Wherein tejas gets all mentory and maternal
I know this might come as a shock to some of you, but there has been a fandom kerfluffle on LJ.
(C'mon, breathe, relax, it'll be okay. It isn't the end of the world.)
I'm not going to be talking here about the subject or location of said kerfluffle simply because that really doesn't matter. (Please don't bring it up in comments, either. I won't be party to excerbating the matter nor am I here to point fingers. It's done. Let's move on and learn something from the experience.) Like all things fandom, we all have our likes, our dislikes and favorite windmills where we love to go a-tilting. Nope, I'm not going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about the manner of conducting them.
If you've been online for more than about 15 minutes, you've likely been involved in something like this. I call it a kerfluffle rather than a flame war simply because I haven't seen a real flame war since I was on USENET. LJ seems to run more to police actions than actual wars. People still get hurt and honest discourse still gets obscured, but the scope tends to be more confined. The thing about it is that this is human nature.
If someone tosses a stone and it lands too close, it's common to feel like it might just have been thrown *at* us. We get defensive. When we primates get defensive we tend to attack. It's what we do. I don't want anyone to feel guilty for that impulse. Goodness knows I've done it myself more times than I care to remember. I'm sitting here on the edge of half a century of life and I still have to fight the urge. Online, we don't have rocks to throw, though there have been times when I wish I did. :-) Instead we have words. Again, this is part of what it means to be human. We are hardwired for language. Is it any wonder we use it as skillfully in battle as we use the weapons our intellect can devise?
What we can do is consider the emotional weight of our words before we speak. (Yes, I know, I'm writing, not speaking, deal with it. ;-) It is so very easy to use emotionally loaded language to try and express logical arguments. The only problem is, smart as we bald apes are, we react first to emotion and then to reason. Once an exchange has become emotionally laden, we can pretty much toss rational discussion out the window. It's so very easy to do, too. See my verbose *headdesk* as an example. (As I said in one of the comments to that entry - I don't have a problem offending people, I just want to make sure I do it on purpose so I can enjoy it properly. ;-)
So, I'd like to build some guidelines on how to keep things on task and out of the emotional mire and I'd love for you all to contribute if you come up with something. I know this stuff has probably already been compiled elsewhere, but I find the act of building it can be far more useful than just reading it elsewhere. This is as much for me as for anyone else, but if folks can take something positive away from this, YAY! I want to keep coming back to this entry down the road to edit it and add to it. If nothing else, it'll give me something to refer people to during the next police action and maybe it will continue to grow.
Note: There are *always* exceptions to everything.
1. "I", not "you". Try to couch arguments in terms of "I". This will do more to keep things on an even keel than almost anything else. Once "you" creeps into a discussion, it stops being an exchange of ideas and becomes an attack. "You" can be useful, but generally only when asking for clarification.
2. Packed words. Some words carry far more emotional baggage than others. Sometimes they become the focus rather than the original subject. Sometimes that's valuable. Most of the time it's not.
3. Take responsibility for mistakes. We ALL make mistakes. I try to own up to mine and to not make them more than once. I have plenty of new mistakes to make, so why clutter things up by revisiting old ground? (Sometimes the the scenery's pretty and the food's good so it can be tough to resist the temptation.)
4. Rants are not always invitations for debate. I really do love the decor of this particular mistake. It's almost irresistible. It's one of my worst habits and I suspect it's one of the mistakes I'll continue making until the day I die. Sorta like overdrawing my checking account. I keep telling myself I won't do it, but damn, there's that blasted overdrawn fee again! When someone labels an entry "rant" it will be emotionally laden from the outset. That is the nature of a rant. Somebody please shoot me the next time I mistake rant for meta.
4.5. Use caution when directing others to a rant (especially something as inherently unimportant as a fandom rant). It's one thing to point to a rant and then use it as a jumping off point for a rant of one's own in one's own LJ. It seems perfectly acceptable to me to even post a comment in the original rant to the effect that "I disagree with X and have posted a rebuttal rant in my LJ".
5. Meta entries are generally invitations to debate. That's debate not fire fight. Naturally, the culture of the particular venue dictates the level of discourse allowed. I try, but don't always succeed, to get a feel for the culture of the venue before wading in. I do have a tendency to let my mouth run away with me. (No comments from the peanut gallery on that one. ;-)
6. Remember that we are visual animals. A lot of communication is done visually and that meanings can be lost when just words are used. THINK BEFORE YOU WRITE. Remember things can easily misunderstood without visual aids.
7. ???? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
ETA - #6 provided by sg1danny. Thanks! (Minor edit for clarification's sake.)
ETA - 4.5 was sparked by babs_sg1, enriched by hsapiens and mucked around with by yours truly. Thanks, ladies!
(C'mon, breathe, relax, it'll be okay. It isn't the end of the world.)
I'm not going to be talking here about the subject or location of said kerfluffle simply because that really doesn't matter. (Please don't bring it up in comments, either. I won't be party to excerbating the matter nor am I here to point fingers. It's done. Let's move on and learn something from the experience.) Like all things fandom, we all have our likes, our dislikes and favorite windmills where we love to go a-tilting. Nope, I'm not going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about the manner of conducting them.
If you've been online for more than about 15 minutes, you've likely been involved in something like this. I call it a kerfluffle rather than a flame war simply because I haven't seen a real flame war since I was on USENET. LJ seems to run more to police actions than actual wars. People still get hurt and honest discourse still gets obscured, but the scope tends to be more confined. The thing about it is that this is human nature.
If someone tosses a stone and it lands too close, it's common to feel like it might just have been thrown *at* us. We get defensive. When we primates get defensive we tend to attack. It's what we do. I don't want anyone to feel guilty for that impulse. Goodness knows I've done it myself more times than I care to remember. I'm sitting here on the edge of half a century of life and I still have to fight the urge. Online, we don't have rocks to throw, though there have been times when I wish I did. :-) Instead we have words. Again, this is part of what it means to be human. We are hardwired for language. Is it any wonder we use it as skillfully in battle as we use the weapons our intellect can devise?
What we can do is consider the emotional weight of our words before we speak. (Yes, I know, I'm writing, not speaking, deal with it. ;-) It is so very easy to use emotionally loaded language to try and express logical arguments. The only problem is, smart as we bald apes are, we react first to emotion and then to reason. Once an exchange has become emotionally laden, we can pretty much toss rational discussion out the window. It's so very easy to do, too. See my verbose *headdesk* as an example. (As I said in one of the comments to that entry - I don't have a problem offending people, I just want to make sure I do it on purpose so I can enjoy it properly. ;-)
So, I'd like to build some guidelines on how to keep things on task and out of the emotional mire and I'd love for you all to contribute if you come up with something. I know this stuff has probably already been compiled elsewhere, but I find the act of building it can be far more useful than just reading it elsewhere. This is as much for me as for anyone else, but if folks can take something positive away from this, YAY! I want to keep coming back to this entry down the road to edit it and add to it. If nothing else, it'll give me something to refer people to during the next police action and maybe it will continue to grow.
Note: There are *always* exceptions to everything.
1. "I", not "you". Try to couch arguments in terms of "I". This will do more to keep things on an even keel than almost anything else. Once "you" creeps into a discussion, it stops being an exchange of ideas and becomes an attack. "You" can be useful, but generally only when asking for clarification.
2. Packed words. Some words carry far more emotional baggage than others. Sometimes they become the focus rather than the original subject. Sometimes that's valuable. Most of the time it's not.
3. Take responsibility for mistakes. We ALL make mistakes. I try to own up to mine and to not make them more than once. I have plenty of new mistakes to make, so why clutter things up by revisiting old ground? (Sometimes the the scenery's pretty and the food's good so it can be tough to resist the temptation.)
4. Rants are not always invitations for debate. I really do love the decor of this particular mistake. It's almost irresistible. It's one of my worst habits and I suspect it's one of the mistakes I'll continue making until the day I die. Sorta like overdrawing my checking account. I keep telling myself I won't do it, but damn, there's that blasted overdrawn fee again! When someone labels an entry "rant" it will be emotionally laden from the outset. That is the nature of a rant. Somebody please shoot me the next time I mistake rant for meta.
4.5. Use caution when directing others to a rant (especially something as inherently unimportant as a fandom rant). It's one thing to point to a rant and then use it as a jumping off point for a rant of one's own in one's own LJ. It seems perfectly acceptable to me to even post a comment in the original rant to the effect that "I disagree with X and have posted a rebuttal rant in my LJ".
5. Meta entries are generally invitations to debate. That's debate not fire fight. Naturally, the culture of the particular venue dictates the level of discourse allowed. I try, but don't always succeed, to get a feel for the culture of the venue before wading in. I do have a tendency to let my mouth run away with me. (No comments from the peanut gallery on that one. ;-)
6. Remember that we are visual animals. A lot of communication is done visually and that meanings can be lost when just words are used. THINK BEFORE YOU WRITE. Remember things can easily misunderstood without visual aids.
7. ???? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
ETA - #6 provided by sg1danny. Thanks! (Minor edit for clarification's sake.)
ETA - 4.5 was sparked by babs_sg1, enriched by hsapiens and mucked around with by yours truly. Thanks, ladies!