame, because I still think it was relevant and good advice. In particular, I hoped that it would help her to look at the whole "unacceptable" business - an adjective which as far as I can tell comes not from the original discussion but is applied by her here, although I am open to correction.
And here's the problem. Because MD and I, and others, have now said that there does not appear to be a point at which it is decided that what .trampetunia has done is unacceptable. People take issue with it for various reasons. Other people defend it. But we've skipped that bit and we're on to the rhetorical questions. And yet, I am reasonably confident that if I had asked then where exactly the conduct is deemed unacceptable, I would have been accused of twisting, or semantics, or rhetoric, or a number of other terms the use of which has been criticised on Barbelith but not identified as unacceptable in a Policy sense.
However. I have already answered this, in various ways, about three times now. But, once more:
Regarding Trampetunia and Flowers, I think Trampetunia was fairly well told it was unacceptable. Don't you think?
No, I don't think, but I am ready to be proven wrong. Is there any point at which it is agreed that what-.trampetunia-did was unacceptable on Barbelith?
And if that's the case it shouldn't be acceptable from anyone. Should it?
If that is the case, which I don't think it is, then it should indeed not be, all else being equal. However, that a) relies on the first part being agreed and b) depends on waht-.trampetunia-did and what-Disco-did being the same thing. Which I don't think is necessarily the case.
So.
I don't think the question is the problem here. It's the delivery - statement of fact based on imperfect recollection of events, followed by restatement with assumed premises. Now, here I might have made a mistake. It is possible that in the ten minutes between my posting the references to the material Lula was misremembering and her next post, she had in fact read the relevant parts of the threads - although the subsequent claim that I was witholding the important stuff suggests not, as the important stuff also took place in those threads. So, perhaps these questions above were genuine inquiries based on a quick but thorough reading of the relevant materials. At the time, I thought not. The absence of any reference to what people had actually said in those threads was also a factor in this decision. If responding as if these were attempts to clarify an understanding of the (read) threads rather than a restatement without acknowledgement of correction of the interpretation based on memory of what happened in the (unread) threads would have saved a scrap, then I miscalculated and I apologise.
Alternatively, it might just have created the need for a different scrap - perhaps about the "harsh" responses in the thread to that point - I attempted to rangefind on what was being interpreted as harsh here, but I was not answered. Subsequently, I have also been accused of treating people - presumably specifically her - like a floor rag - which I think I can say with confidence is a metric fuckload more harsh than anything I said to her to that point, as is the utterly baseless accusation, presented as fact:
You even made a reference to it in a totally irrelevant thread, bringing it up to discredit Trampetunia's comments on a completely different matter, but I guess we won't be linked to that.
We won't be linked to that because it never happened, and I think it's unfair to say that it did. When I referenced the comment in the thread where the comment had originally been made, there followed an argument about interpretations of sentence structure which ended amicably. There was at no point any attempt to discredit .trampetunia's comments, as you may by now realise, Lula.
So, in terms of avoiding further conflict - well, I don't know. I think this conflict arose over a number of things - first a misremembering of a situation, followed by some misrepresentations of what happened. You're still sticking to this idea that at point (x), (y) was deemed by barbelith to be UNACCEPTABLE - which I don't think is true - and the at point (z), (y) happened again, which appears to be open to argument as well, and that therefore now we have to say that actually (y) is deemed ACCEPTABLE - your caps - which I think is where the argument is meant to end, not begin, and I think this assumption that one is simply stating an already-established truth is a dangerous one.
However, I may be wrong. There may be a point at which it was judged as a matter of policy that what .trampetunia posted was unacceptable, rather than unfit for purpose or irritating to some members. It may be the case that MD and .trampetunia were doing exactly the same thing. Those possibilities can be discussed. They cannot be assumed.
Now, I think Ganesh is right that there is a possibility of a thread about how newer and older members are treated. I also think that Duncan is right that it may simply be the case that trust is earned, and that might be another part of the extensive answer I have now given to your questions. However, the argument you are trying to have here is based, as far as I can see, on shaky premises, and the way in which it has been conducted has made it hard to use it as the basis for such a discussion.
More personally, I am still a little confused that I get all this aggression and yet, when, for example, Glandmaster calls my comments "fascistic" and compares me and others to the killers of Socrates, your response is... to ignore completely what is borderline trolling. Again, is that fair? Personally, I'd say not, but I don't expect members of Barbelith, including you, to police every instance of people being unfair to me, although it's very nice when they do. I think it might help if you took on board that you are not going to be able to establish an objective view of what is fair in every case, and thus that your belief that something is unfair does not necessarily justify any action you take on the grounds that it will be by process of elimination fair. |
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