Well, I’m late to the party since I’ve been too busy to peruse Boing Boing for a bit here, but this sort of trainwreck fascinates me, in part because I’m a long time moderator on a climbing oriented board and have had to deal with the same sort of thing, and you can always learn something from other’s solutions to similar problems. I was initially stymied in my pursuit of the details (and the names! the names!) due to the closed nature of the SWFA forum, but here’s a timeline for the meltdown with all the backstory and links you could want: timeline and here’s a link to Theodore Beale’s troll cave where the miscreants and their sycophants whinge and back slap: Vox Popoli
While I miss the old comment system, I’m interested to see how this Discourse system works out. There’s a certain part of online interaction that has been broken since thousands of years before the first transistor, and I’m curious about attempts to remedy the situation.
Since the comment consisted entirely of invective with no actual content, I removed it. If he wants to make comments like that, I’m sure that they’d be welcome on YouTube.
I’m sort of torn. On the one hand, you’re right, people are complicated; someone can be a jerk in one situation but a stand-up guy in others. On the other hand, as Dave Barry said, “If someone is nice to you but rude to the waiter, they are not a nice person.” The way you treat friends and loved ones says a lot about your character, but they way you treat strangers and enemies says more.
I do appreciate your forthrightness, though. Thanks for that.
Which really doesn’t have much to do with unnamed ‘rabid weasels’ behaving badly - leftist or rightest.
Nor am I defending the actions (albeit actions that seem confined to words on website forums rather than any fisticuffs in the streets) of aforementioned anonymous ‘rabid weasels’ - only that the names being so gleefully bandied about in the comments here over who may or may not be members of the infamous band of ‘rabid weasels,’ are fellow writers who, regardless of their politics, deserve as much courtesy and benefit of the doubt as they are being accused of, apparently, not having.
I’m not a professional writer or even a fan, I just like to read SF a lot. But it seems to me that SFWA has a kerfuffle like this every few years. My view from outside is that the SFWA looks terribly unprofessional for a professional body. There’s always some ludicrous internal stuff going on that leaks out into the greater world of SF Fandom (I use the term loosely) that makes the association look unprofessional and a place that many writers would not feel welcome. Mainly, it’s crap published in the professional body’s publication that makes them look bad as a professional body, but there are other incidents such as a certain very public groping incident.
It seems that, as a professional body, SFWA has some serious problems getting its shit together and getting fully on board with the 21st century, which is kind of ironic.
