RE: SUBFORUM IDEAS TOPIC
10-15-2014, 09:18 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-15-2014, 09:37 AM by Jacquerel.)
If nobody actually intends to use it to be an asshole, then there is no reason to have a forum that does not have the rule "don't be an asshole".
If people do intend to use it to be an asshole we just shouldn't have the subforum.
It helps nobody, and threatens some, to have a subforum where there are no rules, when our rules are already so lenient that "don't be an ass" is literally the only one that would be relevant here.
If this had been proposed in public, rather than just unveiled one day, why would anyone have agreed with it?
There is still nothing in any other topic in this subforum that could not have been posted without breaking the forum rules as they already stand.
If you do not want a subforum where you're allowed to be an ass... what are you arguing for?
There should be a reason presented for not having rules, not the other way around. A formal requirement not to be a piece of shit is normal, having a designated area where that doesn't apply is not, and having that area but continuously assuring people that nobody intends to use it for its only exclusive purpose is bizarre. What other reason is there to have one that I have not covered?
Justify this please.
People can and often will cause harm unintentionally, even friends (and small though we are many people here are connected as friends-of-friends or friends-of-friends-of-friends, rather than necessarily a cohesive shared friend group) and in the heat of the moment while they are doing it will not easily acknowledge that this is what they are doing, or be sorry for it, or stop if the person asking them to stop is the person they are in a disagreement with. Or in fact, for a long time afterwards. This is why sometimes you need to have someone who has the authority to get people to cut it out, or the ability to appeal to one even if it does not end up needing to be used.
Even "groups of friends" fall out, and this is not my group of friends. Many people here are my friends, some people are just people I know who hang out with my friends. We all have different connections to each other and they are not equally close.
It is not guaranteed to be a safe place. It wouldn't necessarily be one even if it was exclusively made up of friends.
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. I don't want it to happen here either, I am tired of it, and apparently as proposed this is supposed to be the forum where it's easiest for that to happen.
And that it happening in a place where people are encouraged to be more irreverent than usual is a very very bad idea, because if some people are trying to have a serious conversation at the same time as other people are posting single sentence flippancy, people get justifiably upset. It's even happened already in this topic, this topic is a case study in why this is a bad idea.
We cannot have a place for serious discussion in the middle of the place that has been painted as the place for being casual and irreverent, because everything stops being casual when you start talking about dinner-table-inappropriate topics, and because irreverence is suddenly inappropriate within those arenas. Frankly I can't see why this would be something people would disagree on.
I don't feel the need for a specific "no slurs" rule though because that's already covered by not being an ass, I don't believe anyone would intend to actually exercise their right to throw slurs around, and it is much easier to be an ass without realising it and need someone else to step in than it is hard for people to tell you that a word is unacceptable.
People are assholes unintentionally all the time and creating an arena where they are allowed to get into arguments and there is nothing to actually stop them from being assholes apart from trying to tell them that they are being assholes (something people struggle with, and which there is no guarantee the person who is being an ass will actually acknowledge as true) is a bad plan.
If people do intend to use it to be an asshole we just shouldn't have the subforum.
It helps nobody, and threatens some, to have a subforum where there are no rules, when our rules are already so lenient that "don't be an ass" is literally the only one that would be relevant here.
If this had been proposed in public, rather than just unveiled one day, why would anyone have agreed with it?
There is still nothing in any other topic in this subforum that could not have been posted without breaking the forum rules as they already stand.
If you do not want a subforum where you're allowed to be an ass... what are you arguing for?
There should be a reason presented for not having rules, not the other way around. A formal requirement not to be a piece of shit is normal, having a designated area where that doesn't apply is not, and having that area but continuously assuring people that nobody intends to use it for its only exclusive purpose is bizarre. What other reason is there to have one that I have not covered?
Justify this please.
People can and often will cause harm unintentionally, even friends (and small though we are many people here are connected as friends-of-friends or friends-of-friends-of-friends, rather than necessarily a cohesive shared friend group) and in the heat of the moment while they are doing it will not easily acknowledge that this is what they are doing, or be sorry for it, or stop if the person asking them to stop is the person they are in a disagreement with. Or in fact, for a long time afterwards. This is why sometimes you need to have someone who has the authority to get people to cut it out, or the ability to appeal to one even if it does not end up needing to be used.
Even "groups of friends" fall out, and this is not my group of friends. Many people here are my friends, some people are just people I know who hang out with my friends. We all have different connections to each other and they are not equally close.
It is not guaranteed to be a safe place. It wouldn't necessarily be one even if it was exclusively made up of friends.
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. I don't want it to happen here either, I am tired of it, and apparently as proposed this is supposed to be the forum where it's easiest for that to happen.
And that it happening in a place where people are encouraged to be more irreverent than usual is a very very bad idea, because if some people are trying to have a serious conversation at the same time as other people are posting single sentence flippancy, people get justifiably upset. It's even happened already in this topic, this topic is a case study in why this is a bad idea.
We cannot have a place for serious discussion in the middle of the place that has been painted as the place for being casual and irreverent, because everything stops being casual when you start talking about dinner-table-inappropriate topics, and because irreverence is suddenly inappropriate within those arenas. Frankly I can't see why this would be something people would disagree on.
I don't feel the need for a specific "no slurs" rule though because that's already covered by not being an ass, I don't believe anyone would intend to actually exercise their right to throw slurs around, and it is much easier to be an ass without realising it and need someone else to step in than it is hard for people to tell you that a word is unacceptable.
People are assholes unintentionally all the time and creating an arena where they are allowed to get into arguments and there is nothing to actually stop them from being assholes apart from trying to tell them that they are being assholes (something people struggle with, and which there is no guarantee the person who is being an ass will actually acknowledge as true) is a bad plan.