wait a second, editing...

See, here's the thing about LJ. If I get pissed off about something here and I say to myself, "Dude, you must chill," and then go to LJ to rant in the attempt to maintain board tranquility...well, if you refer to it here, you've kind of fucked up the plan. If you want to call me on it, call me on it in LJ or some other backchannel method. But, even if it is a public entry, I don't think that bringing something back here from backchannel does any good.

I took back my last post right after I posted it, and I thought I was just going to edit it for content, but in fact I might have changed my mind. LiveJournals are still "public," but when I think of talking about anything I learned about someone on LJ here, even that DXMachina is a king and a saint, it doesn't feel right. I could e-mail somebody about what I read, but it's different here. PMM's right. It's not really private, but it's backchannel. The only reason you need to lock it is to keep the person you're ranting about from seeing it, not to keep everyone else from talking about it. Okay.

It's not really private

Thing is, if it's friends-locked then it is private - or at least as private as conversation with a few select friends. If someone breaks that privacy by discussing the conversation outside of that area, it's a problem. Okay, it's not private in the sense that more than one person can't keep a secret, yada.

You guys keep talking about friends-lock. Friends lock is really, really visibly private, like PMM just said. It's so private that an LJ browser like me doesn't even figure out it exists for a while. It's so private I imagine anyone who read it would treat it like a secret. I've been talking about the public, visible LiveJournal experience the whole time. I've come around to agreeing that even that is backchannel as far as here is concerned, but I don't think you could keep people from talking about it at work.

Bloody hell.

First things first - Kat, I really, really wish that you hadn't gone back and edited your posts. I have no idea whether I would have agreed with you or disagreed with you, but now all I have is a ghostly indication that you were part of the discussion, and that it angered you so much that you felt you had to leave the thread. If it was that important - and clearly it was - I wish that I could read it. I totally get that emotions ran high, and I do sympathise with that. But I would have very much liked to hear your side of the discussion, and it's a little frustrating that you've deleted it all.

Nou, if you've seen people rejoicing in the Peoplesforum Marcie Filter in open journal posts, fair enough. I didn't think I had, so PMM spoke for me. Either way, I hope most people agree that the first rule of backchannel is - don't talk about the backchannel. If people need to vent or gush or plan meetups or whatever, then it's great that we have so many media for communicating privately. Bringing it up here - even if it's something as innocuous as 'Get on AIM right now, girl!' does create a sense of exclusivity/clique-forming.

Have to agree with Trudy here . Who, it must be said, is a far better person than me, because try as I might I still wind up being passive agressive. I think this is a very good point:

I think the situation with Mieskie who was, (IMHO) far more deliberately obnoxious and hurtful than Zoe has ever been, went too far too fast. I think it damaged the board and our sense of community. I would like to be careful not to act in haste and do the same thing again.

We have lost community members because of this.

I don't, fwiw, think Zoe is a troll. I think she comes across as very young, quite impulsive, and as quite possibly not used to using language at University level. (I've tried to think of a less obnoxious way of phrasing this, but I concluded it would be euphemistic.) One of the identifying features of discourse here - and at Tabletalk and Guardianunlimited - is that posters are scarily well-educated and mostly very word-conscious. This is a place where people regularly edit for grammar and often spellcheck before posting, and where a lot of people have Arts or Media backgrounds which involved developing quite sophisticated writing styles. Most posters are pretty articulate. At times it's all very frivolous, but people don't make sweeping statements lightly without knowing that they can get called on them - often because they couldn't get away with that in writing essays, I'd estimate, and they've transferred that thinking to online discourse.

In the real world, people constantly make sweeping statements - without getting called on them - without being either malicious or having a disability. So for many people, I imagine that this style of discourse would be jarring and/or inimical. (Indeed, when I was at University 3 of the people in my house were studying Arts and one was studying Science, and there was a real disconnect in communication style. [Which isn't to say that's the case with all scientists, 'cause I know some of you science people are real Renaissance types and are very articulate and well read and arty, and generally make me feel unbelievably inadequate and dim.] But there are different types of intelligence, and my flatmate's wasn't as language-based, I think. It caused a disconnect which was sometimes very jarring - I see a similar thing happening here.)

My impression is that Zoe's quite young and that she's not used to the kind of conversations that people tend to have here . I think she posts quickly, without thinking things through, yes - but I don't think she's a troll, and I think that banning would be horribly unfair. And, moreover, I don't like who that would make us.

I mean Zoe's interjection over on UnAmerican had me smashing my head on the desk in frustration at the complete inappropriateness, but I don't think it was malicious. I just don't think she got the conversation, and she wanted to bounce in and say 'Hi!' and try to make people laugh. The effect was anything but endearing, but I don't think it was calculated to annoy.

I would certainly employ Marcie, if it were available, but I personally don't think there are any grounds for banning her. And I think that 'warning' has a very punitive connotation which isn't helpful here. 'Intervening' might be a better model, with a sense that we have a problem, rather than that someone is a problem, and the emphasis upon trying to build bridges.

I think that within the context of the Bronze or TWoP or lots of other communities her posting style wouldn't raise an eyebrow.

Again, I wish Zoe would weigh in here, because right now this all feels very Cordette-like and, frankly, mean. But for the life of me I don't know where she could take matters is she did. Either it's intentional trollishness (and I really don't think it is), in which case she'd just be reading this and chortling, or else there's a genuine failure to connect, in which case all this discussion would be tremendously hurtful.

I think if I were in her shoes I'd be pretty hurt by all this, so I can understand her not wanting to speak up. Really, I think that by this stage one would have to have an extraordinary level of composure, dignity and confidence to try to speak up for oneself here. If she does decide to address the matter in the thread (which seems better than some official intervention thing in which the stompies are again cast as community policemen), then everyone had damn well better recognise what a lot of courage that would take, and see whether we can't sort things out kindly and constructively.

edited for stuff, because I

I've written three different replies in the last few minutes, and none of them really seems worth it. So, as someone else who has been bothered, I'm just going to try to offer a word of advice of Zoe, assuming she's reading.

Zoe . . . how quickly do you post the things you post? Because I honestly think that your somewhat impulsive posting tendencies have caused several of these problems to snowball. I say this as someone who's probably on the opposite end of the spectrum: I read and re-read my potential posts far too much before I commit to them (see above regarding this being my fourth attempt at writing something).

If, for example, you want to compliment someone on something they said, it appears to me that you normally automatically copy what the person said and stick "Wrod." under it. Now, there's nothing wrong with complimenting someone else's comment, but it helps to try to keep the conversation vital in the process. If it's something someone wrote five minutes ago, or five hours ago and no one seems to have noticed, and it's really a hell of an insight, a simple "Wrod" is appropriate. If, however, your thought upon reading the insight is "Hmm, I agree", and the insight was already complimented by several people in the previous hour, a "Wrod" is going to give many people the impression that A) you're not reading what other people are writing, and B) you're not giving much thought to what you're complimenting.

What I personally do in such situations is one of several things. I may sit back for a moment, realize that my additional compliment won't really add anything to the discussion, and leave it unwritten. I may try to think of some way to expand on the comment after complimenting it. There's also dropping the compliment in the middle of a long post responding to several disparate topics (the nickname for which has totally escaped me).

I know that none of this directly relates to the current problems many people (myself included, it must be said) are having with your more brusque posts, but I can't help but wonder if the group's collective lack of positive reaction to your other posts has helped fuel some of the current unpleasantness, on both sides.

And now I'll be over here, salting my foot to taste.

(the nickname for which has totally escaped me).

Meara. Although it took me ages to deduce that that's what people meant when they used 'meara' as a verb.

(Robert, I'm totally with you on the ponderous composition thing. You don't want to know how long it took me to compose my last post. Too damn long.)

I think that within the context of the Bronze or TWoP or lots of other communities her posting style wouldn't raise an eyebrow.

I disagree. At the Bronze, people would have replied in the same way by asking her to clarify herself. If she made a random post and left, she'd be ignored. If she kept posting such things, lots of people would have jumped in and told her offending people by making jokes about religions, sexual orientations, etc. isn't cool, and people wouldn't have been as polite as the Buffistas bend over backwards to be.

At TWOP, she'd have been sporked a long, long time ago. They have a bad enough time with low bandwidth. As much as I know TWOP is often looked upon as a bad place, I admire the control the moderators have over there when it comes to keeping people in line and on topic. If you aren't able to play along, you're gone. There aren't 200 posts about it. That board can't handle such endless debate.

I disagree.

Fair enough. You sound to have more experience of both those sites than I do.