Posted by Dinah on August 18, 2009, at 9:25:47
In reply to Re: make change, posted by alexandra_k on August 17, 2009, at 22:35:36
I may have once idealized Dr. Bob. It's not an insult really. I don't think I do idealize him after all these years. I *do* trust him to be exactly who he is - at least the person he's always been on Babble. Which isn't the same as idealizing him. And for me the person he's always been on Babble is someone who is a good enough administrator with flaws and strengths. Just like most people.
I've been incredibly rude to him in emails from time to time. In emails. And yet I truly do regret those times when I am rude to him.
Sometimes I've really been angry about other things on the board, and Dr. Bob is a safe person to be angry with. He never responds in kind. He stands like an immovable object in the face of my storm of fury. I don't believe that I have the power to hurt him. Sometimes that makes me even more angry with him, and makes me feel like upping the ante to get an emotional reaction. Which never works with Dr. Bob, which is why he's safe. That may be idealization, but I don't think so. I see it as being a good quality in an administrator and perhaps in general, and one I sometimes wish I was able to develop, but I'm not unaware that it comes with downsides, as most good qualities do.
Being angry with him allows me to be less angry with others. And since it can generally be seen that anything that does or doesn't happen on board is his ultimate responsibility, because he sets the rules and determines how they will be enforced, it's always easy enough to be angry with him.
Yet I always feel genuine regret, and I always apologize.
Sometimes the reason I apologize is that I feel regret for saying something that I realize in my heart of hearts he did not deserve.
Sometimes I apologize even if I believe he deserved every word I said. Because what Dr. Bob does is what Dr. Bob does. What I do is what I do. In my eyes, when I speak to anyone, whether positively or negatively, I'm expressing more than my beliefs about them. I'm also expressing information about myself. About my own values. One of my values is that in public or in private, people deserve the basic respect that all human beings deserve. I can express disagreement with a person's choices or their beliefs without expressing disrespect for the person.
Dr. Bob probably doesn't mind if people email him whatever thoughts are on their mind. I doubt that anyone could be ruder than I have been on occasion, although perhaps I just don't have a good enough imagination.
But he asks that on board, we treat each other - himself included - with basic respect and civility. We don't have to *feel* respect. But he asks that we *behave* in accordance with his site guidelines. I don't think that's a bad thing to ask. It's perfectly possible to disagree with him policies, to ask him to change his policies, while being civil to him.
And we did, and he did. He put in autoasterisking, and he modified the block formula. Those issues are in the past, and whether or not we agree with him on those decisions, the important thing is that he's put policies in place to see they don't happen again. He can't change the past, he did change the future. He changed the rules because we said things that changed his views on the topic. I don't think incivility to him would cause him to change his views. Persuasive arguments presented logically are more likely to succeed.
And.... While this is slightly off topic, no one is blocked for a year for saying anything at all. Someone receives a PBC for saying something, then a one week block, then it increases from there, more slowly now than it used to. A lot of times there is a tendency to think "Someone was blocked for a year for saying *that*?" And the answer is no, of course someone wasn't blocked for a year for saying that. Any more than the last out is the one that causes the game to be lost.
poster:Dinah
thread:904398
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20090813/msgs/912791.html