You got naked?

BWAH! Thanks, Steph, I needed that laugh. Now to clean the tea from my keyboard.

And thanks for pulling me up on the less-evolved thing. I know better, and I went for the cheap joke -- to make up for it, I can only offer these less-intelligent-than-monkeys cute-heads.

Seriously, it wasn't my intent to pull you up. Light-hearted comments are just that. I was just soapboxing on a pet issue. (Have you ever tried boxing soap? It's trickier than it looks, they're slippery bastards.)

Meanwhile, your link is making me laugh. There's a picture of an aye-aye with a maniacal stare (as do all aye-ayes) and a sign saying "Adopt Me". It cracks me up.

Jeez, you guys -- when I got off-line, you were all supposed to, too!

Anyway. The thing about overtly stating your tone? The most common real-life equivalents are "No offense, but..." and "With all due respect..." The speaker is obviously trying to disguise the mean thing they are about to say with an overt statement that they aren't being mean. It doesn't work in real life, and it doesn't work online.

NOT that I think Rafmun was neccessarily being obnoxious on purpose, but many of his posts did come across that way, to several people. And this kind of ties back to our Action procedure, in a way. Note that I am NOT AT ALL saying Rafmun's post are inappropriate in any way. This is just a comment on the group dynamics of offense. We agreed (or at least the majority of people stating an opinion agreed) that only a few (10) people had to be offended for something to be deemed officially offensive. The bar is set pretty low, which I think is a good thing. It's not a popularity contest, it's not about the lurkers supporting you in email. If 10 people are upset enough to say so, that's enough. If several people interpret your posts the same way (even wrongly), it's on you to reconsider the way you're posting.

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.

Yes. This.

You can't mandate the board into a place I'm always happy in without driving someone else away. People, new or old, will leave.

Also this. I appreciated Matt's post a lot. This is not a place for everyone, and it shouldn't be. I may be sad when someone I like leaves, but life goes on. If this becomes a place that isn't for me, I'll go. It's not the end of the world. I promise. Like msbelle said earlier, it really is possible to leave an internet community and not die.

I don't want to get into listing people's names, because you know I'll forget someone, and they'll think I hate them, but there were many excellent posts last night.

I've been following this discussion since last night, off and on. Some of it drove me nuts, other parts had me nodding along in agreement. I think that Juliana wound up coming closest to summarizing my opinion:

I would like to reiterate a position that a lot of people have taken: that we do not slap down newbies willy-nilly. A lot of people have delurked and fit in just fine without a belly-flop in the guac. Some people have delurked straight into the guac, some people have hung about for a bit and tripped over the guac, and some people have set up the damned party and still managed to get guac all over their dress recently.

I also came to the realization that not everyone here is necessarily going to like me, or agree with me. There are people on this board I feel closer to than others. Some of these people have been here since TT, others have only come to my attention in the past couple of months.

Also, there are times when I will feel like everyone is ignoring me. Conversely, there are plenty of times when Buffista A's posts will set my teeth on edge through no intent of his or her own. Assuming I normally like this person, I might just skip/skim A's posts until the tooth-grindy subject goes away. If I think that A has said something out of line, I would point out what I thought was out of line, and why. Whether I do this on-board or through back-channel would depend on a number of things--was the statement obviously offensive? was it a matter of 'tone'? what is my history with this person? what is my history with this segment of the board?

I probably get on some people's nerves from time to time, and I'm pretty sure I've said things that have offended people on occasion.

All I would ask is that if I have managed to trail my lacy sleeve in the guac, that someone would point it out to me so that I can clean up the mess before the stain sets. I'd rather have my feelings slightly bruised than find out later that everyone was letting their anger at my lack of guac-skillz fester and build into grudges.

Because what seems "bullying" to one person might not seem so to another. And it isn't surprising in a board this size that there would be differing perceptions of such.

I'm moving past debate on this issue, Steph.

I posted my observations above, and people responded in various ways. Fair enough. I Got drawn into a debate on the minutiae even after stating upfront that I thought such misdirection was part of the problem.

I should have simply let the original observation post stand for what it was intended - just my $0.02 - take it or leave it, and allow the thread to evolve such that it proved or disproved the points asserted. I think that's what happened, though I fear that the soft-voices are again being overlooked. I acknowledge that by being drawn into the tangential, off-topic issues, I contributed to clouding the results, and inadvertently played into the drowing out of the voices I most wished heard.

So what I'm going to try to do now, lest a moot debate is prolonged unnecessarily, is move onward, go have fun and lemur groom.

I should have simply let the original observation post stand for what it was intended - just my $0.02 - take it or leave it, and allow the thread to evolve such that it proved or disproved the points asserted. I think that's what happened, though I fear that the soft-voices are again being overlooked. I acknowledge that by being drawn into the tangential, off-topic issues, I contributed to clouding the results, and inadvertently played into the drowing out of the voices I most wished heard.

I guess I'm misunderstanding you. What exactly was your main point? Because, from my perspective, we've spent the past several hundred posts discussing your post. What were we supposed to have been discussing from it that we weren't?

I'm moving past debate on this issue, Steph.

Conveniently allowing you to not address my comments. Very nice.

And by the way, the tone on "very nice" was acidic.

I fear that the soft-voices are again being overlooked.

You -- and everyone else -- have no way of knowing this.

Shit, I knew I'd forget something: I do think there's a significant number of "I'm sorry, could you clarify?" posts, and I really don't think the "smackdown" is a regular part of our discourse. Granted, it could be going on in threads I don't read, but that's not my impression of Buffistas.org in general AT ALL.

I guess the main point was that there are certain posters who feel aggrieved because they don't have the desire or the will or the ability to be heard and other posters get their way more often and are driving the first group of posters away. and that by discussin it ad nauseum, we are making it difficult for the "soft posters" to talk.

Or that's what I took out of it.

Here's the thing, I feel put upon more not because the board is a more snipey unwelcoming place. But because (1) I've pissed off people and they are justifiably less tolerant of me (2) I have less time to spend and less time means less posting which makes me less known and (3) I'm not as popular as I was or maybe my own perception of my popularity is wrong.

People haven't changed. The people I feel aggrieved by today are the ones who are saying that there is a small handful of aggressive activist posters who force board culture to be X because that conversation is derailing us from a greater conversation of what to do if people feel upset. By framing the debate in that manner, defensive has been the result, predictably.

So, what should we do when even long time posters feel unhappy?

But I don't care that I'm aggrieved. It doesn't drive me away, per se. Though the tone of this discussion especially from Rafmun's side (intended or not) has caused me to not want to post, because what's the point?

He's sees X. I see Y. We aren't going to agree. For him to continue to argue with just me (which he isn't) would be ridiculous. It would be like arguing with the refrigerator. The light goes on. The light goes off. But there isn't much more that will occur that hasn't been mechanically programmed to do.

I guess I'm misunderstanding you. What exactly was your main point? Because, from my perspective, we've spent the past several hundred posts discussing your post. What were we supposed to have been discussing from it that we weren't?

A number of people have asked this question of Rafmun, and he hasn't answered it. That's not helpful to discourse.