Posted by twinleaf on December 10, 2009, at 15:44:57
In reply to Re: editing posts after submission, posted by Dr. Bob on December 10, 2009, at 5:05:32
When I posted yesterday, I was trying to put into words what I felt the reasons for 100 or more posters leaving Babble were. They nearly all cited feeling "unsafe". I may well not have gotten their exact feelings right, but, overall, they have been pretty clear about their reasons for leaving, as well as their sadness at having to do so.
I was hoping, (still!), that, together with Dr. Bob, we would find a way back to making Babble a vibrant, safe and helpful mental health community.Because of my clear focus on community-wide, rather than personal concerns, I was quite amazed to find Dr. Bob directing my suggestions back at just me, and adding something that I did not say- that I might "feel unsafe if I was not understood by other posters". I have never had the slightest problem with anyone here, other than Dr. Bob! I have shared many personal things which have found resonance with other posters, but, at times, they have felt and thought differently from me- no problem! There has always been a basic trust and respectful tolerance of differences in experience and opinions, combined with a wonderful, warm appreciation of our common experience. If it had not been like that, I would not still be trying to find a way to make it work again. I, and everyone else, would quickly forget Babble.
By responding to me as if only I have problems with him, Dr. Bob is not only trying to put me on the defensive (he will not be successful in that no matter how hard he tries), he is also, for about the thousandth time, avoiding the real problems on this forum, which he has played a major part in creating. I have spent almost all of 2009 being blocked, three times for objecting to the long blocks themselves, and once for objecting to the automatic forwarding of our posts to social networks. I have been blocked, not for incivility (although Dr. Bob has always managed to find some third-party individual whom I "might have hurt."). I have been blocked because I said what I believed and what my moral principles were. During that time, pretty much all of the posters with whom I interacted here, and who grew to mean a lot to me, have pretty much left. In varying ways, they all say the same thing: they do not feel heard or respected, and therefore, they do not feel safe. I am just giving a tiny fraction of the list of posters who decided during the past year that it was not safe enough to remain ( and I don't want to hurt anyone by not mentioning them- it's just that these people made up my own community here, and now they have all left): Partly Cloudy, Stella-by-Starlight, rskontos, Happyflower, alex. Daisy and Dinah.
If we all keep in mind how much Babble meant to us in the past,
wouldn't it be wonderful to begin recreating it, as it was at its' best? And, if we can make it even better, and welcome new people to a great place, wouldn't that be wonderful? Babble at its best was by far the most supportive. informed, and emotionally profound mental health forum around. So many of us know that, and we are, obviously, going to great lengths to get it back! But even the most dedicated of us will give up eventually if we do not receive understanding and respectful responses from Dr. Bob. I would have expected that he would have easily grasped the fact that i was attempting to address generic problems which hundreds of posters have had with Babble, and not personal ones which he thinks his repeated blocks may have caused me. I was asking him to consider the effects that his actions have had on the entire community (not just on me). Nothing more, but definitely nothing less.
poster:twinleaf
thread:660662
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20091103/msgs/928759.html