Author: Fernando Villegas
Date: 17:08:28 09/24/98
Go up one level in this thread
On September 23, 1998 at 23:59:23, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On September 23, 1998 at 23:43:36, Fernando Villegas wrote: > >> >>The sortie of Thorsten has rekindled once again the old issue of how we pamper >>the baby without killing him. It is clear CCC will not resist too much time as a >>living and creative site if more people is going out due to his attacks on this >>or that guy, followed in the next step by his expulsion. So pressing is this >>that many post has been dedicated to the task to look for another method of >>moderation: some of them, IMHO, are a lot worst that the illness they try to >>cure. >>I only can say that I have reached the following conclusion: in a discussion >>group, moderation is not possible without killing the discussion in the long >>run. >>How could it be other way? Do you know a discussion where very soon personal, >>vicious attacks does not arise? Even theologians are prone to shoot each other >>discussing about the third or fourth attribute of Christ. How can you rule human >>passions without killing human passion, a necessary attribute of any discussion >>to begin with? >>Easy to say you can discuss these matters without getting personal . Wrong: >>every issue becomes personal when discussed long enough. Sooner or later EGO is >>involved and war begins. Nobody wants to appear as the guy that shut the mouth >>after a broadside was shot at him. Everybody want to say the last word. >>Everybody is willing to scalate the conflict in order not to appear as the >>defeated side. >>What this means? >>It means that if we are not capable of living with that, we soon will be not >>capable of living with CCC anymore. We have lost Chris, we have lost Sean, now >>we lost Thosrten. Who will be the next? Will this site, be governed undirectly >>by the delicate skin of those that cannot sustain an attack? >>I know I said something different a couple of days ago. I said that Thortsten >>really went beyond limits and that the things had not remedy. And in fact it is >>so, IF WE persist with the moderation kind of site CCC is now. Not that the >>moderators has made a bad job, but they are trapped by the system; they are >>compelled to do a job that is heading toward the peace of cemeteries. I cannot >>see much sense in putting Amir, Bruce and Don in the task to look the site hour >>after hour in order to detect undesirable material or answering petitions of >>expulsions, etc. I think they have the right to live easy lives, quite lives, >>programming lives and not expend his time in this unfruitful task. >>What is the solution, then? >>Is so easy or should be or at least is in words: nobody is coerced to read an >>insulting post and nobody should feel idiot because a post say he is. My >>experience in this is not exactly the same as that of those that were permanent >>targets, BUT I have received here and there some post where I was treated as a >>thief -the piracy thread- or a guy that was saying something stupid. Did I ask >>some protection ? My system is take a look at what is said to me and >>objectively see if what they say are at least partly right, if not entirely. If >>so, even the harsh words are useful. As a chess player I have learned to learn >>from my mistakes. I don't give a blow to Fritz each time he gets me badly and >>besides he makes an ironic commentary. If the attack has not ground -and in my >>profession as journalist I receive a lot of them, grounded and not grounded- why >>should I became worried about? I do not care if someone thinks I was defeated or >>mistaken; I am grown-up enough to feel confident in myself when I think I am >>right and not to worry too much if I am in the wrong side. To commit mistakes is >>the destiny of all of us even in the craft we best know and sometimes a good, >>fresh, sharp insult and deprecation could be a good healing method to avoid them >>next time. I am not stupid but I have been stupid many times. I have been stupid >>even in the issues I handle best. Of course, as everybody else, I prefer to be >>considered a bright genius, a wonderful guy, but that is not very useful after >>all; an acusation of imbecility has been many times a great asset to improve my >>work, a kind of purification even if repeated, wrong, malignant. Even these >>serve a purpose if you are strong enough to put them in use. . >>But then, if you are not strong enough to see things in that way, you always >>have the resource not to read something unpleasant. I do that all the time >>because I am not. There are people here whose style is very harsh when something >>does not fit with his tastes and so, when the issue they are writing about is >>non chess and computers and I see that they are going to the kind of sentences I >>do not like, I just stop reading and go for another post. Ii is so difficult to >>do so? >>By example: maybe one of you will think this post is awfully stupid and they >>will say it in a way or another. Well, if they do, I will get angry, of course, >>but then I will see my post again to detect the stupid things that really were >>said ; if I meet some, I will be thankful to the guy; if not, I will be >>indifferent. And if I feel in the vein of waging war; I will launch my own >>attack. Sometimes a good quarrel is very good for the spirit, kind of storm to >>clear the sky. What I will not do is asking the expulsion of the guy. >>I think this is the only way. >>Fernando > > >*IF* we can get a decent moderation facility, *NONE* of this need happen. No >more expulsions. > >The reason is simple... we expel people to stop their posting nonsense and >starting flame-wars. *IF* moderators could screen every post before it appears >here, none of this could happen. Offending posts would never be seen, so there >would never be a need to expunge someone... just that their offensive posts >would go into the toilet. > >We need to make this happen. Then the problem goes away, totally. Well, Bob, if that is posible, the seems to problem disappear as much my analysis is based on the presuposition that we face a dilema. If the dilema does not exist, the problem does not exist and my advice is irrelevant. So seemes to run your reasonning. BUT then, in fact, we will just have another problem: where is that device, who is going to handle it, who defines the threshold of offense, etc? Do not blind ourselves: no tehcnological tool will save for us the need to face the real problem: there are here different visions about what this site should be. So the fact of the already existent purposes stablished in the beginning of the times is not a solution either. You cannot solve these kind of things retorting to old constitutions. We should think a little more about this. I smell two large and opposite groups of people here, with very different visions, and that schism has not been faced. Fernando
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