there are no rules in kintsugi

i need to interrupt this to point out that, to this day, i have no idea at all why a person would do that when translating. it makes sense if you're translating an idiom that can't be translated to a word. it does not make sense when you can say "x means y".

 

I think you might find it useful to just take a step back to a higher level of abstraction:

You were being highly critical and sometimes sort of insulting. You were sorta attacking people. That's a thing people can be upset about, and you don't have to know which people, or how exactly they were upset about it, for the connection from "I attacked people" to "people were hurt" to be apparent. And I know you were thinking of it as "defending", and I was sorta harsh about that, but I think that distinction really is important.

Honestly, that's 90% of all the serious drama we have on this site. "My friend is hurt, I must defend them, the only way to defend a person is by attacking someone else for them." If people stopped doing that, we'd have small conflicts which died out quickly and were generally replaced by reconciliation. We've had that, in fact, on many occasions! But it only works if people can avoid the temptation to react by attacking people.

It really is that simple: If you are trying to hurt someone, you are probably making things worse.

Also, just as a personal bit of advice: Seeing your past self is often painful, but it is very, very, close to being essential for healthy development. I've never seen "don't be reminded of who I once was" work out. That continuity is what lets you track your direction of growth over time and come to terms with the things you're not happy with. You can't not have a dark side. You can either have it and be aware of it, or have it and not be aware of it. Only one of them gives you any control over how much people get hurt.

So I strongly recommend keeping that continuity and coming to terms with it.

 

I think it's important for people to know that pheelog has been putting a lot of effort into making amends, debugging, and figuring out ways to go forward well in some extensive pm conversations. I'm grateful to them for that and I don't want anyone to think they aren't trying, which is the most important thing.

 

To that end, we're thinking of composing a very general, non-mandatory "how to do a rassel" faq. Chiomi and I will keep you updated and hope it might be helpful to some people who would like to utilize it.

(I cannot stress enough how much this future thing is meant to be a resource, not a rule set.)

 

That's a pretty good point. I just sort of assume that people who are yelling insults are at least vaguely aware of the general outcome of yelling insults.

 

Okay so I've been thinking, and I think this is what I'm getting at when I say "not a rule".

The intent is not to force people to do certain things. Like, obviously in general personal insults are a problem. But we have in the past let someone say "no, I really need to say this, it's important to me" and said "okay, fair enough, it's your call".

We're not saying "here are things you can't ever do". There's some things that I'd be really, really, unlikely to leave alone. Like, if you wanted to post someone else's home address, and they objected? Yeah, I'd probably side with them. Probably. But you know, some day, someone could conceivably come up with a counterexample compelling enough that I was willing to say "okay, you have a good enough reason that I'm gonna leave that be".

That's what I mean when I say they "aren't rules". They're defaults or guidelines or suggestions. Things where we're pretty sure doing things a given way will produce better results.

This place is full of people who have been denied agency, and I don't want to deny people agency. Like, look how angry people get about even the suggestion that someone is being denied agency, even temporarily. The difference is, a lot of people are saying "how dare you do that without a written rule explaining the thing". My feeling is more "how dare you do that, at all, ever".

I will totally step in and edit or delete a post in the short term to prevent harm. But if people really feel strongly about a thing, I will often say "okay", and let them do the thing. Even if I think it's harmful.

Being allowed to decide whether or not you are going to harm people is an absolutely essential component of deciding not to harm people.

If you don't actually get to make that decision, you can't make the "right" decision any more than you can make the "wrong" decision. And in a community full of people who have been prevented from making any decisions at all by their abusers, I place a huge additional weight on letting them make decisions. Even "wrong" decisions.

 

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