From: Hermit (virus@hermit.net)
Date: Mon Oct 06 2003 - 10:01:41 MDT
[Jake] I haven't read every message in this thread, but generally I find Mermaid and Hermit arguing about the degree of control we wish to exert over the things people say and the ways they act to each other in CoV. I would point out that continually referring to this as a "disciplinary process" comes across as needlessly condescending and to me implies an excess in attempting to control others. I would rather refer to it as simply a "moderation process".
[Hermit] One of the things you may have missed was in the introduction (See Reply 2). Discipline doesn't only mean "doing to" others or yourself. On the other hand, "Moderation" can be both too. But in this context, remembering the screaming matches "moderation" has generated in the past, and the fact that it has a specific meaning in the BBS context, it is to my thinking a much more aggressive word. Moderation is not, generally speaking, a component of the Disciplinary Process.
[Jake] Discipline certainly stands out as something that we can and would value for the sake of self improvement, but once we have
passed childhood we humans generally don't seem to respond very positively to external attempts to impose discipline. We do tend to become more disciplined as individuals when we find a purpose to do so, and tend remain truer to the disciplines we have nurtured ourselves rather than those we have adopted to oblige others. I guess I could be wrong about that, but that seems to reflect my experiences anyway.
[Hermit] Yet I don't think that you will disagree that we are creatures of our environments. And when the environment is "messy" we tend not to bother too much about how carefully we clean up after ourselves. Consider the Disciplinary Process (And no, Im not enraptured by the name either, so if you can suggest some alternates, we may well adopt one - but not moderation which I think is far worse) as a way of cleaning up the environment.
[Hermit] When offended, instead of dashing off a clever put down, dash off a letter asking your opponent to play nice. And do it privately. If that doesn't work - or you can't manage it, ask some referees to step in. I bet you won't do it often - knowing how busy we all are, but the fact that it is available as a process, and the fact that you know it can and will be applied, will make it much easier to not need to respond to silliness,
[Hermit] And while helping with self-discipline, that will clean up our act. And once everyone is used to it, there will always be the reassurance that the system is available in the case of a Brettster, an Aaaaron, an Everettie, a Yash, or a Dees.
[Jake] We have people wandering in all the time so it helps to keep this "in the middle of things" perspective in mind. When you do so, you need not do so not out of any kindness for your enemy, as you really do this out consideration for everyone else who has to share the same cyberspace with both of you.
[Hermit] But until the Meridion, and the Disciplinary Process there was no process to dispose of the obnoxious walk-in other than through unpleasantness. And despite repeated attempts to institute such a system, every time the next "inwardly wandering person" arrived, there was only one way to clean-up. Now we have a process. But we also have a very messy community. The process will hopefully help the community clean-itself up.
[Jake] I don't think that trying to enforce discipline will get us where we need to go. In fact I could see how obsessing about this too much can have a chilling effect, where in our zeal to become pleasant we collapse into triviality as more interesting and important discussions simply become too dangerous and prone to occasional bouts of "rudeness".
[Hermit] "Rudeness" should not be needed with intelligent people. Yet it has become the norm. As the community will institute the process - and others in the community will decide what level of damping is required, the community itseld will set the standards for what the norm ought to be. All the Disciplinary Process defines is the actual process. Not its application. Hopefully nobody is going to obsess about this. And if they do, they too may end up under the same microscope.
[Jake] We can collectively deal with the more obviously disruptive behaviors (like flooding and/or spamming-types of activities), and the more childish insults without having to indulge ourselves in some extreme community regimen of thought and attitude policing.
[Hermit] Without the process, the evidence is all over the BBS that we couldn't. With the process, in place, hopefully we can.
Kind Regards
Hermit
---- This message was posted by Hermit to the Virus 2003 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=54;action=display;threadid=29437> --- To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Oct 06 2003 - 10:01:58 MDT