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Flyboy: It's not your nationality.
These things are all linked - you can't seperate the perceived increase in snippiness from the broken mechanics of the board, because the one is a direct result of the other.
I think there's a lot of truth in that, which is why I started the "topics of concern" threads. The "banning"threads, in particular, I think, caused a lot of stress, in particular on the people who are generally trusted to look after the best interests of the board, through experience, familiarity and commitment. Personally, I think that this is at least in part because people who basically had no interest in the actual subject, and no ability to discuss it, but a powerful desire for the spotlight - get the right to clog up discussions, which are more attractive the higher their profile, which leads both to frustration with that person and broader frustration with the way threads can be derailed. Mathlete in the ShadowSax thread, or ParanoidWriter subsequently, caused this problem.
The broken state of banning, in particular, and the uncertain nature of the way we try to deal with it - for example, the way that about half way through the Policy discussion people were invited to post PMs to Tom directly if they did not feel like sharing their views with the board - has caused considerable stress, I think, and has demonstrated a problem in how we as a community can keep our fur clean and unmatted. At the moment, I think some of us are... well, tired, or more precisely not really confident that the returns on engagement justify the effort expended. At some point, I would like to post explaining to Lord Morgue.. sorry, Sole Eater why he is getting some push-back, on the assumption that he might not be in a good place to put those pieces together. I tried to do this with Scarlet156, here. It's a work in progress.
However, I almost dread the next time somebody really starts getting tasty with the sexism or the Islamophobia, or something else not as easy to identify and thus deal with as "I don't think the Holocaust happened" or "I hate gay people and believe them to be unnatural", and I fear that that might very easily occur from somebody realising that this board, as Shadowsax did, is a) sufficiently concerned about these things that a number of people who will be upset by them will be present, so utterances will have an impact on them, and also attention will be garnered, but b) is not sufficently centred on the protection of those people that they will be immediately banned for it. |
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