Not sure where else to put this.

(I'm sorry, I'm really conflict averse too, and starting to spin myself up over Publicly Disagreeing With People, so I'll probably leave things be after this post) In terms of the guidelines Mala and Ana Nimus listed above, I think laying those out is helpful and manageable. When it comes for controlling fights and fallout, I think things get so specific so fast that laying out general guidelines is just... incredibly complicated and difficult. Corralling them (theoretically) to TCHGB and managing them within that environment is a good idea, I think people are generally in favor, even if they sometimes have to be told to move over there.

But it's like... with the suicide baiting and threats, people weren't able to work out a Standard Procedure for dealing with the people who were affected by them, because everyone has different needs, etc., and it's going to vary so much on an individual level. I think that the discussions about how to deal with fights do derail so often mainly because it's almost impossible to pin down One General Case. I said earlier that a solution is conditional on the people involved, the instigating incident, history, broader context, etc. Compare the Gills discussion to the recent adventure with suicide baiting. Those are so different, trying to pin down general guidelines that cover both of those, plus all kinds of other cases, that's where things balloon out to being... I'd call it unmanageable. There's a certain point where it feels like trying to lock down a general rule of thumb is just introducing difficulties for the cases where that rule of thumb wouldn't work well.

And I don't think that it's like, 'we have 95% certainty that this guideline will apply to any given fight', any fight is unique, and just gets more unique as more people get involved. What guideline is going to cover 'how you're allowed to engage with vent threads + what is dogpiling + cliques + taking the fight to other platforms + suicide baiting'? Even just isolating 'how to deal with suicide baiting' didn't really get all that much consensus, and it isn't because people weren't trying to find a way to address it. The derails aren't necessarily a failure of the attempt to establish guidelines, they're... just going to happen when situations are too complicated to be covered by a simple, easily-consumed, widely-agreed-on set of guidelines. Maybe some derails are introduced by people who are getting frustrated by watching a discussion spin its wheels (hey, rigs), but I don't think we've failed to establish guidelines because of derails. I think we've failed to establish them because there's only so far you can define a system before you end up juggling too many interacting variables to manage.

And with that, I think I'm out. I'm fretting because even this discussion, which has a pretty narrow focus, keeps branching out in so many directions that it's hard for me to respond meaningfully to it. I don't think that's a bug! I think it's just... an innate part of the system. I really do get the desire to lay out universally applicable guidelines, but it's only manageable up to a certain point. I think that certain point stops before how we handle fallout from fights, and the way manymany discussions we've had produced very few resultant general procedures (apart from the ones listed above), that just strengthens my belief that trying to place more constraints on this corner of social interaction protocols just isn't manageable.

(but yes, i'm out, i'm getting worked up over Disagreeing and over how i'm trying to communicate the thing and i don't think i'm managing it)

 

This works if people are involved in the 3AM chat where folks say this is ptsd and people need to back off (I have never been involved in the skype chats, and I know I'm not the only one), and it works if the mods are available and on hand in realtime (even with additional mods, not a good thing to depend on).

I'm on board with disengaging when people ask to disengage (I did stop engaging directly with gills pretty early in the thread and tried to clear up at least one or two of the things he was saying later when there were obvious communication disconnects). It's polite. But this has been a social thing that people are like 'nah' to most often in fights (just look at how often variations on this happened in the pussy hat thing), and 1) there are tons of variations on this basic 'please stop engaging' scenario, 2) this shades right into the 'don't interact with vent threads thing' that was the topic of discussion right before Seebs took a break, and 3) it can be exploited in both directions. The point of my whole post, it gets very complicated to box it in. If someone is going to ignore a direct request to stop involving someone in a conversation, I think odds are pretty good they'll ignore a 'general guideline' and bumping it up to a solid rule enforced by modly power is awful strong.

I didn't say the conversation was productive. I said the people involved probably wouldn't have appreciated it if there was an external rule that automatically locked down the conversation and they got cut off.

And on that note, I would really like to disengage :( I know I didn't say it explicitly, but I referenced getting upset three separate times in my last post, and this is extra especially upsetting because it feels like my point was aggressively ignored. I didn't set out to dissect everything everyone did wrong with the Gills conversation. Especially when it feels like I'm getting some implicit blame for not knowing what was happening in a midnight skype conversation I never knew happened until now. Especially when it feels like everyone who was involved is getting lumped into some single-minded monolith who did all the same Bad Things. The point I've been trying to make is that things are complicated, and especially when I'm already worked up, this feels like I'm being told that see, look at this super-obvious hindsight, you really should have known better.

So please stop pinging me about this.

 

I disagree that this should be a general thing as stated above. Sometimes some of these things need to be removed even if spoiled, sometimes some of these things don't even need spoiled. Rules don't only restrict, they give permission, and I'm not willing to say x, y, and z are okay forum wide if put in a spoiler. It's situational.

Community Guidelines post:

Community Guidelines post:

Pinned TCHGB posts:

These are not buried in long threads hashing them out, they are situated at the top of their relevant forums in pinned threads that contain clearly marked guidelines.

The only major guidelines that haven't been added to these posts are the "how to vent thread conflict" and "what if ITA/super personal quote/posted screen cap" guidelines which is something I have asked Seebs to do. We'll discuss it when he's back from his break.

 

God in heaven, Jesus Christ, and all the saints.

"SOME people, not naming names here, are bad and naughty racists and we need a community pear wiggler that we can toss them into that will make them atone for their sins."

Fucking codify this for me. Make this sentiment into a rule that won't do immense amounts of harm to good people while not discouraging assholes in the slightest.

You can't legislate this shit. You can't make it law. Rules don't make a community less problematic, and if you're unwilling to work on it with the people in the community on a case by case basis, or let others do it for you when you're tired, then sorry but shit's not going to get better. There is no rule, or guideline, or individual discussion that will solve the problem forever. There is only the long slog toward helping the people you care to help be less shitty. You're not required to do it, you're allowed to be salty when people fuck up, but don't try to say that if we only had better rules, better punishments, better lists of do's and don't's, that shit would magically be better.

It won't be.

I'm perfectly happy to watch a discussion of past screw ups, of things that need shifted so that we can all be better human beings, etc. But that's not a matter of "no rules" being the problem, it's a matter of education activism. Don't conflate the two. "Not being addressed" is a thing to talk about, but the appropriate address for this sort of issue will not be rules or guidelines or anything of the sort. It doesn't work like that in irl organizations and it won't work like that on the internet either.

 

Kintsugi forum culture's problems have been being laid at the feet of the no rules thing this entire thread. If that's also being moved away from then cool, I retract my irritation.

 

"There are problems with racism in this community" -> "the problems in this community have been being laid at the feet of the no rules thing" -> "pear wiggler hyperbole."

I think that explaining how I got there in my previous post explained my irritation in the post before that. Like I said, if that's being walked back on too then cool, good, have a discussion. I didn't mean to interrupt. I do not think it was a completely unreasonable mistake to make, though a mistake none the less. Not sure what else you're looking for, an apology for my tone? Sorry for seeing a connection between two presumably now unconnected things and getting irritated. I'm not irritated anymore now that the connection has been shown false.