[split] Discussion About Potential Rule Change and Staff Action

[Angrboda]

"I rather like the shit brown." (An allusion to the ST:TNG episode, Devils' Due; the default color scheme at rationaliia is affectionately referred to as "poo brown".)


Meanwhile, back at the forum...

I think there is an unfortunate desire to attempt to control content by changing the process, when changing process is seen as a quick expedient to that goal. Maybe changing the process, with the aim of precluding the content is justifiable here, but I don't think so. I have only little experience of forums, having spent a year at Ratz, and hanging here entirely too long, but my impression is that, yes, while a good set of rules can help shape forum participation in constructive directions, imo, forums are far more organic than is normally assumed. The culture at Ratz is dramatically different than that here at AFO, and it's not because of a fundamentally different set of rules, nor willingness to enforce them. The people involved are different, with different needs and goals, and the loose tissue of rules only catches the extremes, it doesn't give the whole its shape. Attempting to make a mono-culture by changing process unnecessarily, with the belief that it will have a positive effect overall, is one I doubt, and find rather overly optimistic. Beyond the points that Shell makes about desiring changes in process which would result in rules applicable to more than the content you find objectionable. Be not surprised if where there was one problem, there appear many, as those who can, choose to make opportunistic use of your new rule. (ETA: In the months preceding my departure from Ratz, I saw the forum membership sorely tested over debates of just this nature. Sadly, the damage done by the member whose behavior was deemed objectionable was slight compared to the damage to the community from the resulting acrimonious debates which followed, including the departure of several valued, long-time members.)


Anyway, just my humble opinion. For what it's worth.


Form follows function, says the organizer
and turns himself into a paperclip,
into a vacuum cleaner,
into a machinegun.
Function follows analysis
but the forebrain
is only an owl in the tree of self.
One third of life we prowl in the grottos of sleep
where neglected worms ripen into dragons
where the spoilt pencil swells into an oak
and the cows of our early sins are called home chewing their cuds
and turning the sad faces of our childhood upon us.
Come back and scrub the floor, the stain is still there,
come back with your brush and kneel down
scrub and scrub again
it will never be clean.
Fantasy unacted sours the brain.
Buried desires sprout like mushrooms on the chin of the morning.
The will to be totally rational
is the will to be made out of glass and steel:
and to use others as if they were glass and steel.

— Marge Piercy, Song Of The Fucked Duck, excerpt