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.

SO VERY MUCH has sucked beyond the telling of it, lately. I don't want to see us implode over this, so I'm going to try to stay focused on process rather than personality. I'm half afraid it's too late for that.

• We already have unofficial measures in our warning system.

If a post offends, any of us who are offended speak up on the spot, or chalk it up to a bad day and look the other way.

In 99% of the cases, unofficial measures work. For most of us, it's so intuitive that it doesn't even feel like a measure, and never involves anyone outside the two people who've had a troubling exchange. Either way, the poster who has been called on his or her posts either apologizes, clarifies, or steps back for a while. The person who complained either accepts the apology, or feels better because of the clarification, or lets it go. This is how it works in polite society, and it works here, because that's what an overwhelming majority of us want. There's no (or shouldn't be) list of ongoing offenses, because we recognize that even the most Buffista-y Buffista is going to have an occasion problem.

(These measures have been used with Zoe, and because she hasn't modified her style, it's left some of us with our hands up in the air. See subsequent points.)

• We also have an official warning system.

People are loath to initiate process when they don't feel individual incidents rise to the level where suspension is justified. In part, we hesitate to take it to an official level, specifically because we learned a difficult object lesson with mieskie. Still, 100 mosquito bites can be more troublesome than one bee sting.

The question is, do we need something to bridge the gap?

There is a gap, but should we bridge it, or is it small enough that we can hop over it? I don't know the answer to this, but I think this is the area where we need to focus our discussion. My next post will toss out an idea on bridging the gap, but I'm not convinced we need to, and I think deciding whether or not we bridge it is more important than the "how" of it, so I'm not including the idea here.

I am also requesting that we all try to make a few fun posts in non-Bureaucratic threads, for every one time we each chime in here. I'm going for 5, myself. Let's not make us all about this. Let's make this an occasional duty when we can, and not lose our focus. This is a place where bright, kind, polite, funny, silly people meet, to have fun together.

She has been asked to think about her posts repeatedly, unofficially, and politely. And that hasn't changed a thing.

If this is going to happen (and I'm waffling on it), someone needs to threadsuck and prove this - if you want this step taken so badly, do some legwork on it. Provide links to specific posts where she has been rude/crude/whatever, and to where she's refused to take constructive criticism.

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

Too much. I really need a new job. Fast.

If this is going to happen (and I'm waffling on it), someone needs to threadsuck and prove this - if you want this step taken so badly, do some legwork on it. Provide links to specific posts where she has been rude/crude/whatever, and to where she's refused to take constructive criticism.

I have a serious issue with this. People have taken it upon themselves to say, "Excuse me, but you were being offensive." She doesn't apologize and makes the situation worse. It happens over and over, so much so that there were 200 posts about her behavior when I came to the board today. People finally bring it up in here, something that Buffistas loathe to do because you're all bending over backwards to appear polite and open to all. And now they're being told to cite and use footnotes and present relevent case histories? People have already linked to specific instances and mentioned the threads in which the flare-ups occurred. If you care so much, go look. I did.

I'm sorry, I just think 200+ posts about a situation makes things worse, and demanding that they have a complete case history isn't going to help because you're probably not going to agree with their interpretation of the escalation of events. I don't understand why everything is blown up into such a mountain around here and why it takes a couple thousand posts, people stomping out of the thread, and in some cases leaving the board out of frustration, before something is done around here. I run a board. It shouldn't be this hard. Really.

See my previous post for context.

Nutshell: There's a gap between incidents in which official action is clearly needed, and those incidents which we are able to address via informal measures.

Some posters who fall into the gap, bounce between all right and offensive, and don't acknowledge our unofficial measures. Some posters fall into the gap, seeming not to understand what we're about, maybe because they're new to the 'net, or maybe because they've had too much exposure to the 'net, and can't believe there's a polite society therein.

t blunt Sometimes people fall into the gap because we don't like them. t /blunt When this happens on an individual basis, it's easy to ignore, because we accept that some people don't click with each other. When a lot of people are having a problem with one poster, it goes beyond chemistry. We know this, because we'll find a really disparate group of posters, and they all see that one poster gazing up at them from the gap.

As I see it, when we encounter this kind of poster in the gap, our choices are:

• Continue/Start to ignore

Pros: It's the more accepting route; It allows us all not to take this too seriously; It avoids these kinds of conversations; It avoids letting the person in the gap control the community's conversation in one way or another.

Cons: When the problems are persistent and pervasive, people get prickly; People have different levels of tolerance, so while you may be ignoring, you'll have to ignore half the board, because a lot of people aren't ready to ignore; People get driven away from the threads, and/or lose their postiness (paradox with the pro list: in which case, Gap Guy is still controlling the conversation); Some people can't take a hint.

• Initiate a Notice Without Teeth

*** (BIG meaning changing edit in italics) This notice would NOT have an "or else". Not every problem poster would be entitled to it. It would be reserved for people who do (at least part of the time) seem to try to be part of the community. Liken it to this: If your next door neighbor (who wasn't your best friend, but seemed to like the neighborhood) dented your parked car but didn't offer immediately to have it fixed, you'd probably hint around. If the hints didn't get through to him, you might just present him with an estimate or bill before (and hopefully instead of) filing a police report.

If he takes responsibility for fixing the dent he made, it's over. You might not feel the same about him, because of everything that happened, but your car is fixed and you can co-exist in peace.

Pros: The onus is on the person in the gap; You present the person with certain examples of problematic posting, and point out how the posts dented community standards; People who are Buffistas, will want to fix the dent.

Cons: If the person doesn't really want to be a Buffista, this isn't going to mean shit.

If Con/then Pro: If the above con happens, the community will feel less upset about initiating offical warnings, because we'll feel like notice was a sufficient clue-stick for anyone who is a Buffista.

If Con/then Pro/then other Con: In cases like the one cited immediately above, there are always going to be Buffistas who would never opt for acknowledging and addressing problematic posting behavior, and they're going to think we're still going overboard.

I'm not requesting that we do this (or anything else) in Zoe's case (nor am I necessarily against doing anything).

I am requesting that we enter into a community discussion on whether or not we want some sort of gap bridging procedure or not. I am also requesting that anyone else who has an idea on how to bridge (or just assess) the gap, chime in as well.

*** damn, I was gone all morning and just saw my error. I meant it would not have an or else, but wrote just the opposite. Off to see what happened after I left.

I am dark this weekend, and I have to say that I was just about to post what Cindy posted.

Also, I wished Kat had left her osts, because it is really confusing and I think I agree with her. In fact, it seems like most people agree with her, so I am not sure what is going on...

But-- perhaps instead of a warning, Roberts post could be sent to Zoe.

It is alot easier to ignore an annoying person if there aren't 5 million posts.

And I forgot to friendslock my first few posts on LJ on this subject, sorry!