Posted by itsme2003 on March 16, 2006, at 2:18:22
In reply to Re: Posting more difficult » itsme2003, posted by Dinah on March 15, 2006, at 21:24:22
Dinah,
Word choice is usually very revealing.
You said
> There is no intent to insult or embarass the poster.Even though there may be no 'intent' what is your opinion of the effect? Do you believe that some or many are embarrassed, feel belittled, insulted, humiliated by the public shaming of the civility system? Of course not everyone does, but plenty of people do. It's clear from lots of posts that I have read that lots of people feel ACTUAL harm from the civility standards which are often imposed to prevent an IMAGINED harm.
Some people go out of their way to be insulting, etc, and they deserve to have a penalty imposed. On the other hand, I've seen lots of penalties imposed here on people who really had no idea that they were doing anything wrong.
Open administration might be a great theory, but truthfully it's broken here. If you took a poll here what do you think the number one problem would be? Is it possible that it would be the civility system?
In the case of posting warnings about possible triggers, assuming that you had a voluntary system, what better way than gentle behind the scenes encouragement toward the desired behavior. To make a spectacle of someone in public about an unintentional infraction of a subjective rule that is skewed against the poster is not the method most likely to produce the desired outcome. And what's more important, getting the desired effect (either being civil or posting a trigger warning) or getting the pleasure of thrashing someone for breaking a rule. The answer to that one is clear here.
Don't get me wrong. I know that this is Dr Bob's playground and he gets to make the rules. And I don't have any problem with that. He does, however, permit free (civil) discourse about most any topic here. I'm choosing to exercise the privilege that he has granted to everyone to come into his yard and tell him that they disagree with him. I've seen quite a few posters come here and disagree with the civility rules and be told by others that if they don't like the rules they can just leave. I feel that I have as much right to stand here and disagree with the civility rules (as long as I'm civil) as anyone else has any right to say anything here. And I'd like to tell you what I think about the people who tell people that they don't have a right, or shouldn't be here if they disagree with the civility rules, except that if I told you what I thought about that I would be violating the civility rules.
In terms of one of your other points, I'm not surprised.
You said:
>Obviously, I disagree that the current civility system is tyrannical or oppressive. I consider it the reason it's pleasant to post on Babble.Let me take a wild guess. I could be wrong, but I think that people who are opposed to the civility system here probably don't get to be moderators. Therefore it would probably be safe to assume that since you are a mod you are in full support of the civility system.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of a civility system. It's just the one here is broken. It punishes too many innocent people too harshly. It creates lots of hurt feelings. Those are truths. I've seen people work toward agitating someone then that person gets banned. I've even seen moderators {(self censored to avoid the civility police)} instead of trying to soothe things over.
As far as tyrannical goes, I especially like one definition that I saw:
tyrannical 2. marked by unjust severity or arbitrary behavior. Yep, that about sums it up.
poster:itsme2003
thread:614568
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060225/msgs/620838.html