@derp said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
I don't mind the Hog Pit. There are times when gloves off can be beneficial. I more mind the fact that, even with a designated gloves off area, people can't seem to keep it there and it ends up spilling everywhere because things get dragged into the mud if they get too dirty, instead of someone turning on the hose, like should happen.
If we get rid of the Hog Pit, then those lines become, well, muddier. I think that would ultimately have the opposite of the intended effect. At least with it there, there are moderate boundaries between 'pit material' and 'non pit material'. Even if some people still fail to grasp that.
Here's why I don't approve of this line of thinking.
Some people don't want to play in the mud, like Faraday. I know this, so I could hop into the Hog Pit and defecate a whole ton of false, defamatory offal there accusing her of everything from kidnapping the Lindbergh Baby to being the reason why kids are getting shot in schools. And I could attempt to do so in a witty, rhetorical fashion that both amuses and persuades people to my line of thinking. And if Faraday wanted to denounce all of that bullshit, she would have to come into the Hog Pit to do it. Otherwise, she has to sit back and take it or hope that someone steps into the ring for her.
How is that fair? This is what bullying boils down to: I take the fight to a place where my victim can't or won't go, or won't have a fair shot in.
I cannot say from personal experience that I have been the target of a whisper-campaign, but I can damn well understand it is some shady peak-at-high-school bullshit that I have neither the time nor the inclination to properly express my anger over. I have seen and heard enough in my 20+ years of lingering in virtual space to know that, at one point, the WORA community was about two steps away of heading down the road of 8-bit and 4chan. And I'm too old to think there is anything hip, edgy, or valuable of having a website that has a section that condones and even encourages people to be shitty to one another.
Maybe back in the day when some of us were neophytes still masturbating to our purple TS prose, we thought that it would be cool and cathartic to take potshots at people who had difficulty communicating over the internet. Where we could nitpick about grammar and spelling, and pass judgment on who or what was acceptable in our community of misfits. But in retrospect, I've come to the conclusion that my belief in a "free internet" where people could express what they felt in whatever way they wished is the same sort of mentality that shields hate groups as they organize, intimidate, and sometimes kill the easily-oppressed.
If we can comprehend that there is a good behavior and bad behavior, then we can recognize that bad behavior is bad. In order for a person to conclude that there is value to the Hog Pit, they must also conclude that the bad behavior is desirable, and should be considered acceptable. But if conduct were acceptable, then there is no reason why it should have been separated in the first place from the other forms of acceptable conduct -- the good conduct, if you will. And that doesn't make sense to me.
But, more fundamentally, I do not see why we have to accept bad behavior here. What value is there in giving members of the community a place to accuse one another of things in egregious ways that are sometimes lauded and praised? Why is it that we seem to be incapable of airing grievances as we'd expect our friends to do, namely civilly and without childish name-calling? (I suppose it depends on the kinds of friends you have.)
If WORA was a place where people could complain about what was happening in the hobby, then make a "Complaints" forum and attach the same rules as we have for "Mildly Constructive." Complain all you want, but stick to what happened rather just accuse someone vaguely as a psycho hosebeast.
I don't think it's difficult, but I file complaints for a living.
