thread origination derail

Discussion in 'That's So Meta!' started by Athol Magarac, Oct 17, 2018.

  1. Athol Magarac

    Athol Magarac I prefer reading posts without a lot of topics.

    Dragging this here for relevance...

    Maybe this can be explored a bit more. There might be more cases where the OP (or in cases of a split, the account associated with the first post) doesn't want to be the center of attention. Is there a better way to initiate a thread without having ownership of it?
     
  2. Chiomi

    Chiomi Master of Disaster

    No.

    People take ownership of the discussions they want to start for the most part and I'm uninterested in setting up a mechanism for people to disavow responsibility for their own words. James Joyce used to pick bar fights and then hide behind Ernest Hemingway, shouting "Take care of him, Hemingway!" Having an explicit Hemingway account seems useless at best.
     
    • Agree x 5
    • Like x 1
  3. applechime

    applechime "well, you know, a very — a very crunchy person."

    those are different things. one person's post prompting a discussion that they do not want to be involved in is different from a person wanting to instigate a discussion without participating in it.
     
    • Agree x 6
  4. spockandawe

    spockandawe soft and woolen and writhing with curiosity

    Seconding that no.

    If you want to sit back and passively observe conversations without risking accountability, you can sit back and passively observe. If you want to steer conversations or initiate discussion, you can own up to your own agency. You can't just tell the monkeys to dance while pretending you're not involved at all.

    Incidentally, even though you're talking about what happened in this thread, your post has nothing to do with what this thread is about, and if you wanted to discuss the issue, it would have been the ideal moment to create your own TSM thread.
     
  5. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    If you want to initiate a thread, you need to own the fact that you want to initiate the thread.

    In the case where a split happens, it's often because the discussion isn't of the post, but about the post -- and that's often, possibly even usually, unwelcome. And sometimes it's a case where someone really did want to start a discussion, in which case, absolutely they should be the OP of the discussion they wanted to start.

    Note, by the way: People don't "own" threads in general, with some fuzzy heuristics around things like personal vent threads. The OP is not the arbiter of a thread's topic or direction; you post a thing, people get to talk about it, they don't have to have the conversation the OP wanted. That's how public discussions work.

    What you do have to take ownership of is your choices about, say, which discussions you want to start.
     
    • Agree x 1
  6. Athol Magarac

    Athol Magarac I prefer reading posts without a lot of topics.

    Well that's a discouraging hard-line. I was willing to have the fatlogic thread get split off because it wasn't solved in a few posts, but then the discussion went everywhere and I was always the enemy even when I agreed with some of the points being made, sometimes my opinion would be filled in before I was aware the discussion went that way.

    The topic was if fatlogic was actually a hate-group and why, and one of the directions was accusing me of fat-phobia when that has tangential relations to countering anti-diet culture.
     
  7. spockandawe

    spockandawe soft and woolen and writhing with curiosity

    We're not usually huge sticklers for a thread needing to stay on a single narrowly defined thing, but this tangent is well and truly off-topic on a TSM thread created with a pretty specific site-management point in mind (and clearly stated), so I'm mainly approving to say that 1) we're not debating this here, and 2) please stop derailing this thread with something this far off-topic
     
  8. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    Just how many rails can we go off?
     
  9. Athol Magarac

    Athol Magarac I prefer reading posts without a lot of topics.

    Okay, I was just about done with that part, still waiting for rigor on the other part. How long should I wait for discussing something that happened in PM that doesn't seem that sensitive?
     
  10. Athol Magarac

    Athol Magarac I prefer reading posts without a lot of topics.

    I did not understand that. (Not taking it personally unless there is clarification.)
     
  11. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    Unless there's a really compelling reason, my usual answer is "if I don't have permission from the other party, I don't talk about it".
     
    • Agree x 2
  12. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    This thread is a derail of the report confidentiality derail in the fatlogic derail of I think the PPC thread? IDK, I thought it was kinda funny.
     
    • Like x 1
  13. latitans

    latitans zounds, scoob

    Couple of general curiosity questions, if that’s cool:

    Can you turn of notifications for threads that you start?

    Can you ignore threads that you start?

    If you have a user ignored, does that also ignore all the threads that they’re OP of?
     
    • Useful x 1
  14. KingStarscream

    KingStarscream watch_dogs walking advertisement

    You can unwatch a thread you've started (though I'm not sure if there's a way to turn off post notifications of any kind, so you'd still receive ratings and/or quote pings) and you can ignore a thread that you've started. I occasionally unwatch fandom threads I've started if it's too much for me to stay on top of them for a couple days.

    I believe that it was reported that the ignore feature includes threads started by the ignored person--this is part of why we have two religion threads in Top Serket now.
     
    • Useful x 4
    • Agree x 1
  15. Key

    Key never make a triangle

    You can turn off post notifications - I have ratings turned off but left quotes and mentions on.

    Ignoring a user hides any threads they started - if you want to see a particular thread you can use the show ignored content button to open the thread and then refresh the page to hide everything again.
     
    • Informative x 1
    • Useful x 1
  16. Athol Magarac

    Athol Magarac I prefer reading posts without a lot of topics.

    Off the rails again! Naw, it's cool. I'd rather see threads evolve rather than have a million of them for tangents.

    Other people were talking about things that were happening behind closed doors. This was relevant and a mod got pissed at me.
     
  17. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    I still feel that the thing you have about stuff that gets wiggled is really its own topic, but you seem pretty committed to posting it in other threads, so... okay?

    It's probably true that you're not being treated very well. In the time you've been here, you've been openly cruel to a lot of people, including the mods, and have not really improved this noticably. When people express distress about a specific thing you do, you tend to respond to Something Else; either a more extreme complaint than they made, or an unrelated complaint, or whatever. The actual things don't seem to get changed.

    So, basically: You're a jerk to people, including people who have definitely not been jerks to you, you frequently escalate things, and attempting to communicate with you at all is like slogging through taffy. This is frustrating, unpleasant, and unrewarding. And it doesn't even seem to help you! So yeah, people are probably pretty burned out on that.

    Rigs was completely right about one of the things he said: What you are doing isn't working. You should try doing something else.
     
    • Agree x 7
  18. spockandawe

    spockandawe soft and woolen and writhing with curiosity

    *a mod got mildly annoyed at me

    Could I have been nicer? Yeah. But you prefer blunt communication. Supposedly. And then you got pissed at me for explaining why I didn't approve this post, so I'm going to go ahead and say 'mildly annoyed' is plenty justified.

    And even though I already repeated myself once in the wiggler, for the literal third time, I literally do not care if you paste the exact same original text into another location. I even suggested one. This isn't a productive way to play victim.
     
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2018
  19. Athol Magarac

    Athol Magarac I prefer reading posts without a lot of topics.

    How about treating me the way you want to be treated?

    I came in here with some heavy topics, but mostly I was prepared to be nice. Then people were a jerk to me to the point of me lashing out and then calling me the bad one. Either it's okay to not treat someone well because they were a jerk, or it isn't; not one rule for me and one for you(group)

    The rest of it might be that you should be a little clearer about complaints, not accuse me of something I didn't do, and don't expect me to know x is wrong if I've done it because most of the time it's ignorance. (The rest is mirroring or occasionally frustration.)
     
  20. spockandawe

    spockandawe soft and woolen and writhing with curiosity

    I'm holding you to a standard of behavior I'd be comfortable being held to, sure.

    But oh my god, telling US to treat others the way you want to be treated? The double standards are legit killing me.

    Absolutely nothing about the way you have conducted yourself gives me confidence that you came here prepared to be nice. You're polite enough until someone disagrees with you, or tries to communicate you've done harm, and then all bets are off.

    And every time, every single time you misrepresent something I said in the wiggler, you're punishing me for engaging and trying to help. I was annoyed yesterday, but I'm pissed now, awesome. And still, through all this, you've been getting advice from me on how to communicate and engage with the forum. I said before that people are being impressively patient given how you've conducted yourself, and I stand by that assessment.
     
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2018
    • Agree x 4
    • Witnessed x 2
  1. This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
    By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
    Dismiss Notice