Right off the bat I assume they meant what they said.

And from just words that's fine (though the example of my poor sentance structure shows that this can be in error too) - it's the adding of 'tone' or 'intent' that's most often a problem.

Back to the same post that began this discussion:

A few posters are definitely quite selfish and unwilling to accomodate the wishes and needs of others, and instead persistently require others to accomodate their wants and opinions.

Nutty's Corollary to Godwin's Law: When one person makes insinuating but vague accusations against one or more other persons, on behalf of a third party of one or more persons described by the first person as oppressed, the discussion is bound to go nowhere but acrimony and is effectively over. You might as well invoke Nazis. See also: Snacky's Law, where the invocation is "those popular people in high school".

Needless to say, I found Rafmun's tone -- word choice and phrasing -- from the very first condescending and verging on the passive-aggressive. That might have not been his intent, but that was how he came across to me, and it hurt my ability to listen to and understand his viewpoint.

Nutty's [Very Own!] Law: In an unmoderated board environment, you are exactly as oppressed as you choose to be.

Which is to say, I think I sussed out some of what Rafmun was trying to say, with assists from other people who chimed in -- but I don't think that feeling occasionally ignored or challenged or vaguely insulted or run-over by a Mack truck in the course of a discussion necessarily puts one at a particular level of social power or lack thereof. You've got the power of your eyeballs and your fingertips, however you choose to use these tools. Nobody will take either of these tools away from you (unless you really break the rules, which nobody has done here today).

So --

Given that we all have personalities; and that we cannot all sing Kumbaya in the same key at once at any given moment; and that we may or may not grow dislikes, nurse grudges, talk behind each other's backs, and occasionally full-out lose our shit,

RESOLVED: that all Buffistas shall forthwith, unto the ending of the world, (1) strive to speak and listen with a minimum of obnoxiousness, and with a maximum of empathy; (2) consider before posting anything, and double on anything composed under circumstances of high emotion; (3) acknowledge that word choice, phrasing, amount and extent of quoted material, and even those stupid emoticons constitute "tone" as practiced in an online environment, and that the sum definition of "tone" as set forth herein matters; (4) speak outright and specifically any resentments, dislikes, grudges and feelings, or not speak about them at all, an honest debate being greatly preferred to a veiled one; and (5) strive ceaselessly to groom one another verily like unto monkeys, preferably the nice soft giggly kind and not the kind that throws its shit at people in the zoo.

Speaking of grooming, I think Wolfram's entree into Natter, after his guacamole episode in Bureaucracy, was a wonderful example of monkey-grooming. Not "Oh, aren't you nice, let me wuv you forever" grooming, but "Here I am, my head is here, and my tail is over there, and the part in between is the groomable part" grooming. I mean, the wuv you forever stuff comes in time, but knowing what it is you're grooming, and how, is no small part of grooming. As anyone who has ever stepped on the business end of a hairbrush can tell you.

First off, I'd love to say, thank you for that post. If I don't necessarily agree with every point w/r/t board culture (though I think I understand the feeling), it's wonderful post that should be archived somewhere. One of the reasons I love this place and made it pretty much my only online...anything really.

Second in terms of the tone conversation, I'd say that while Rafmun has brought up some valuable points of discussion, he lost me, at least when it comes to his posts on the subject, with his "what have we learned today" post, the gist of which probably sent a lot of people's backs up.

If he's been lurking the general board as long as he says, and I know he's been here in specific threads for a while, he should have known that lecturing uses of the royal "we" were going to fly around here about as well as a dead penguin. Just my two cents - none of which is a dismissal of the subject at hand.

What Shawn said.

and move on to trying to address the situation which makes those posters feel less than welcome.

Dude, read the last 400 posts. We've been talking about the points you brought up all day. Is there something specific you're waiting to hear? Maybe you should better just post it yourself, since obviously we're not getting it.

[edit: Nutty's post is just about the most sensible and well-phrased thing I've read yet.]

And from just words that's fine (though the example of my poor sentance structure shows that this can be in error too) - it's the adding of 'tone' or 'intent' that's most often a problem.

I'm still not seeing how there's an "adding" of tone. Tone in conveyed in the words. There is nowhere else for it to come from. Some writers may convey it badly, some readers may misinterpret it, but it's not like someone's say, "OK, I'm going to read the next post as insincere, the one after it as somewhat sarcastic, and the one after that as snarky."

I read frustration in your tone, Jess.

He's been officially out as a Buffista for a couple of months and he's married to a Buffista.

Was also a member of TT for a bit. Not too active, but did post. Names are familiar to me, and I've lived, if by proxy, through much of the ups and downs. That being said, it is fine to treat me as a noob, and to value my opinions thusly. I'm kewl with that, and happy to live (not die though - got lots of things left to do, like learn macrame) by my words. My tone - well, that's part of me. Cold- like a cat ready to pounce...an old, sick, partially blind and slightly high-on-catnip cat, but a cat nonetheless.

As a side-note, in describing ita to Bob, he compared her to Wild Bill Hickok on Deadwood. I don't watch the show, so I don't know if the comparison is apt.

Hmm. I think what Bob might be trying to say there is that Hickok on Deadwood is someone that creates a lot of their own space and is very decisive in their actions. I think the comparisons end there, because the rest of the Hickok character wasn't very flattering, as far as I could tell, and here's the fun part:

I got all that from not knowing Bob or ita in meatpuppetland and only saying what I "know" about ita from here.

The coolest part of this whole conversation with me is that I got away clean with calling ita an axe murderer upthread, if you can call not suffering any structural integrity at least until the Mayberry get-together, "clean". Oops.

I think I should have sent this post to Allyson's LJ.

Tone in conveyed in the words. There is nowhere else for it to come from. Some writers may convey it badly, some readers may misinterpret it, but it's not like someone's say, "OK, I'm going to read the next post as insincere, the one after it as somewhat sarcastic, and the one after that as snarky."

Okay, fortget adding tone. How about misinterpreting tone? (and, actually, I often feel that the 'tone' comes more from the headspace of the person reading than from anything the writer intended)

I read frustration in your tone, Jess.

You fucking asshole, how dare you!

[eta: Really going to bed now, as it's incredibly late on this coast.]