What Would it Take to Repair the Community?

[Ghost]

@hobos said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

To those who have been upset in the past due to being unfairly character-assassinated, is it possible to realize you are just collateral damage to a society struggling to keep itself safe? The personal attacks are difficult to stop taking personally, I know. But realization where it comes from and why might be a good step towards healing -- on an individual level, at least, if not a community one.

Constructively, I don't think that accepting oneself (or being susceptible to bullying/abuse) as collateral damage in a "community trying to keep itself safe from bullies and abusers" is an acceptable approach because it removes accountability from the people who are actually performing the abuse. That approach ignores the fact that abuse is being used in the name of combating abuse, and innocent people who have done nothing wrong should never accept abuse on the basis of "oh this person is just trying to protect themselves", because in this scenario the targets of unfair character assassination are rarely exonerated and the people who perform said character assassination are often cheered on for it and rarely face accountability for it.

Absolutely not.

Or, in short....

I've been held at knifepoint in my own home. The fact that I want to take steps to never be held at knifepoint in my own home again doesn't make it any more okay if I go next door to my neighbor's house and assault them to ensure it's less likely they'll ever hold me at knifepoint. It also shouldn't be some sort of consolation my neighbor that even though they were innocent I beat the shit out of them.

The honus of responsibility absolutely needs to be on the abuser. Accepting that concept of simply being collateral damage ONLY works if it's also accepted that the abuser was in the wrong, acting against an innocent person, and is held responsible for it. This approach, nor that healing, will ever happen if you just let it go and the person continues to abuse others.

[hobos]

@Ghost

While online communities are like... the new social existence of many modern human beings, and societies and subsocieties matter hugely to the human psyche, I still wouldn't go as far as comparing 'a bunch of people made me feel bad online' to being held at knifepoint in real life.

I don't think the analogy fits, to be honest. The type of abuse they are trying to defend against is not the same as the type of abuse they are propagating. "Someone stalked me IRL" is not the same as "someone hurt my feelings on an internet forum", you know?

Also, if they generally keep the tribal behavior in their own community and don't go out attacking others, it's not as if they're breaking into their neighbor's home to hold their neighbor at knifepoint. It's more like there's a big sign on their own home warning: "You could be held at knifepoint if you step in here!".

The Hog Pit used to function as that sign on MSB, which is why a lot of calmer sorts of people keep (kept?) away.

I'm okay with accepting that people made fun of me on an internet forum (that I entered despite the big sign) because they are traumatized and deep down worried about being stalked in real life, and they're just strafing at any unknown possible-stalker figure. I actually feel sort of kindly towards them when I think about it that way.

Personally, I wouldn't operate that way myself, because again, I don't believe it is effective. But that is beside the point anyway. And I am thinking about efficacy from a position with very little trauma compared to many people, so it is natural that I would be thinking more logically and less emotionally -- and there is no proven science about this anyway, so it's possible I am not even correct.

[Groth]

I think there exists a certain irony in that the person responsible for the most bans in the history of the forum and managing to squeeze that into a single day talks about being against ostrazisation on loose grounds.

I think comparing exclusion from online communities to physical abuse or the justice system is inherently misguided. Being part of an online community is not a right, it's a privilege and the primary goal of anyone managing a community is to do what is best for that community.

Waiting beyond all reasonable doubt to verify that someone is a bad actor often leads to that bad actor having plenty of time to poison your community, just like a gardener can't afford to wait until the blooms wilt to do something about the weeds, so does a the manager of a community have to be pro-active. They need to encourage the behaviors they want to see and they need to root out what looks to be a weed even at the risk of it sometimes not being one.

This is no great injustice, there's countless of other online spaces out there for anyone to join or even create their own ones.

[Derp]

@Groth said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

I think there exists a certain irony in that the person responsible for the most bans in the history of the forum and managing to squeeze that into a single day talks about being against ostrazisation on loose grounds.

You may want to verify your facts on this one.

I think comparing exclusion from online communities to physical abuse or the justice system is inherently misguided. Being part of an online community is not a right, it's a privilege...

Yes. It is.

and the primary goal of anyone managing a community is to do what is best for that community.

Which happened. The administrator of the forum at the time made a call that she felt was best for the community, the first being to hire people that could fix a problem that nobody else wanted to deal with, and then a second to remove an objectively small number of individuals in light of repeated disruptive behaviors.

Waiting beyond all reasonable doubt to verify that someone is a bad actor often leads to that bad actor having plenty of time to poison your community, just like a gardener can't afford to wait until the blooms wilt to do something about the weeds, so does a the manager of a community have to be pro-active. They need to encourage the behaviors they want to see...

Which also happened. We laid out the behaviors that we want to see and encourage those behaviors by removing the people that refuse to abide by the rules. My standard isn't beyond a reasonable doubt. It's preponderance of the evidence. I'll take action if it seems more likely than not that the accusation in question is valid.

But both of them still require some sort of evidence.

and they need to root out what looks to be a weed even at the risk of it sometimes not being one.

Nope.

This is no great injustice, there's countless of other online spaces out there for anyone to join or even create their own ones.

Indeed.

[il-volpe]

Changing the World Takes Time, Gentle Readers
by Judith Martin, Nicholas Ivor Martin and Jacobina Martin
Miss Manners | August 4th, 2022

GENTLE READERS: There is a disturbing trend in Miss Manners' correspondence that she wishes to address, lest Gentle Readers give up hope of a more polite future. It concerns letters that begin:

-- "When did it become OK to ...?"

-- "Am I just being hopelessly old-fashioned or ...?"

-- "Am I being too sensitive when ...?"

What follows is an example of something that was never OK. Miss Manners' field is external behavior, not internal squirming, but her concern is the implication that the victim has, or should have, given up hope of improving society.

A fourth type of letter underscores the point: It seeks a polite response to a slight, real or imagined, that the Gentle Reader already answered with a taunting rejoinder, a rude gesture or worse.

Miss Manners does, on occasion, supply responses which, though faultlessly polite, cause an offender to explode in a burst of mortification and apology. But she more often counsels more subtle responses, which, even had the reader known them when the event occurred, would not have required a fire extinguisher.

This is because the goal is not to strike someone who struck you first -- the goal is not to get hit in the first place.

This should be apparent, as even Miss Manners' most caustic advice is too late to touch a driver who has long since sped away, a line-cutter who is off offending new people out of reach of the Gentle Reader, or everyone else who has long forgotten what happened at that date, luncheon, meeting or class reunion.

It takes time to improve the world -- or even, truth be known, one's friends and relations. This is not because there are no solutions to rude behavior or because one must either accept rudeness or be rude oneself. Nor is it because the solutions proposed do not work.

True, Miss Manners' approach does not always provide the instant gratification of smacking our fellow citizens under the guise of good manners. She realizes this runs counter to a world that is impatient when the package just ordered is not already at the door. What she advises used to be known as solving the problem, an activity that Miss Manners accepts is old-fashioned, even if it is the only one that ever worked.

And just because we do not see the offenders shrivel up in front of us does not mean we have not succeeded. Who knows but that, having been shown a better way, they have not spent a sleepless night repenting?