A LANDFILL

I appreciate your thoughts, guys. I will write more about this later, i just want to clarify i'm against the existance of this subforum.

EBWOP:

There should be a reason presented for not having rules, not the other way around.

Nope nope nope, nope, nope nope. Nope. Nope! That is NOT how things work, ever, at all. Not from a formal debate perspective, not from a conversational perspective, not from a common sense perspective. You do not make arguments to affirm a negative; the person proposing something has to justify it, and people who disagree can address why they do and the points in the justification, not the other way around. As it stands, there are no rules; if you want to change that, demonstrate why you think it's necessary to.

People suddenly springing from sentence or paragraphs of jollity to literal essays is not a difficult thing for anyone to be aware of, and it's transparently clear from the fact that it occurs both in other parts of the forum and on IRC, and immediately kills fun conversation and reduces participation whenever it happens, that people no longer want to contribute in that environment.

Obviously more than zero people are interested in being allowed to post how they want and contributing in a more serious context; why should we regulate posting so that we can only post in the manner you particularly are interested in? I've already said WHY I disagree with that; if you can't see why people would, then you're not considering anyone else's perspective or preferences, and just trying to force things to confirm to your preferences. That's really exclusive! As you point out, we're not all equally close: many of us have different things we want out of the community or ways we want to communicate; why should we make it so that one portion of this extended circle's preferences are codified? It seems to me that (especially in a medium like a forum) it's better to, rather than restrict how people communicate or what they talk about, simply disregard things you're not interested in. Someone says something serious and you don't want to respond or have that conversation? Don't respond, just keep being flippant at the people that posted before, and the conversation will either split into two or the one more people want to have will take over the other. Someone consistently talks about things or in a way you don't like? Block them, you can always check their posts manually if something comes up you need to read something they said for context. Don't like a particular thread's too-serious contents? Post in a different thread about reptilehousesmells and keyquests. It's not fair to restrict what can be said and how to the particular style and contents one subgroup wants; at that point, you should just be starting your own splinter-splinter forum.

Hum.
This is an interesting discussion.

Jacquerel, here's the justification:
The reason to not have rules isn't to create a space where it's okay to be an ass.
The reason to not have rules is because some people feel it's a bummer to have to police each other, and can't we all just get along? It's still not okay to be an ass, but we don't need to say it, because duh, we all know that.
And this is where I think I basically disagree with you: I think the members of this community ARE capable of just getting along. Not that we're all perfect and will never be asses to each other ever, but that when we do, we can work it out. Evidence: We have so far with minimal influence from the Eagle Time rules.

I also don't have nearly as much confidence as you seem to have in the ability of rules and authority to have a positive impact. We already have an informal "rule" that we all agree being asses to one another is generally a bad thing. If that's not enough to stop it, then writing it down somewhere isn't likely to help.
As for authority, it can't resolve these issues except by banning the offenders and deleting the offending posts, which isn't resolving the problem so much as just burying it. That can be useful in a big, public forums, but for a small community like this, I'm not so sure.

Maybe I'm wrong. But I think also, part of the point of this subforum is to find out if we can get along without rules. It's meant to be an experiment.


The issue of having serious discussions crop up in a supposedly-informal space, I agree is a potential problem, but it doesn't seem to me like a BIG problem. Nor is it a problem we can solve just by outlawing it. I think the right thing to do is to move that stuff to its own thread when it happens. Then interested parties can continue, and uninterested parties can ignore it.
Jacquerel, do you think this is a good solution? If not, what do you think we should do instead?

EDIT: Dangit, 3 ninjas'd.
Slorange, I agree with pretty much everything you're saying, but I'm worried this discussion is turning too much into an angry argument, not enough something where constructive things happen.
Jacquerel has concerns. Let's try to resolve them.

idea #44: install a soda machine 15 feet away from the currently-installed soda machine that sells 3/5ths the amount of soda as the pre-existing soda machine for 1/2 the price; see how many people still buy their soda from the original soda machine.

i sure am glad people are equating harassment and the use of slurs with freedom to express opinions, its really great and not completely disingenuous at all

god knows i cant express myself without saying fag

Loather, this is obviously something you feel strongly about - and with good reason, since harassment pretty much sucks.
But I don't think anyone here is arguing that harassment and slurs are good things. I think we can all agree we don't want them here.
So what's the real problem? And how can we fix it? Or are you just venting some bitterness?

Loather, this is obviously something you feel strongly about - and with good reason, since harassment pretty much sucks.
But I don't think anyone here is arguing that harassment and slurs are good things. I think we can all agree we don't want them here.
So what's the real problem? And how can we fix it? Or are you just venting some bitterness?

i vote that harrassment & slurs and stuff shouldn't be allowed because we need a modicum of order.

this is literally whats being debated

it was never about the fucking freedom of expression and i would appreciate it if everyone would stop pretending otherwise

While I hate to use my beloved solaris and to-a-lesser-extent-beloved loather as examples this is kind of exactly what I am talking about.
Prickly, passive-aggressive, and unhelpful single line flippant replies are exactly the climate you are going to create by trying to brake on a topic that started out as silly and flippant and make it into something that probably shouldn't be treated with irreverence. If what was a fun time is suddenly slammed into a wall of serious business then the immediate response from people who now feel like someone is treading on their fun at the same time as saying something they find morally disagreeable is going to be bitterness. Especially if they also feel insulted or intimidated by what was said in the aforementioned textwalls.
It is not a good climate to have a chat in at all!
This is exactly why I am saying that it is a bad idea to be doing this.

Nobody's around to tell anyone (whether they're posting a short, bitter response or a long, patronising one) to back off except the people they were already mad at! Is that something you really foresee being workable and practical? Perhaps you have a more optimistic view of the people we hang around with than I do, but my experience suggests that what it's more likely to get somewhat ugly without any mediation.

Why can't we all just get along? Because we can't. I'd love it if we could, but we don't have that kind of magic. Are we all getting along right now? It looks to me like people have been fairly upset by the conversation so far and by the standards of things we've talked about before it's a pretty tame subject!

A culture of large paragraphs and tiny angry responses are all this is going to create and why it's not cool or fun for anyone.
Can people just ignore things? Yeah! Are they going to when suddenly in the middle of what was a fun time, they feel personally attacked by other people's viewpoints? Well... you can answer that yourself.


And yes Slorange, I know you don't make arguments to affirm a negative? I'm pretty sure that having rules is the generally accepted norm, the one that actually is applied everywhere else, thus not having them is the negative? The exceptional stance is the one that demands justification.
You're not alone in wanting a place where you can "post how you like" (although again, apart from "don't harass people" which you have stated was not within your plans, you can actually do that basically anywhere) while being serious, but clearly nor am I alone in thinking that a designated anarchyland which people decide to use to talk about divisive subjects is something that is only going to become incredibly toxic and undesirable.

This is EXACTLY the kind of prickly, passive-aggressive, unhelpful attitude that has Ed feeling anxious and unwelcome about posting anything that doesn't agree with the general #eagletime zeitgeist, or that he just isn't sure will be copacetic.

do not speak to me like that

Not that we're all perfect and will never be asses to each other ever, but that when we do, we can work it out.

to abridge a point jac is making: you are assuming that everyone is able and willing to 'work things out'

making it the standard that every problem someone has with someone else has to be discussed until some kind of understanding is reached is making a standard that is very nice and easy for people who are good at writing words and having debates and very very bad for everyone else who isn't

if you are hurt by someone's words and attitudes you may not want to talk in pms with them, you may feel unsafe or scared of doing so, and framing that as the best way of resolving a problem leaves a lot of people out in the cold

while it may be an ideal to have reasoned debate, we have to make a forum where people feel safe talking no matter what their writing skills or emotional ability to engage in arguments are

Ok there are about half a dozen different points I'd like to address here, about half of them are metadiscussions about the nature of conversation/arguments on this forum/in this community but that's kind of why Hawkspace was made in the first place.

Two things I want to address here:
1) When Wheat contacted me about making Hawkspace, their main concern was not about their inability to use slurs, or that they felt stifled in their ability to debate the shit out of everything. It wasn't even some kind of weird desire to criticize the likes of me for being a tone-policing SJW. The only rule Wheat really wanted tossed out the window was Gen Chat's unwritten rules of "post quality". Every other accusation of what this forum's attempting to circumvent/condone has stemmed from Wheat's inability to scratch out their missive in the sand without flicking a bunch of grit into our collective eyeballs.

For the record, I agree that Gen Chat needed a shakeup. If all we can agree on from this is that we shitpost in Gen Chat like we've been doing in Hawkspace (which everyone is more than welcome to keep doing even as we debate the merits of this subforum, that's the beauty of having multiple threads after all), that's fine by me.

2) I am ok with arguments and disagreements. They are a thing all us young adults need to learn to deal with if we're going to acknowledge the world is full of different people with different backgrounds and opinions and cultural/social preconceptions. I think a rule that says "don't srsbsns out of nowhere" is not a good rule, nor is any rule that makes people think too hard about the flow of a discussion and whether it's "right" or "wrong" before that discussion's even happened. I've, uh, actually been thinking hard about my kind-of self-destructive views on morality but that's like, a whole nother essay.

3) My opinion on this whole business has gotten much nuanced as I've sat down and had one-on-one talks with people. If people do have the time/energy to hit me up on this (preferably on IRC or another IM-esque), I'd really appreciate it.

to abridge a point jac is making: you are assuming that everyone is able and willing to 'work things out'

I just think that everyone here is basically a good person and probably doesn't want to be at odds with other people if it can be avoided.

I'll grant you that working things out can be hard. I do hope that everyone is at least, yes, willing to try, for some value of try. (I don't think I ever said anything about discussion, though, or what the best way to resolve a problem is. If I did, I shouldn't have.)

Mind you, I'm also kind of surprised on how much this particular discussion boiled over. Maybe this group doesn't have it together quite as much as I thought we did.

Whatever the case, I don't know what we can do as a community to help this process, but I don't think "have rules" is a solution that makes any sort of sense, and I don't think "appeal to some authority figure" is a very good solution. (Though I'm starting to think I may mean something fundamentally different from Jacquerel when I talk about having rules.)

Sorry if the following post doesn't make sense since i'm really sleepy at the moment, but i would like to state some things before going to bed.

I think we have a lot of talking to do and see if we really can stay as a community, or rather, if i can be part of it; otherwise i am willing to leave if it means everyone will be more comfortable/safer. This isn't a place for me if i'm not allowed to make unintentional mistakes, and by which i mean something like "shit, sorry, i didn't know what i just said is considered transphobic" or "fucking hell i'm sorry i didn't know you didn't identify as ___" or "english is my second language, sorry if that came off as rude" as opposed to "IT IS MY RIGHT TO DISCUSS WHETHER OR NOT SOMEONE CLASSIFIES AS TRANSEXUAL".

Oddly enough, i agree with what you guys had to say about people not always being able to talk things out; i feel like you had the impression i wanted anarchy, but i was just overly optimistic about our collective ability to be self-moderated. I think the creation of this sub-forum was unnecessary, we coulda just loosened up on the regular one.

Personally, i'll wait and see what Schaz collects from talking to everyone (she's really great for doing this, she's almost unhealthily willing to keep this place nice for everyone) and see what happens, i'll try to stay optimistic again. I'll also talk to Wheat when i get time because i think he needs to tone down his confrontational nature for the greater good.

As for what i'd like this place to be, i'd like it to be a community where we can politely correct each others mistakes when they happen - have rules and penalties if it makes people feel safer. But don't wait for moderation approval before having a conversation, let them happen naturally and trust the user base is well mannered enough to not let things get out of hand.

'not wanting to be at odds with other people' is different from 'being able to calmly discuss an emotional topic with someone who's made them very uncomfortable'

I don't think you're really getting what I mean? making the policy 'you should have a discussion instead of bringing in a mod, if you want serious action you have to convince other people' means that people who aren't good at discussing or convincing other people will be shut out of the process of having their problems with other users addressed.
it's not an issue of whether or not they're 'willing to try.' some people don't have the same capabilities as others. making discussion/convincing others the way conflicts are addressed is like telling a monkey and a rabbit that climbing a tree is the way conflicts are addressed.

this may sound far-fetched, but I haven't seen any proposals for future revisions other than "if there are problems we will discuss it and put it to a vote." your point about authority figures gives me another idea: 'authority' doesn't just disappear because an official authority figure is gone. if the management system for this subforum involves "who can convince people the best," the 'authority figures' will become the people who can convince people the best. as jac puts it, it will probably be the people with the loudest voices, the people most willing to voice their opinions. this is kind of not a good thing!

the thing about having a dedicated authority figure is that it provides (as Schazer well knows :( ) accountability. if you feel a mod made a wrong call it's easier to talk to them about it. with mods, you know where you stand. if you trust the mod, you know that authority is someone you trust. if it's 3 people all arguing roughly the same point with one person leading them and then ten or so people agreeing, it's a hell of a lot less easier to feel safe. you feel less certain you'll be treated fairly, you feel less certain your voice will be listened to. to a mod, you're a direct pm. to a mob, you're one person trying to be heard amongst other, possibly louder people. I'm biased, because I like Schazer a lot. responsibility is a hell ride, but there needs to be a sense of it if people are influencing the outcome of conflicts. and if someone's position is essentially "I talked and other people Just Happened to listen," I can't imagine they'll feel a lot of responsibility at all.

they might just chalk it up to the will of the people. even if the person was so much less skilled than them at talking that whether they were right or not never really counted. but it's not their fault for streaming words at the person without thinking about their position of power, because in the end it's not them that cast the deciding votes. maybe I'm just pessimistic, but that's how I see it. I don't want people to use a system that privileges "people who can explain well and sound convincing" without acknowledging where that system places them over others.

if someone wants to go "no, that's not the system we'll be using at all, we're doing something completely different," then go ahead

@SeaWyrm

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Spoileralso, jac is not proposing 'have rules' as a solution, jac's point is more like "we don't need the rules to be civil but also why do we need the absence of rules in this instance, what exactly are they stifling that makes you need to get rid of them")

I know you aren't stating things as authoritatively as some of the points in my post addressed, your quote was just a good jumping off point + I feel like talking to you because you seem to be fairly neutral and I feel you could see this side of things?

just to clarify, i'm not advocating for everyone to get banned the moment they drop a slur. sometimes people legitimately don't know better, i get that, and i feel that there are plenty of cases where it would be far more constructive to let someone know that they slipped up than to immediately shun them from the community. however, if we implicitly allow people to just throw about slurs as much as they like, people will get hurt, and i don't think any community as heterogeneous as ours can be expected to effectively police its own actions when things like that happen. there are lines that need to be drawn for mod intervention, even though they might not always be clear.

purposeful, repetitive harassment in particular should not be tolerated. that's kind of what i had in mind when i brought it up

intent matters a ton when making judgements on this sort of thing.

i don't think this subforum should be any less casual; the most important thing to me is that everyone that is a part of eagle time feels safe and welcome, and i feel that setting a standard through some basic rules is necessary to accomplish that. i dont think having rules to protect members of this forum would change the generally wild and fun tone of hawkspace. i really like this subforum (though i dont think its really as much of an appropriate place for serious debates as general chat because of the difference in tone)

also, since I've just been talking essentially about SYSTEMS OF POWER AND GOVERNANCE and PRIVILEGE WITHIN A STRUCTURE THAT FAVORS TALKY-TALKS (disclaimer: if you haven't noticed I am also a disgusting talky-talk) I thought I'd make my position about this whole subforum deal clear (I've already mentioned this to Schaz over skype, but eh):

my main worry is that there have been mentions of "if there's problems, we'll make a change." 'problems' can be a slippery word, and all I've seen as the way for change to be made/problems addressed is discussion + vote (which I have already made my points about in the previous post.)

my other worries are that this distinct subforum will eventually lead to ingroup/outgroup drama. I don't see massive amounts of offensive content being posted, I don't see horrible harrassment happening. that doesn't seem likely to me! what I can foresee happening is a growing trend of "people who agree with THESE concepts post HERE, and people who agree with THOSE concepts post THERE," essentially turning the subforum into a sub-community, with large amounts of people mostly ONLY posting in there and other people NEVER venturing in. a situation like this being allowed to continue would lead to enmity, feuds, and general Bad Feelings.

it wouldn't be immediate, of course, but without the right oversight it would very likely develop.

all my problems with this subforum are solvable, were I convinced that the apparatus is set up to resolve conflicts in a good manner. currently, I don't think it is.


@Ed:

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Spoiler
I am saying this because I, too, have serious anxiety problems about morality and saying the wrong thing. forgive me if this is rude or out-of-line advice to give.

anxiety fears are not logical. they stem from reality, they can be cause-and-effect based and feel logical, but in the end they are not governed by its logic. which is why attempting to resolve them through logical solutions will...not really work.

I think you would be better served by looking at resources for dealing with thoughts and fears that cause you anxiety, and maybe talking through your fears with a friend (or friends). making a rule that says "you can't be mad at me if I mess up" won't work. not just because you can't control people's feelings with rules. but also because the reason you are afraid of being yelled at or abandoned is not /because/ there is no rule preventing it. it is because your brain is doing a thing. making the rule will not prevent your brain from doing the thing.

I'm not saying this means it's a bad rule to make, or that it's an unworthy point because it stems from your anxieties. that would be fucked up and wrong of me. the forum should try to make all its users comfortable, and someone's discomfort shouldn't be judged on the basis of where it comes from.

I just don't think that making a rule will put your fears to rest. and I /definitely/ don't think it will put your fears to rest better than talking deeply with friends and learning how to deal with stressful thoughts will.

oh hey I just refreshed the page and: hey wheat, while I can't really complain about you picking and choosing whose points you want to address (it's a free country, after all!), I'm sort of annoyed at you /still/ linking that post where you took me and ixcaliber's words completely out of context and spin-doctored them to fit your argument. after we had that exchange, ix apologized, I apologized, we worked out our differences (like you say is a great thing to do in your posts about how this forum will be regulated!). but without the follow up posts, the whole tone of the conversation is changed. I made this point before and asked you to stop using your sound-bite clip of my words to fuel your version of the story. you ignored me. maybe this time you'll listen?

I don't know why you say that the old forum was shut down 'because of cliquishness.' do you have an inside line to the mods that I don't know about? it's an opinion you're stating as a long-established fact, and people who weren't there at the time are going to read your words and assume it /is/ a fact.

anyways, like I say earlier in this post, my fears for this subforum /would/ be cliquishness. serious mafia asked everyone to make well-reasoned posts. this subforum is telling people that the way to have conflicts is through well-reasoned posts. you can see how this will drive out some people while appealing to others?

Also something more serious: you should know you would not be here if it weren't for my attitude.

making an argument that has "you owe me" as a part of it, especially when its over something that happened years ago, something that happened back when the person you're referring to was still a dumb teen, really comes off as arrogant and manipulative. it doesn't invalidate your argument, but.. come on

I haven't really posted in any of the hawkspace threads (or even really threads in general, IRC is generally much more appealing to me than more formalized forum interaction) and I could be misreading this topic so far. I'm probably like, responding to something old and this topic's already moved on or whatever, but I feel like to some extent it's important to get my thoughts out, I guess.

I'd kind of like to have some form of system in place that isn't reliant on everyone being friends and talking things out with each other. I tend to get somewhat anxious and nervous when interacting with friends, let alone a potential someone who I feel threatened by or uncomfortable with, and a system that's "talk it out with the person you're having issues with" just doesn't work for me. If I'm in an argument or an environment I feel uncomfortable with or in, my response is to leave and wait until it's passed-- and, while some impetus should be on me to not do that and say something, it'd be nice if there was like, I dunno, an acknowledgment that people like myself exist and a minimum of accommodation for that fact, or whatever.

I've generally preferred IRC as a form of interaction with my friends because, to some degree, it gets away from the well-reasoned post methodology that's really pervasive in the forum proper. I'm not comfortable making a case for something longer than, like, three sentences at most, and the rigid formalization of long-form stuff is something that really dissuades me from posting. I don't really know where I'm going with this-- I guess I'm trying to say that I'd prefer hawkspace as something closer to the more free-form communication IRC provides (although obviously not an exact replication), and that the means of conflict resolution ties into that? That debates on Eagle Time, the way they're presently conducted, are intimidating to people like myself? I don't know.

Fundamentally, though, the notion that we're all friends and everything'll work out seems kinda bullshit to me given that, even among people I have known for years now and know are my friends, I still feel intimidated enough to barely ever post. How much of that is a product of myself and how much of it is a product of the environment cultivated is something I don't rightfully know.

Dagnabbit.
Had a whole post ready, hit refresh, and BANG! it became obsolete and irrelevant.

Wheat, I'm gonna be honest here, I'm not sure I see the issues with insularity you're talking about, and I'm not really convinced that the old mafia stuff on MSPA is really relevant to what's happening here and now. (Particularly since seedy claims you're misrepresenting people?) And I agree with Loather that dumping that on Chwoka was kind of a dick move.

That aside, the "Hawkspace meant to be != Eagle Time" is the important thing, yeah? That's more or less how I was seeing it and why I was so perplexed as well that people were so horrified over not having rules. But of course, Hawkspace is hosted on Eagle Time and has all the same people, so it's only natural that some folks wouldn't see it that way. They still are clearly affiliated in some way or another, not totally separate entities.

I'm not convinced, though I'm open to being persuaded, that cliquishness/insularity are problems on Eagle Time. I'm also not convinced that making a separate thing is any sensible way to REDUCE cliquishness - it's just "oh, here's a new place for a clique to form," as seedy rightly pointed out. I wouldn't expect it to necessarily make things worse, but I don't see it solving that problem.

But I like what's been happening on Hawkspace in general, so I don't think it's a bad thing to have.
The post quality issue, people feeling too self-conscious, that I can maybe see. And I've probably missed some incidents during the times I wasn't keeping up with this forums. Heck, the stuff Ed was saying in that last post about being jumped on, I was on the receiving end of a little bit of that a ways back myself. Not that it was entirely not my fault, but.
On the whole, I haven't really felt super-uncomfortable with being able to post whatever things I want. Sounds like at least a few other people have, though. And I can't deny that Hawkspace's informal atmosphere has loosened my own fingers.
So, aside from what it was meant to be, what is it? And what should it be? What do we want from it? (Hoboy, we'll never reach a conclusive answer to THAT question. But for what it's worth, let's at least consider the possibility that so far, it's been a fine thing being what it already is, and maybe in the end we're all making a big fuss over nothing. MAYBE. Maybe not, but maybe.) (And it's originally Wheat's idea, so, ...?)

making an argument that has "you owe me" as a part of it, especially when its over something that happened years ago, something that happened back when the person you're referring to was still a dumb teen, really comes off as arrogant and manipulative. it doesn't invalidate your argument, but.. come on

My initial argument was that 'but some people when they post dumb things are young, give them a chance.' Yours was 'it doesn't matter, if they do x they're toxic and we don't want them.' That now you turn around and say 'but he was a teen' shows you are not willing to evenly stick to your ideals if the person in question is your friend. It's different when it's not a generic, nebulous bigot and it's someone you know with a name, isn't it?

just to clarify, i'm not advocating for everyone to get banned the moment they drop a slur. sometimes people legitimately don't know better, i get that, and i feel that there are plenty of cases where it would be far more constructive to let someone know that they slipped up than to immediately shun them from the community. however, if we implicitly allow people to just throw about slurs as much as they like, people will get hurt, and i don't think any community as heterogeneous as ours can be expected to effectively police its own actions when things like that happen. there are lines that need to be drawn for mod intervention, even though they might not always be clear.

purposeful, repetitive harassment in particular should not be tolerated. that's kind of what i had in mind when i brought it up

intent matters a ton when making judgements on this sort of thing.

i don't think this subforum should be any less casual; the most important thing to me is that everyone that is a part of eagle time feels safe and welcome, and i feel that setting a standard through some basic rules is necessary to accomplish that. i dont think having rules to protect members of this forum would change the generally wild and fun tone of hawkspace. i really like this subforum (though i dont think its really as much of an appropriate place for serious debates as general chat because of the difference in tone)

i wrote this before i read your post, just fyi. schazer can back me up on it, i spent hours getting my thoughts together there

There are two points: one, I want to make clear to anyone who keeps posting irreverent sarcasm, after I said specifically not to, that if you want to make me feel bad I will return the favor in an effort to get you to stop. I am kind to those who are kind to me and feel terrible even making them feel uncomfortable (which is why I always feel apprehension about posting long things that might upset people in general). But for those who treat me consistently rudely? I have to make clear somehow that while I have plenty of patience that will get me mistaken for an android, I also have limits.

are you really that pissed that chwoka didnt go along with your argument? how does that justify the low blow?

you're less of an android and more of a terminator

And owing me? The point of that post wasn't to make someone feel like 'they owe me.' Owing and deserving are concepts that don't really exist. All events are independent of each other; history is just one fecking thing happening after another and there's no karma bank that says anybody gotta pay back anyone for anything.

you were purposefully inciting guilt to win an argument, you pseudo-intellectual pedant. literally all you had to do to get me off your back is own up to it, but instead you sprouted out another massive pile of paragraphs telling everyone why you're right, as. fucking. always.

And two, is to make you - not chwoka specifically, but everyone, me included - remember. Remember that you're never done with that shit, you are the same person who sprouted the seed of that action, and cannot ever feel like you're over it or better or done learning and are enlightened. Just because you donate to charity or you're part of some movement doesn't mean you're a pure person on the inside. Everyone has to constantly be reminded of their past, and humbled and made to feel they must keep learning to be a better person to make up for it. Because if you forget and become unhumbled, you will just repeat actions of that intent- but as a different, more refined, dressed-up kind of hate.
That is how you become your parents, unable to understand the new ways of your children and unable to relate back to how you once felt about your parents not understanding you.

why are you so full of yourself

Wheat, you keep shitting on insularity happening in our internet communities, which is all well and good and the actual existence of such I'm not going to disagree with. Where you're being grossly naive is thinking that any kind of Hawkspace, affiliated/hosted on Eagle Time or not, is not going to go through its own process of "deathspiralling" into insularity.

It could perhaps be avoided in a communication medium that is exclusively about ideas, not people and their personalities and emotions and other inconvenient things, but Eagle Time/#eagletime is very indubitably people, to the point there is inevitable mistrust/lack of immediate unconditional benefit-of-the-doubt/trust when a new person nobody's really vetted joins in and acts like a people (the "who's this asshole" effect. This is a recurring intrusive thought of mine and one I have to confront and stamp down constantly). Ideas are piss-easy to broadcast, dissect, refute and revise. People are not, and in a discussion of ideas about how people should be or might already be or were at some prior point, you're basically obligated to suffix everything with a shrug and a "but nwuh-uh."

Heck, if we want to make threatening-sounding but ultimately-impotent statements, insularity's basically the only reason I didn't send you packing to another forum!

Contention the second: This talk about biting people's faces off if they descend into sarcasm because they can't step up to the debate plate with you means you are just as bad as you've accused me of being. You will choose to shove people out of the discussion because according to your stated ideals, it's all about whether you can elocute to a particular standard. I feel like you falsely dismiss my cultural/girl-upbringing-mandated/cognitive objections that stop me from hitting that standard, instead assuming I'm not trying hard enough. This fucks me personally up in a quiet but persistent way.*

What is your endgoal with these people you drive off? Are you ok with a potential scenario where Loather (who I found in private discussion an intelligent lady who can be a good listener even when told their argument had bad grounds) goes down some kind of Darkest Timelonether route into a staunchly anti-intellectualist thorn in the side of not just you, but the kind of people I assume you’d prefer to engage with? I know you’ve given me shit in the past for not upholding my own ideal of never giving up educating people on how to be better/more accommodating; although I guess for the purposes of making you a new subforum it’s now turned on its head into contributions to a shitty culture of over-conscientiousness? Does the prospect of repulsing/repelling people with your objectevangelising bother you? Who are you trying to convince here, where anyone you hurt is going to have a bunch of friends who are going to be pissed you hurt a friend of theirs?

Because, if you’re ok with labelling some people here, in what we should all be hoping and aiming to make Hawkspace’s first and ugliest (hopefully by a very long shot) “serious group discussion”, as “unfit to continue engaging, it’s now safe to forcibly remove you from the debatespace”, that is just as shitty as me making a snap-decision and berating someone (issuing a “don’t do XXXX”) instead of using the slip as an opportunity to have a group examination/discussion of, I dunno, policing of bodies and appearances and why we might do that without thinking**. Like it or not, Hawkspace is “your” thing as much as Eagle Time is perceived by this community to be “mine”. You’re setting a standard that you think is good. When I’m not tying up my own hands, I try set a standard I think is good. If you think Eagle Timers’ preconceptions are not going to jive with your standard for Hawkspace (you’re drawing from the wrong well), please, by all means, go bore somewhere else and find a more receptive audience for your forumnular ideals. Insularity of Hawkspace/Hawkspace Mach2 is an inevitability provided its users care about each other as individuals and people; I can only hope you’ll be as vehemently critical of it when it’s a culture that suits you and all of your needs. If you’ve got some kind of game plan from the get-go about how to prevent insularity from happening (it doesn’t need to be corrective measures, you already stated you’ve given up on trying to change Eagle Time’s), I’d love to hear it.




*I'm a perfectionist, and not even a particularly useful one. I got through high school being The Smart One, and was devastated by a 51% final grade on a university paper because I’d busted a nut studying harder than I’d ever studied (after lackluster midterm results). I still don’t like to admit I’m not good at things (instead engineering my environment through procrastination etc so I can claim that my peak could be reached under the Right Circumstances). So, when I admit I’m shit at debating, I’ve thought really hard about it and I mean it. The implication, implicit even, that I can Debate Like Wheat just by trying harder, and when you dismiss or disrespect me or think less of me (compared to old, “open-minded” me) because right now I “won’t”, it’s like trying to avoid screaming at my parents that I hate them all over again. I don’t want to hate you. I don’t want anyone on this forum to hate you, because hatred is fucking useless and everyone, you and I both, are simultaneously founts of sage advice and utter horsecrock.

** and if you think that even that meta-discussion is not a thing worth having, I’d like to attest to how unpleasant it is to live in a world where a woman’s body/appearance is a topic anyone is free to contribute on. It’s pervasive and shitty and I will acknowledge again that I did not air that concern in a useful or constructive way. Whimbrel I think could attest to my getting snappy over something “obvious” after that incident (Uluru being the original name of Ayers rock), realising that was not constructive, and apologising for it.

I work 70 hrs a week. I do not have the time to answer everything immediately but I will eventually get to everything. I said that I would.

I'm sorry for assuming you were ignoring my posts when you've done so multiple times in the past.

You seem to have seen and then recalled a drastically different version of these events, as if we have two completely different sets of eyes with different types of rods and cones exclusive to each other. Maybe one set of eyes has a fault that projects phantoms onto a normal situation. Or the other has blinders to a problem that is there.

The reason I didn't know about this information is because unlike you I wasn't privy to behind-the-scenes secrets. All of what I saw of the goings-on was the main thread. But I think the reason the subforum only attracted a certain kind of person was partially because the stuff done there was only appealing to a certain kind of person (chatting about vidya in a genchat thread is simply /more accessible/ than a weeks-long game, and no amount of open arms will change that). (Also, I note that you make no mention of the mspafa clique stuff, when that really /definitely/ happened.)

This would be my intention. (Excluding the part I lime'd.) Not cliquishness, but having two separate cultures that share geography alone. Because, as you said, "to abridge a point jac is making: you are assuming that everyone is able and willing to 'work things out.'" It is not possible at this point to get those who are so deep into one culture to see even far enough to compromise with the outgroup, so my intention was to make a second, separate forum - hence the emphasis on 'this is a separate forum'. People could be part of both if they wanted, just as people can sign up for two different forums on two different websites, which is why the lime'd portion does not follow.

So...the response to my concerns is "yeah, that's what I want to happen." I...can't really say anything to that. Other than I guess: there is already bitterness about this subforum and these ideas, there is already friction, how is the "lime'd" part so ridiculous that you don't think it's worthwhile to consider how to prevent it.

that is not what I wanted this to be. I agree with the idea of 'don't be serious' on this board. And I agree with the idea that if someone asks me not to ask anything of them I won't (the catch being you can't ask anything of me - don't ask of others when you are not willing to even listen to someone else).

then how do you plan to deal with conflicts on this forum, if isn't through "both parties have to discuss"

this is why I do not ask or expect someone who does not demand things of others and takes a more laid-back approach to social interactions like Red to listen and I won't pester them with long things. After they made clear their social apathy, I was like, yeah, that's fine if they're the type who just wants to do their own thing and let others do theirs without incident, I respect that attitude. It's consistent, and it fulfills the principle of 'first, do no harm.' Some people on that board voiced disgust at that voicing of apathy - which unfortunately ties in with how they are the type of person that cannot let others with different posting styles or outlooks be their own dang selves on another board.

hey, maybe you could not degender romy. she's a girl, and she has NEVER used 'they' pronouns. the fact that you choose to refer to her with those is...well, it's kind of suspicious. also, romy's a super close friend of mine, and she's fine with having her social missteps corrected because hey: she doesn't want to accidentally hurt people and push them away! maybe while you're talking about how I shouldn't 'mislead others' by having a view that I 'haven't done my homework on,' you could not use a friend of mine as your pet example of how you're so tolerant and others aren't. especially while misgendering her.

On the other hand, I will not leave alone people who demand things from others while saying "no, you can't tell me anything, who are you to tell me things?"

If you (the general you) don't want to hear long things from me, do not a)demand things from me b)mislead others by imposing a social view publicly that you haven't done the homework on and has factual inaccuracies or omissions that I can correct for the sake of your audience not being demagogued by you. For b), try to empathize: isn't it really frustrating when you hear a smörgåsbord of ideas that misconstrue a topic you've learned and care a lot about? For instance, wouldn't you get mad during a conversation where someone keeps referring to feminism as the idea that the social order should be flipped so that women become dominant over men?

It's hard to address this part because it's not technically directed just to me, but:
1) this sounds oddly like you're annoyed about being told you can't participate in certain discussions about privilege while also being told you need to follow certain social rules. forgive me that's not what it's about!
a) is telling you not to condescend or spin-doctor people's words or mock them really a 'demand'
b) again: sorry for not knowing all the back-room deets that you were privy to in that situation. funnily enough, your point (b) works well as a refutation of your own propensity to rhetoric on social issues you don't experience!
I think you realize this, since you grossly try to equate a situation in which I (and the other people you are directing this to who are women) are trying to argue for our rights as human beings with a situation in which you're trying to make a small internet community be less cliquish. maybe don't put those on the same level?


anyways, to cap this all off...you still haven't addressed taking my words out of context (not that I really thought you would)! I'd also like to bring up that beru, whom you choose to mock in that old post, genuinely meant her statement to ix as advice and phrased it a little more flippantly than perhaps she should have. I believe she said this in the thread, and you ignored it. I would have assumed you'd changed, but you brought up the post again without making any explanations or apologies, so I guess you still stand by using your rhetorical power to publicly mock a person with less skill with words than you? because...that's what happened.

p.s. when a lot of people tell you the way you interact with them/others distresses and bothers them, it's not them making unfair demands of you while not acceding to your demands, it's a sign that maybe the way you interact with others is distressing and you should maybe think about that instead of dismissing everyone.

p.s.s I agree with loather and schazer that going "ok, you've been sarcastic enough times, now you deserve to be hurt" is a really fucked up way of going about things. it's one thing if it was an emotional reaction that you regret...but, uh, it's a little creepy to stand by guilt tripping someone as the 'right' thing to do in the situation?

Fyi, everything ive gathered since becoming a hs cop points to the removal of the games and regular rp forums, and the other misc forums, was the result of softie o beimg ordered by Da Bosses to make the forums of old more streamlined for the BACKERSTREEt FORUMS and taking out the parts that had the most chance of survival elsewhere (you can play mafia anywhere, you can rp anywhere) was the easiest way

heavy moderation being needed there was probably a contributor tho, but i doubt that ALL OF GAMES died because of the MSPAFIA MAFIA