This strikes me as revisionist history at best. When the development of the BBS was announced it was specifically stated that this was not the case:
With forums, you’re not limited to discussion of our posts. You can create your own discussions and tell us how you’d like the forums to develop, as well as comment on the threads that we create ourselves.
BBS was intended to be a community, not just comments.
The more I think about this the more I keep coming back to two ideas. Consistency and proportionality. But these are both underlined by good-faith communication.
And I guess those all flow both ways.
I, personally, feel indebted to Jason for fostering the creation and continuance of this place and I want to see things from his perspective if I can. There must be a way to bridge the gap.
Hopefully we can all come together and communicate constructively. If that isn’t the whole point here, I don’t know what is.
No. Snarky gifs are just as flippant a response as any other joke.
Being flippant in a post, be it a gif or a verbal joke, might be an intentional put-down, or it might just an attempt to be funny. Sometimes the former is justified; sarcasm is not a bad way of dealing with bad arguments, and it is pretty common on BB even on the front page. Sometimes the latter is interpreted as the former - I think that is what happened here.
What we don’t want to do is fall into the trap of thinking “that person’s jokes about my posts are hurtful, my jokes about that person’s posts are just funny”.
wildly off-topic for a thread about a guy who was banned for being off-topic despite usually being funny
Surely you mean, “wildly on topic”?
It troubles me to think of the state of the world if, throughout all history, everyone everywhere stayed safely on topic. Medicine, the sciences, and art would now be… well, something else altogether.
Especially since in the books Hugh is specifically painted as an intellectual equal to Cadfael, up to being a partner-in-crime with him. Not to mention them casting great big sherriff-y types when Peters often made mention of Hugh’s slight build and how it led people to underestimate him.
IRL I’ve just been through a major drama fest involving someone else’s teen and one of mine. The other teen already had a few serious strikes against her; yesterday, she pulled a stunt of such cruelty (against my kid) that the mother freaked out and delivered a strong punishment (literally, hard labor). For reasons I’m not going into, there was a glitch that caused me to be able to see the text conversation the miscreant was having with the teen who’s staying with us for a month, so I saw 1) absolutely no contrition and 2) further insults against my family.
I am not the parent there. They did what they felt was right. I don’t agree with the punishment. But more importantly, we know not to trust that person in future. It will cause friction between the families, but she has run out of chances with us.
I’ve been very busy this week and did not see the MO posts in question. It sounds like a few other times I can think of when we’ve had a long-time community member have a difficult day, when usually people jump right in to check “are you OK?” and things get sorted within about an hour. That didn’t happen this time.
I’m not the parent here, either.
It’s going to be a while before I feel I can trust that I’m part of a community.
That was a great (and sad) line from the book. I’ll definitely have to revisit itone of these days; deep into sci-fi rightnow.
Let ye among us who has never posted a snarky gif as a response cast the first stone…
I never read the books, but watching the TV series, it seemed logical (and necessary) that Cadfael have an authority figure on his side, otherwise he would not have gotten anywhere given the fickleness of Medieval justice, general lawlessness, and absolute power structures of the church and state.
That’s “Kangaroo” for… game over.
Indeed. I wonder if this community is democratic enough to unban users based on the will of the community, as a check and balance of the power of authors?
But I am just musing.
Don’t ban me, bro!
But I came for the wine?
Sorry, eh
The likes now come from the collective mind.
That’s at least part of why mine isn’t completely transparent.
That really is the key to keeping people in check. Ever watch Supernanny? (Is that still on?) She can make it work with small children, and most of us are at least legally adults.
Heck if there are certain behaviors that the mods would rather do away with, it might behoove them to nip things with some short term bans, FOLLOWED UP with PMs about the why. Rather than tolerate for awhile and then lash out the one day someone really crossed the line, or that mod decided they were done with it. If there are particular behaviors that really bug some mods, odds are they are the only ones aware of it. (maybe there, aren’t, I dunno).
Nipping with out communication will probably be unfruitful and making things worse. Nipping with an explanation, such as a “nothing personal, but we are trying to discourage blah blah blah”. Psychology 101 has taught me people are more willing to go along with something if there is a reason - even if the reason isn’t very good.
Also, some times no nipping is needed, just communication. I have had a few PM slaps from the dragon that reeled in what were meant to be jokes, but still not kosher.
I think that’s a fair point. To be honest some of those rub me the wrong way some times. Usually depends on the context. One can take it as rather patronizing some times.
At the same time, it is also sort of “Internet body language” where pushing the issue further with that person won’t be fruitful, and their snarky bark is tamer than a verbal maul.
At the very least, with those of us who have stuck around long enough to become “regulars”, I’d think you could almost guarantee that a little communication would work better and easier than a context-less smackdown. Might not work as well with a hit-and-run trolley, but that’s an easy distinction to make.
