Posted by twinleaf on June 13, 2009, at 11:57:12
In reply to To all, posted by Deputy Dinah on June 11, 2009, at 19:52:20
I think we are all aware that Bob has many time-consuming responsibilities besides Babble, and that his interactions here are necessarily brief and sporadic- no problem there at all.
But I don't know if anyone else has noticed that there is a sort of rhythm to Bob's presence and absence. Right now, he is facing quite a few challenges from posters: he is being asked to apologize for blocks widely considered inappropriate or excessive, to change his blocking policy so that the blocks are not escalating or excessively long, and generally, to adopt a more empathic, responsive stance towards everyone here.
At times when he is more clearly in control, he is often here for several consecutive days. At those times, his posts generally are about the importance of the rules, about how there is a natural power imbalance here, with him having far more-and rightly so, in his opinion. In his interactions with posters, questions are not answered; they are responded to with additional, slightly off-point questions. There is a notable absence of empathy or interest in the concerns that posters bring up.
Right now, I feel that we are in a crisis which has been slowly building for a long time. I think that what we would like from Bob is reasonable, and even necessary for Babble to avoid losing more and more posters, or more basically, to lose its reason for existing. We are asking for either no blocks, or very short ones, where there is a clear opportunity for the poster to apologize/make amends for hurtful or inappropriate comments. This is so much more in keeping with our personal goals of becoming increasingly more responsible for our feelings and actions. And no more blocks when the poster does not understand why it's given! We are also asking Bob to apologize when his reasons and manner of blocking have traumatized a poster. I consider this to be extremely important in a mental health forum such as this. Lastly, we are asking him, when he does have time to interact with a poster, to make sure that he does so with flexibility and empathy. It is no longer acceptable for him to turn these exchanges into personal exhibitions of power and control by means of his rules and how he administers them. or into an exasperating series of clever, but frustrating and unhelpful questions of his own.
These requests all seem reasonable. I have no particular reason to think that he will consider doing any of them; I do believe, though, that both Bob and this site would benefit if he gave them careful consideration. It is no fun for an administrator to be the object of such intense anger- it's horrible- but there are real reasons for it that need to be understood and addressed. It's not a normal state of affairs,
poster:twinleaf
thread:900540
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20090529/msgs/900768.html