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naathWhy is it that anytime I see a post that someone has made of the form "thing X is a bad thing and I wish people-who-do-X would stop doing it" there are almost always responses of the form:
a)"but *I* never do X"
and
b)"but thing Y is bad too!"
as for (a) - great, continue not doing X. Unless the initial post clearly accused *you personally* of doing X then why bother commenting to say that? Do you have anything else to add?
(b) comes in two forms; sometimes it's *true* and sometimes it's *not*. But really, NOT RELEVANT. Sure, if you were having one of those lazy afternoons down the pub and letting the conversation go hither and yon my "OMG I HATE X" might well be responded to you saying "WELL I HATE Y" and then we can all be "YEAH, HATING STUFF". But if one wants to have a Serious Discussion about X and how it affects people, and why it is bad, then Talking About Y rarely helps.
These tactics (among others) are things I think come under the heading of "Derailing" that means that they take the conversation away from what was intended (travelling along it's rails). It takes a fair amount of effort to deal with these types of comments, even if one's moderation policy is "don't like, will delete"; they really do get in the way of serious discussion. It is certainly my experience that even reading with no intention of dealing with (because someone else is doing that) these types of comments really eats up valuable head space that I could be using to engage in interesting discussion (and I'm doing quite well for spare head space really).
If you want to use your corner of the internet to have other discussions about other things then you do that. It's a big internet, there's space for everyone. But increasingly I'm find that there are a lot of topics that simply can't be discussed in a public forum, because others come along and refuse to let the discussion happen; and I find that bad because, whilst of course we could all retreat to closed communities, it makes it much harder for people who are just starting to dip their toes in the water to find things. I have a great deal of respect for people who have been, and continue to be, willing to deal with moderating public discussions of sensitive subjects and kept their sanity.
(Hello Metafandom; OMG I've been metafandom'd!)
a)"but *I* never do X"
and
b)"but thing Y is bad too!"
as for (a) - great, continue not doing X. Unless the initial post clearly accused *you personally* of doing X then why bother commenting to say that? Do you have anything else to add?
(b) comes in two forms; sometimes it's *true* and sometimes it's *not*. But really, NOT RELEVANT. Sure, if you were having one of those lazy afternoons down the pub and letting the conversation go hither and yon my "OMG I HATE X" might well be responded to you saying "WELL I HATE Y" and then we can all be "YEAH, HATING STUFF". But if one wants to have a Serious Discussion about X and how it affects people, and why it is bad, then Talking About Y rarely helps.
These tactics (among others) are things I think come under the heading of "Derailing" that means that they take the conversation away from what was intended (travelling along it's rails). It takes a fair amount of effort to deal with these types of comments, even if one's moderation policy is "don't like, will delete"; they really do get in the way of serious discussion. It is certainly my experience that even reading with no intention of dealing with (because someone else is doing that) these types of comments really eats up valuable head space that I could be using to engage in interesting discussion (and I'm doing quite well for spare head space really).
If you want to use your corner of the internet to have other discussions about other things then you do that. It's a big internet, there's space for everyone. But increasingly I'm find that there are a lot of topics that simply can't be discussed in a public forum, because others come along and refuse to let the discussion happen; and I find that bad because, whilst of course we could all retreat to closed communities, it makes it much harder for people who are just starting to dip their toes in the water to find things. I have a great deal of respect for people who have been, and continue to be, willing to deal with moderating public discussions of sensitive subjects and kept their sanity.
(Hello Metafandom; OMG I've been metafandom'd!)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-25 11:43 am (UTC)I think there's a big difference between saying "hmm, yes, this makes me think of that time when..." and adding something new and interesting. Or even saying "I, as a member of S, have never done X; and here are some things that I think contribute to that" which is also interesting and discussable. And being directly confrontational without explanation/discussion which don't contribute really, other than to annoy other people in the discussion.
It's also to do with the repetition, I guess that a lot of people won't read all the comments to a post and just post their own view - but if that view has already been expressed and is already being discussed then it's really annoying if someone comes along and says it again.
I'm not a fan of heavy-handed moderation; but sometimes I think that sometimes it is needed. If I don't like a forum's moderation policy or rules then I don't have to post there.
There is a matter of experience, of seeing what discussions have *been had* and working out whether your thoughts might be adding anything; but I would usually tend to spend some time reading a forum before sticking my oar in to see what the normal social interaction looks like before diving in. I think it's pretty annoying to disregard the social norms of a forum without good reason to do so, especially if you don't understand how those norms developed.
And there's the kind of general purpose social interaction thing where it's important that some subjects are, by their nature, more emotionally charged and carry more potential to hurt people than others. That's an "experience" thing too, but less specific, and something I'd expect most people to know about if not to actually be able to decide which topics fall under that. Some of the rails go off into dark places where people might not want to go, and I don't think it's nice to drag people there (I am overextending this metaphor...)