Posted by caraher on December 6, 2008, at 13:28:14
Thanks for the response...
> We've been discussing the Politics board with Dr. Bob recently. He'd prefer posters to post positively about the leaders they support and the political positions they hold, rather than negatively characterize other political figures or political positions. The idea is to be respectful of those who voted for those political figures or hold those political positions.
Are these discussions among Dr. Bob & the deputies, or are they in these forums somewhere? I don't see anything in Admin on this. I obviously don't know about any off-board communication you might have had with rayww; assuming there was none, this strikes me as a cross between the old game "telephone" and a mind-reading exercise. It seems ordinary posters are being asked to constrain our posts in accordance with evolving guidelines developed in discussions we might not privy to.
> We're trying to run things by Dr. Bob as much as possible during this period of time, so that we can do the best we can do in following his desires on how that board should be administered.
The problem with this kind of process is that, unless everyone can adopt Dr. Bob and all the deputies as their "civility buddies," there's little assurance that we can get accurate feedback on the acceptability of a particular post short of receiving some kind of reprimand.
While it is in the nature of these rules that some human judgment (and therefore some unpredicatability) must come into play, I think more explicit guidelines, including examples (perhaps based on modified actual posts) would be helpful in reducing the ambiguity.
Regarding Dr. Bob's desire that we "post positively about the leaders (we) support and the political positions (we) hold," I think this can and does clash with the other policy that presenting something as an opinion (whether mine or that of a politician I support) renders insensitive or uncivil content acceptable. The fact is that politicians routinely promote policies that are viewed by substantial numbers of reasonable people as insensitive, even uncivil. That is what made saying anything about California's Proposition 8, for example, very difficult.
If I say that gay marriage is great because it recognizes a basic human right for people of all sexual orientations, Prop 8 advocates reading the board could feel accused of seeking to deny people their basic human rights. If I say I support Prop 8 because it protects traditional marriage, Prop 8 foes could feel accused of seeking to harm traditional marriage. There would be some justification for those feelings in both cases, yet I don't see how either statement could reasonably be construed as insensitive or uncivil.
I totally agree that we should "not post anything that could lead others to feel accused or put down," but this must be interpreted reasonably. It is a fact of the world that not everyone holds the same opinions I do, and it is not reasonable of me to feel accused or put down when someone expresses a differing opinion simply because the opinion expresses differs from mine. A reasonable guideline would turn on how that opinion is expressed, and it simply does not work to base that on whether the opinion is expressed as support for X rather than opposition to Y.
What is crucial is whether the opinion involves a relatively explicit commentary about *people* who hold differing views. For instance, if someone posts, "I oppose gay marriage because it threatens traditional marriage" I fail to see how any person could reasonably "feel accused or put down;" where an expression of opinion might begin cross the line would be a post along the lines of, "I supported Prop 8 to protect traditional marriage from gay rights advocates." I'd consider that fairly mild, but I could also see how that's getting more personal, in that it imputes a motive (attacking traditional marriage) to people holding a different opinion.
Once again, I just feel bad that rayww was "playing nice" as far as I could tell and got slapped with a block...
poster:caraher
thread:867037
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20081003/msgs/867037.html