Posted by M. Lee on January 9, 2003, at 13:20:40
In reply to Re: Kid A, a politely worded reply.... » Dinah, posted by kid a on January 9, 2003, at 11:39:34
> > Fortunately, Dr. Bob has tried to establish a different sort of neighborhood here.
>
> A neighborhood devoid of any yang, any darkness, even though darkness permeates most of our lives... We're encouraged to quelle our bad feelings and push them deep down inside us, where no one will ever see them... Many of us fight a lifetime's worth of feeling persecuted and attacked, we're trying our best to become strong and to stick up for ourselves, while at the same time we are given our shots of Thorazine and sent quietly off to spend time alone in our rooms.
>This reminds me of a similar situation that I had to deal with a few years back.
I help moderate discussion groups on another site. Arguments got so out of hand at one point in the "general discussion" board that we ended up creating a separate board. It was called "arena" and there was a warning message to the effect that it was unmoderated and just about anything goes. (there were limits)
(I'm not suggesting that it would work here. It was actually a very different situation. I didn't even see what started this thread. I'm just remembering, and thinking out loud...)
This solution ended up being a workable compromise between free speech (sometimes to the point of "brutal" honesty) versus providing an environment where others could choose to stay out of it. Messages were moved from the moderated area to the unmoderated board, and then allowed to take whatever direction the participants choose. Yeah, at first, the discussions got really nasty, but after a while it calmed down, and actually helped diffuse some conflicts. Messages there would also expire after a certain set amount of time, and not linger on as a reminder long after impulsive things were said and resolved.
In this case it seemed that we had been unintentionally quelling the resolution of disagreements between people. And the feeling stirred up will often come to the surface (one way, or another) despite our attempts to prevent it. For instance, participants realized that they could say things in private email that were not allowed by the moderators, and those exchanges got _way_ out of control.
Sometimes the new message board was empty for long stretches of time, but we kept it as sort of a "safety valve" - to relieve the pressure that sometimes builds.
poster:M. Lee
thread:34859
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030104/msgs/34918.html