Posted by mair on March 30, 2002, at 10:44:13
In reply to what's going on? civility inconsistencies cont., posted by Krazy Kat on March 28, 2002, at 10:03:47
Yes this has been very testing!
I went back over the thread in question to see if I could figure out what happened and I have to agree with Dinah and KK that Andy certainly didn't merit special attention for his uncivility.
I have a hard time seeing how anyone could find Andy's initial post offensive. He may not have said it as articulately as others on this Board, but he was simply making a point that has actually been discussed on the Board many times before - namely that people who come to this site need to be aware that we all respond to different drugs very idiosyncratically, and be forewarned that to some degree one person's miracle drug may be another's poison. We've discussed this not only in the context of new people who come to the Board looking for assistance, but also as a reminder to those already here that we need to be careful to convey that our advocacy for a particular drug is based primarily on our individual experience.
I found the response to Andy's post to be very "in your face" and unnecessarily so. I think he intended no offense by it. I remember an instance when i first came on the Board and apparently wrote something that could have been taken as insensitive by the person to whom it was directed. Another poster responded pretty quickly but did so nicely and in a way that assumed that my comment had been made in ignorance (it was) and without intent to offend (certainly). That was pretty much the end of it - no other participants in the thread felt that they had to jump in to "rub my nose" in my inadvertently insensitive remark. I think that would have been the end of my participation here if it had happened that way. Criticism always stings but the way that situation was handled simply made me a more careful poster, not a reviled poster, or, for that matter, an ex-poster.
Once attacked, Andy did defend himself in a way that may hve seemed accusatory, and maybe it wasn't inappropriate to point that out to him. However, that his post resulted in what you may perceive to be a less than civil discourse is, IMO, not his fault. He was not the first to sling arrows, and if Zo and Elizabeth thought that his remarks were insensitive, they could have pointed this out to him with significantly more tact.
Mair
poster:mair
thread:3619
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20020308/msgs/3666.html