Xander: Am I right, Giles? Giles: I'm almost certain you're not. Though, to be fair, I haven't been listening.

'Sleeper'


Bureaucracy 2: Like Sartre, Only Longer  

A thread to discuss naming threads, board policy, new thread suggestions, and anything else that has to do with board administration and maintenance. Guaranteed to include lively debate and polls. Natter discouraged, but not deleted.

Current Stompy Feet: ita, Jon B, DXMachina, P.M. Marcontell, Liese S., amych


Betsy HP - May 19, 2003 1:39:37 pm PDT #2163 of 10005
If I only had a brain...

Are we in the middle of a crisis and I just haven't noticed,

I'm speaking for me, not anybody else. I feel exhausted and discouraged. I am sick to the bone of attempts to fix Buffistas. Because it all starts out sensible and before I know it people are trying to fix things I don't think are broken, worrying about evils people might perpetuate and then arguing about what to do.

I'm tired of fixing us. I would be profoundly grateful if we stopped trying for a couple of months.


Elena - May 19, 2003 1:55:09 pm PDT #2164 of 10005
Thanks for all the fish.

Betsy has a point, as does Nutty. But I tend to miss nuance, so maybe the sky is falling and I just don't see it.


Wolfram - May 19, 2003 2:04:14 pm PDT #2165 of 10005
Visilurking

It's all my fault, really.

Allyson, quit hogging all the fault! I'll take my half too, and I apologize to the board for any recent handwringings I might have caused.

I can see where this comes from, so let me state again that I feel like an ass for the way I said things, not for what I said.

Fair enough. Sorry to come down so hard on you.

I am sick to the bone of attempts to fix Buffistas.

Despite what some people seem to think about me, I don't see the Buffistas as broken. I agree that the tweaking of decision-making has gotten way out of hand, but I think it's mostly at an end. There will always be disagreements. The trick is keeping them good-natured and short-lived.


P.M. Marc - May 19, 2003 2:07:23 pm PDT #2166 of 10005
So come, my friends, be not afraid/We are so lightly here/It is in love that we are made; In love we disappear

I'm tired of fixing us. I would be profoundly grateful if we stopped trying for a couple of months.

Word.

As we were not especially broken in the first place. We keep picking at (metaphorical) threads until the whole freaking sweater's just a mess of yarn tangled around our hands and heads and feet.


Jon B. - May 19, 2003 2:14:50 pm PDT #2167 of 10005
A turkey in every toilet -- only in America!

We were constantly picking at metaphorical threads even before voting was voted on. The hope is that now we have a method (i.e. voting) to stop picking at a particular metaphorical thread before we start to pick on the next one. It's not as much of an improvement as I would have hoped, but I think it is an improvement.


Julie - May 19, 2003 3:18:28 pm PDT #2168 of 10005

Also, in apologizing for my opposition to the Tim thread, it's the same thing - I don't feel like an ass for having opposed it, I feel like an ass because of the way I opposed it, if that makes any sense.

Speaking for me (me me), Sean, thank you for that. I came away from some of that conversation feeling disproportionately slapped down. And that was far more in regard to the way you were responding to people, rather than what you were saying. I ended up in a place where I could sense a lot of hostility from you, wasn't sure where it had come from, assumed it was backstory or backchannel I had no idea about and decided to bow quietly out and leave by the backdoor.

And yes, it was my choice to back down rather than step (or speak) up, but somehow it's.. comforting to read that you realise now how you were behaving then, and that given a second shot you would go about it differently.

As we were not especially broken in the first place. We keep picking at (metaphorical) threads until the whole freaking sweater's just a mess of yarn tangled around our hands and heads and feet.

That’s exactly how I think of it too! Have you ever patchworked? Ninety five percent of it is routine. Ninety five percent is straightforward, don't think about it, get it done. Cut, piece, sew, next. It's the other five percent, where corners interact, where the tension must be perfect, where the grain must be prepared, that matters. That five percent requires one hundred and ten percent of my attention.

Sometimes, I feel like the Buffistas give one hundred and ten percent attention to the entire quilt. And that's the bit that takes away all the fun. In my experience, going with the flow can achieve a solution just as affectively and with less damage, than the focusing can. And sometimes, just the act of overfocusing can cause problems.

Some things, in sewing, can be fixed. The line wasn't straight? Take a second crack at it, sure. But sometimes, the tiny little deviation is preferable to the mess we make of the fabric by unpicking and retrying and over-sewing and unpicking and retrying. That's when the fabric gets irreparably damaged. And I sit there thinking, you know, in hindsight, I could have lived with the wee little bump in the line that no one would have noticed, because overall? The patterns, colours, textures and flow of the entire quilt is a thing of beauty. And that makes it impossible for me to think that one little flaw is anything but character.

Buffistas have a lot of character. This is a good thing.


Sean K - May 19, 2003 3:40:44 pm PDT #2169 of 10005
You can't leave me to my own devices; my devices are Nap and Eat. -Zenkitty

Okay, back from lunch with some further comments...

FWIW, Sean, I wasn't sure what your original opposition was to the thread.

Well, I can and will recount my opposition when that discussion comes, but at least part of it was me being Hostile McCrankyPants. That's that part I'm sorry about.

I'm sorry to hear you're deleting it (or have done so). Not least because you've got a right to say it, and I don't want you to feel pressured not to say something just because you think it'll be unpopular.

Don't worry, Nutty. I didn't delete it because I felt pressured. The only reason I deleted it was because I mistakenly jumped the gun in Lightbulbs and felt awkward having this rant which was relevant to a discussion we weren't having sticking out there.

I still have the entire thing in its original form, it waits only for the Tim discussion's turn.

I'm tired of fixing us. I would be profoundly grateful if we stopped trying for a couple of months.

I'll chime in with a big ol' wrod here, too. I'm all for the idea of all of us putting the bureaucracy down and slowly backing away for a bit.

It's all my fault, really.

Allyson, quit hogging all the fault! I'll take my half too, and I apologize to the board for any recent handwringings I might have caused.

Don't forget to share, you two. There's plenty of fault for everyone to get some.

Fair enough. Sorry to come down so hard on you.

Now worries, Wolf. I knew what you were saying.

We keep picking at (metaphorical) threads until the whole freaking sweater's just a mess of yarn tangled around our hands and heads and feet.

Yeah, but we'd all be naked in a giant tangle of yarn, and make for a cute picture for email newbies to spam everybody in their address book with, because they don't know we've all seen that picture twenty-five times already.


§ ita § - May 19, 2003 3:47:30 pm PDT #2170 of 10005
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

Adding a thread isn't fixing the Buffistas. Working out what might make the next troll response less traumatic -- is that unwelcome fixing?

What are all these proposals that are ripping us apart, again?


Betsy HP - May 19, 2003 4:04:06 pm PDT #2171 of 10005
If I only had a brain...

What is ripping me, personally, apart is the nitpicking. Single example, because I can be concrete here, not to single out one poster.

Voting should start either tonight (which would allow for four days of discussion if you include Friday's partial day) or tomorrow night (which would allow for four full days of discussion). For previous votes, it's been up to the proposer which way to go.

Why does voting have to start at night? Can't voting start at noon tomorrow or 2:00 p.m. tomorrow?

That's nitpicking. Some things we don't have to do perfectly. Nobody is going to bleed or get their feelings hurt or raise an eyebrow if voting starts at midnight, at 2PM, or on the 57th second after the vernal equinox.

And it is a pattern of doing this that is upsetting me -- not this particular incident, but the habit. Not one single stitch, to use Laura's metaphor, can go unquestioned, undebated, unexplored. That's exhausting.


ZeusGirl - May 19, 2003 4:10:22 pm PDT #2172 of 10005
"Angel and Spike, The Starsky and Hutch of the Netherworld" - Albert Einstein in his speech to the U.N. Security Council, Sept., 1955.

Hostile McCrankyPants

That would make a great name for Joss' next series.