I think part of what happens, and part of what Trudy's trying to verbalize, is that these sorts of situations tend to feed on themselves. Like, seeing five people you do like snipe at someone you kind of don't like makes that second person far less likeable, and the bar for sniping at them gets lowered. I don't know how this happens, but it does.

Zoe has never upset me enough that I couldn't walk away from it. Ever. So the whole up-in-arms thing is kind of baffling to me. I will admit that I agree with Trudy that part of the problem is that if you pick at a scab, it will not heal.

Would it be helpful to step away from Zoe's situation in particular and look at incidents like this, as a whole?

How do we want to handle it when a community member is clearly having more than a random bad day? How do we want to handle it when a person who seems to be disregarding our etiquette isn't coming in all obvious like U all sux and Josh is a big foggat!!!!!!1111, but instead is just continually annoying, disrupting the flow of conversations, and is unresponsive or hostile when called on those actions?

U all sux and Josh is a big foggat!!!!!!1111,

... perversely tempted to tag. 'cause it makes me giggle.

No one person intends to be nasty, but 15 or 20 people being terse at once is provocative and it's not nice.

Trudy, when you express your opinion here, are you checking first to make sure that you're in the minority, to avoid a pile-on? Is that honestly what you expect people to do?

When 15 or 20 people get terse, it's a SYMPTOM. The cause needs to be addressed, not excused.

When fifteen or twenty people get pissed off at once, don't you think the problem isn't that they're pissed, but that someone has seriously crossed a freaking line? Most of this shit is crossposting.

I agree completely.

But I think the pile-ons exascerbate the problem to such a point that it becomes a code orange when the initial offense was a code yellow. I think if we can find a way to address the pile-ons things will calm down a lot.

Suggestion:

Zoe (or anybody for that matter) says something obnoxious.
The next 23 posts are simply "Zoe, that wasn't nice"

That way the problem is addressed without escalating. The crap isn't ignored but the bait isn't taken either. (The phrase doesn't matter, btw, as long as we all agree on one)

Perhaps it's a perverse need to have a discussion that prompts people to get detailed.

If I make a controversial/offensive/aggressively stupid statement and I get from different people "What did you mean by that?" "Surely you're not implying that X is Y?" "Excuse me? Have you read any of the works by ABC? Then you'd see that opinions differ." "You're being an ass." how is that WORSE than 23 people quoting a code phrase at me?

No one person intends to be nasty, but 15 or 20 people being terse at once is provocative and it's not nice.

I see most of that as cross-posting, which is a reality of online life. It happened at the Bronze all the time. Someone would reveal a spoiler, and 15 of us would post really quickly to warn everyone there was a spoiler. Of course the poor bastard who made the mistake felt like he was getting ganged up on, but he wasn't. It's just that each of us who were spoiled, individually, decided to warn everyone else, so you'd see fifteen posts saying:

WARNING: Joe Blow spoiled the finale in his post at 15:16 pm board time. Do not read.

Sometimes in Zoe's case in particular, I think there is a tendency for a lot of folks to speak up, not so much because they're trying to pile on, but because they're thinking, "Well, she didn't seem to get what Cindy and Cashmere said, maybe if I rephrase it, it will be more clear."

So if ita, as a Stompy, feels vacuous, and a vote isn't appropriate, how to we decide? There will never be unanimity about ANYTHING, much less the criteria for a warning.

I am postulating ex-cloaca here:

Intervention (i.e. fill-gap): If user1 feels another user2 is being disruptive, but that user2 may be unaware of or too het up to think about the site rules, user1 may request that user2 be Intervened with. To wit:

• user1 notifies user2 on-thread that Bureaucracy is the place to talk.
  
• user1 goes to Bureaucracy and asks for an Intervention, citing a specific (recent, just now) instance.
  
• user1 gets 4 seconds, just like in Vote Proposing.
  
• A Stompy sees that seconding has been achieved, and sends out a standard Intervention email, with blanks filled in for who and what and a link to the FAQ and all that nice stuff.
• I know there's a Tron joke in here somewhere, but I can't find it.

Takes the creativity (and decision-making) off the shoulders of the Stompy; requires that more than one person note and dislike the disruption; makes the actual Intervention private (hopefully less humiliating?); and doesn't take an hour and a day and attempts at consensus. It also, because it requires no consensus/vote/greater Buffista approval, causes no change in status for user2. S/he just gets an official and officially worded email notifying her in concrete ways that she needs to straighten out and fly right a little more.

I think that will help solve the bringing-it-up shyness, and it will make everybody feel a little better about the gradations of Official Action Of A Stompy Variety.

Like I said, ex-cloaca. Anyone have a counter-proposal?

I'm using dictionary.com a lot today. Cloaca means sewer or latrine. It's no help with ex-cloaca, which, extrapolating, means outside the sewer? That just doesn't seem right.

I really think what I'm proposing is worth considering.