Posted by Solstice on December 13, 2010, at 14:02:29
In reply to Re: clarity???, posted by sigismund on December 13, 2010, at 12:29:10
> >He has offered to allow a Community Council to shorten blocks, after an as-yet-undetermined minimum time has been served.
>
> I wonder what that minimum is?It hasn't been set. He asked a while back what others thought that limit should be. I think I said a few days. Not very many people answered him on it.
> I have always felt that it would be more transparent of Bob to just block some people for life than to use the formula in the way it has been used.Well - although I can see that a year block feels like it might as well be lifetime, I've been having a ball interracting with someone here who I believe has been blocked for a year (Alex - right?) I'm glad she didn't get blocked for life. She stirs the pot - for sure. But perspectives like Alex's do keep things closer to the center of reality. And I Love all her wry irony. She's got a sharp eye.
> Which is, establishing an precedent via a PBC and then ratcheting up the penalties until you are at the year long block. You could see, when those people came back at the end of the block, they were watched very very carefully, and they were treated differently too.
I honestly don't know. I've noticed that more than others, some do seem very prone to pbc's, rephrasing requests, blocks, and then longer blocks. But I think if we could look at it objectively - or have someone from the outside look at it objectively for us, we'd notice some things.
First - I am absolutely certain that Bob is not capable of being 100% consistent and equal in enforcing civility guidelines. But I don't think anyone else is capable either. So that would be an unmeetable (is that a word?) expectation. Deal with Bob is, though, that this Is 'his baby.' No one is more motivated to keep it intact than Bob. You just can't invest the amount of time and effort into something like this that Bob has invested, and it mean nothing. So in my view - there isn't another imperfect person that I'd rather have as Babble King.
Second, I think that there are a good number of people here who have emotional, psychological, and/or biological conditions that make them more vulnerable than others to violating civility guidelines: i) Folks who are young and have hot passions and less mature self-restraint; ii) folks with diagnosis' that make impulse-control a real challenge - like bipolar, ADHD, etc; iii) folks with dissociative disorders that result in loss of time for their most well-functioning part; iv) folks with cognitive disorders that impair their reasoning, their executive functioning, their language skills. Some of these folks have the potential to develop what it takes to stay within the guidelines. Some, through no fault of their own, may not possess the potential to ever have enough control to stay neatly within the tight civility guidelines here. I don't think any of those who have trouble with this deserve to be punished for infractions. I also don't think civility guidelines should be abandoned - which I think would quickly lead to mayhem and really kill off the community. I think civility must be managed - but I think here it should be done with an abundance of compassion, and without the tones of shaming and punishment that have been imbedded in the current system.
It's all very tricky. I think Bob works hard to strike a balance. He says he thinks it can be improved. I think he's putting legs to his words by proposing a Community Council. I'm a newcomer to the active posting community - and in my own arrogance sometimes I wish I could just wrest the controls from Bob's hands and say "Ok! You just sit right here & be still while I get this thing set up for you - and then I'll give it back with the instructions!" No doubt I'm not the only one here who thinks they could set up a better system that would work 'right'.
But here we are. We've got what we've got. I really do think my thoughts about how to put a Council in place are more in tune with the Community than Bob's desire to have campaigns and elections. I even think my idea is truer to Bob's goals than his own idea ;-) But I don't have those controls. All I can do is keep saying what I keep saying, and hope that eventually he gives it a chance. And I hope sooner rather than later.
Solstice
poster:Solstice
thread:965628
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20101201/msgs/973435.html