Posted by SLS on August 8, 2009, at 7:02:15
In reply to Re: make change » Dr. Bob, posted by Sigismund on July 16, 2009, at 15:56:35
This post sucks, but I tried.
> >> "Bob ... has demonstrated so little understanding of how important privacy is for us."
Taken out of context, this doesn't sound too bad to me.
"I feel as though Dr. Bob doesn't understand how important privacy is for us."
The subtle change sounds better to me because it is an "I" statement. Interesting what happens were I to substitute "me" for "us".
Almost any statement can be viewed as an accusation if it refers to an action or trait of someone other than the speaker.
What would you do with this one?
"I don't think you understand me."
Or this one.
"You never take a good picture of me."
This is an accusation, right?
It might hurt the photographer's feelings, but does it rise to the level of being uncivil? If so, why? If not, perhaps the two people can work out any conflict, if indeed there is one.
Same sentence, add a smile emoticon.
"You never take a good picture of me. :-)"
Is tone important in assessing the civility of word combinations? If so, then you might need to exerpt more than one sentence of a post in a notification of incivility.
If I were to say, "Dr. Bob understands us", is this accusatory of everyone who thinks otherwise?
This semantic dance could go on for quite awhile, but how does it enhance the communication between individuals to not be able to post any sentence that mentions another individual? There aren't too many things left to post.
At some point, the microscope loses perspective when it examines objects too closely for too long.
I am not against the moderation of the Psycho-Babble website. I think it needs some enforceable guidelines to prevent flame wars and the ridicule of one member by another. There are other posting behaviors that should be examined as well, including overgeneralizing. However, at this point, I can't help but to feel shackled by what seems like an ever expanding judgment of posting incivility.
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:904398
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20090707/msgs/910886.html