Even less sure where to put this

Discussion in 'Brainbent' started by seebs, Feb 7, 2017.

  1. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    Yeah, I recognize that there's problems, and I don't have a solution in mind. I just have a really, really, strong negative reaction to "you can't discuss this, the person who said it doesn't want to talk to you".
     
  2. spockandawe

    spockandawe soft and woolen and writhing with curiosity

    Seebs, I get the things you're saying here (and I agree about the implications of violence not being ideal, but I was having trouble coming up with any better metaphor for the situation). But going along with the accidental status signaling and the benevolent dictator caption on your icon, I can do logical thought and figure out where my reaction jumps the rails, but this gives me a massive knee-jerk NOPE reaction that the only forum rules are going to be there because Seebs did something, other people disagreed, so now Seebs is going to lay down our first formal rule to make it explicitly clear that Seebs is allowed to do whatever Seebs wants. I'm usually pretty blind to the accidental status signaling, but this big enough to alarm me.

    I'm not saying that not engaging with vent posts is a good absolute rule to live by. I'm saying your timing was unfortunate, and the way you refused to disengage and did a number of things LT specifically mentioned they couldn't deal with (walls of text, etc) made it look even more unfortunate. I'm saying that in this specific case, I disagree with your actions. Someone asked you not to do the thing, and you did the thing. Some people chimed in to say they didn't think you should have done the thing. And your reaction is threatening to make a rule to defend your god-given right to do the thing. You're allowed to wade into any discussion you want. Anyone is technically allowed to. I still think that your actions here were unkind and inconsiderate, and it wasn't nice of you, and getting threatened with rules in response to that is setting off alarm bells like whoa

    (inb4 definition-slicing about 'unkind', 'inconsiderate', and 'nice.' I'm not interested in a discussion of low empathy and how an action being unkind isn't the same as saying you shouldn't do it. There are only so many words out there for me to use. I'm saying that it made me uncomfortable that you weighed your own curiosity against LT's request and discomfort, and let your curiosity win until multiple other people weighed in on LT's behalf)
     
    • Like x 7
  3. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    I'm aware. You'll note that I didn't actually make the rule. Consider that to be an example of something sort of like "venting"; I'm not saying I plan to do the thing, or that I think the thing would be a good idea, just that I have a strong emotional impulse in that direction.
     
  4. spockandawe

    spockandawe soft and woolen and writhing with curiosity

    Sort of like venting, but when there's an implied concrete action wrapped up in the vent, the feel of the thing shifts from 'vent' to 'threat.'
     
    • Like x 8
  5. prismaticvoid

    prismaticvoid Too Too Abstract

    That's fair! But that wasn't what happened here. What happened was someone saying "hey, I need this space to myself" and you saying, as far as I can tell "but we need to talk about this!" and forcibly involving the person who already said they didn't want to engage with you. You can say elsewhere "this person's posts made me think about a thing" (which I think is different from vagueing if your goal is to discuss points they brought up rather than to complain about them) without overrunning the space they have set aside for themselves.
     
    • Like x 9
  6. Ipuntya

    Ipuntya return of eggplant

    to rephrase, i am directly suffering from people continuing with this pattern of behavior, but i am still telling you that your solution is a bad idea
     
    • Like x 1
  7. Paradigm Shift

    Paradigm Shift Sleepy Girl Wants Love

    As far as I'm aware, this "Engaging elsewhere" thing is the actual rule of things (Even though we apparently have no rules somehow?) that I've seen Beldaran sling here and there, unless my memory is betraying me. Not to, like, bring it up directed at you specifically, Ipuntya, because I think you know, but pointing it out for other people.

    In my opinion the ability to engage with things said in vent threads outside of the vent thread is the solution to the problem in the first place - people can elect to respond or not, just like any kind of argument thread.

    Whether this is common courtesy or an actual rule I think it's a good idea.
     
    • Like x 5
  8. sirsparklepants

    sirsparklepants feral mom energies

    That's fair! I and a lot of other people have a very strong reaction to 'I will pursue this even after discomfort is clearly expressed'. I don't know what the solution is either. You expressed confusion as to what the communication barrier was, I put some information forth. I think one thing that could have helped in this specific instance is a solution that's already been discussed - starting a discussion in a place not the vent thread in question.
     
    • Like x 2
  9. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    Yup.

    Part of my problem here is that I'm much annoyed because I am getting yelled at for taking things literally. LT said "I don't want to talk to you", I said "okay, that's fine", and continued doing things with the expectation that, well, LT wouldn't talk to me. Because that was what they'd said they did not want to do.

    And "the thing" had to do with "vent threads", but I have no definition of "vent thread" under which that thread was such a thing, and this is making me think that the very concept of a thread which can be implicitly and without an explicit statement be a thread where you're a Bad Person if you argue with claims made in the thread that you think are false.

    Except that I didn't weigh them against each other. I considered them totally unrelated. LT's desire to not talk to me was, it seemed to me, entirely up to LT's decisions. It's not that I "let my curiousity win over LT's discomfort". It's that I apparently misunderstood what they said, until people said things that made me think it was supposed to be interpreted differently. At which point I split the posts out so they wouldn't have this in their thread.

    And... I'm pretty sure I've explained that before, and the wording here of "it made me uncomfortable that you [...]" confuses me, because either you still think I did a thing even though I explained that that thing never actually figured into my evaluations, or ...???? I have no idea what happened there.
     
  10. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    And if the thread had been labeled as "a vent thread, please don't discuss this", and hadn't already had discussion, that's what I'd have done in the first place.
     
  11. iff

    iff Well-Known Member

    i'm just here to point out that the entirety of Brainbent is mostly vent threads, the holler closet is just the private subforum because Brainbent is public
    e:spelling
     
    Last edited: Feb 8, 2017
    • Like x 2
  12. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    It's an incredibly bad idea.
     
    • Like x 2
  13. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    ... I think this is one of those things where the long and complicated history has sorta fucked things up.

    Wayyyy back when, "Brainbent" was the forum for discussions pertaining to the Brainbent homestuck AU. Then it got sort of migrated into a general chatter and advice forum, with some number of vent threads. And I vaguely understood the intent of the holler closet to be a place for specifically "vent threads", but some of them are still here for historical reasons or something.
     
    • Like x 1
  14. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    There's a whole lot of discussion in that thread with multiple people, that doesn't look at all like "I need this space to myself".

    And it is by definition not vaguing if you name the person whose posts you're talking about.
     
  15. Paradigm Shift

    Paradigm Shift Sleepy Girl Wants Love

    Brainbent and Holler Closet, as I've understood it, are interchangable depending on how self-conscious (or whatever other reasons you might have) you are about your vent thread being visible to a greater or more narrow threshold of the public. It hasn't been for the Homestuck AU in how long? I joined on a different account in 2015 and that AU was long dead.
     
    • Like x 1
  16. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    I know, but the actual shift in forum subtitle was more recent, and the forum's never had a clear Statement Of Purpose. We didn't intentionally create a "vent thread forum", we created a forum for a completely different thing, and it got repurposed, but as a result this forum never actually got a definition of what it's for.
     
    • Like x 2
  17. prismaticvoid

    prismaticvoid Too Too Abstract

    I added the bit about vaguing because I wanted to be clear about my intentions.
    Can you try in the future to be more accepting of people not wanting to engage with you? There was no shit-stirring happening, and nobody is obligated to talk to you when they have an issue. It might be helpful in the long run, but it is not a requirement. And I apologize for my unclear wording, but they stated that they did not want you in the thread and you ignored that. I can understand why someone would feel threatened!
     
    • Like x 4
  18. sirsparklepants

    sirsparklepants feral mom energies

    I was under the impression that unless otherwise stated, threads in brainbent were vent threads. Some people welcome discussions in vent threads. Some don't. My impression of the thread is there was discussion about forum culture, which was relevant to what had been vented about. You started talking about yourself and your discussion style in response to what LT said to inform you that she wasn't comfortable with engaging. Then you continued to engage, not necessarily with her but with the discussion you started, in a thread I perceived as a vent thread. I would see that as not necessarily speaking to her, but speaking over her using your clout as admin. The discussion she was interested in having got completely derailed, and while that happens often here, it does not often happen to directly discuss an admin.

    Edit: I'm taking a break from this for a few hours, I need some self care.
     
    Last edited: Feb 8, 2017
    • Like x 4
  19. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    Yeah, I can see how that would be upsetting. I'ma go look at historical stuff and add a clarification one way or the other on the vent thread thing.
     
    • Like x 2
  20. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    Did they actually state that they "did not want me in the thread"? Because all I remember them stating was that they didn't want to talk to me, which is a significantly different claim.
     
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