OK. So I’ve read this thread through pretty carefully now and I’d like to add my two bits.
First: I am uncomfortable with ideas about sponsorship. Why? Well, many of the key reasons have been addressed but I’ll reiterate the ones I am most concerned with: (a) people who do not know any Lithers and/or stumble upon this site by some means are immediately screwed. They would have to have some way to contact existing members of the board in order to convince one of them to sponsor him or her, and this seems like a pain in the butt that not too many would try and pursue; moreover, a dedicated and intelligent troll could easily sway someone with clever and conscientious claptrap until he or she was allowed to wreak havoc at their leisure, (b) sponsorship implies an elitist attitude that I know many of us would like to avoid: it is much like if the New Barbelith is being designed as a ritzy nightclub with a VIP + guest entrance, and a “please stand behind the velvet rope” line for the rest of the riff-raff (and we are all riff-raff in some ways—“one person’s Haus is anothers Knowledge” ), and (c) mentoring, while valuable in certain circumstances, doesn’t seem to be applicable here; Litherland has always been, in my eyes, a sink or swim place, like IRL, you come in naked and you go out with style (or not). This, IMHO, ties into exactly what a part of the wonder of Barbelith is about—finding your own way and discovering parts of your identity that you were previously unaware of. Thus, having someone to hold your hand to get you in and continuing to hold your hand while you learn the ropes seems counter-productive to being forced to chance your arm and learning to fly.
Second: I’m opposed to voting. Well, at least voting for people! I see many problems with this route: (a) if a person really has it out for you, how hard would it be to run a smear campaign against you by PMing all his or her Litherland friends and persuading them to simply “vote” against you? (b) there are certainly people here with multiple fiction suits, and as such, could there ever be a “fair” vote? And (c) voting requires, to be effective, a representation of significant portion of the population: if fictionsuit X is up for a vote to be ostracized, and only ten posters vote and all ten vote against, then whose interests have been served? In other words, I imagine that many of the members would be apathetic or indifferent towards fictionsuit X and not bother to vote one way or the other. If you look at the number of regular posters vs. the number of actual members, we clearly see that only a small portion of Litherland is a vocal representative of everyone else. In conclusion, I do not see voting as a reasonable solution and moreover, I see it creating more difficulties with grudges and infighting than it solves.
Now Libertine Idler has said:
quote: And you know--I can't really put my finger on what's so unsettling about this thread. I just hope it doesn't spread. Perhaps I'm not cut out for Membership and its attendant Privileges...
and I feel very much like this. There is something extremely uncomfortable about this thread, and whatever it is, I feel it flies in the face of everything that the origins of this site stand for. Mordant’s thoughts on this matter included:
quote: At the end of the day we're talking about exclusion, and that is an ugly thing. It really bugs me that the irresponsible behaviour of one or two people has had this effect.
And exclusion is certainly part of the troublesome nature of all this. However, as much as it also bugs me that the “…irresponsible behaviour of one or two people has had this effect,” I’d also like to add that, while you are one of the Belle’s of the Ball around here MC, you certainly played a role in encouraging all the garbage that helped in leading us to this current crisis. And this brings me to my next point, which I put out there before, but I feel it bears repeating.
The Haus noted:
quote:…the problem with the "don't feed the trolls" plan - if somebody is being offensively awful, I'm ethically conflicted about just leaving them to it.
And I agree strongly with the sentiment expressed here. Persephone says some things about this as well, but I do think that silence is not the best answer, but then again, giving an irresponsible poster ammunition (through text), even if you are only trying to point out hir sheer idiocy, only encourages the misbehaviour. Thus, my reiterated solution is this: create a specific emoticon which we can slap up all by itself (with no text message) to say, “By posting this emoticon to your sorry excuse for a thread I am showing you that, while I don’t agree with anything you’ve said, the way you’ve said it, your piss-poor attitude and blatant idiocy, and your flagrant abuse of the unspoken rules of Litherland, I do not wish to engage you in conversation because it is obviously a waste of everyone’s time.” Thus, we have a way to express extreme disapproval without giving the offensive person any text based ammunition to fuel the fire.
Finally, I think I agree with Libertine Idler in that the best solution (along with the suggested emoticon) is that:
quote:…an Ignore button, combined with Enlightened Moderation, would nip as much of the problem as can be nipped.
I know, I know, I spoke out against the Ignore button before, but have since re-evaluated my position. It is so clear now that some but not all of us could use this function, and those of us that are opposed to it can (as someone pointed out in the ignore button thread) merely choose to ignore the Ignore button!
In closing, I am on the side of the most possible freedom for new and old members alike at the least possible cost to that freedom. However, I recognize and am sympathetic to the position that all this has placed Tom in: I know I’d hate to receive a reams worth of whiny, angry, unreasonable emails on a daily basis simply because I made decisions about how I thought MY board ought to be run. In other words, I’ve presented my case against some of the ideas expressed above, and what I see as the best solution to our problems; however, ultimately it is your board Tom, and you need to feel free to deal with it in the way you feel is most appropriate. If this leads to measures that some of us find uncomfortable, then we can either compromise our positions or leave. I for one thank you for the opportunity to try to sway and inform your choices and I sincerely hope that such drastic, elitist, and easily corruptible measures such as voting and sponsorship are not instituted.
Sincerely and as a concerned member of this community,
4 + 5 + 6 = 0 (mod 3)
[ 15-03-2002: Message edited by: modthree ] |
