Posts by Emma Hart
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to Megan Wegan,
The only problem with that, is when they don't answer, you get even more offended. And in my own case, shrill.
Oh, I think we've pretty well established that when you ask someone if they were offensive deliberately, and they continue to post but don't respond, they meant it.
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to Megan Wegan,
No, I mean it, name a time being inappropriate has stopped either of us doing something.
Separately? I think a handful of times. Together? Never.
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to Megan Wegan,
And hey, one of my dearest friends, who is now describing me as her girlfriend all over the internet, came out of this place.
Hey, if anyone's coming out... Wait. That's inappropriate.
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Firstly, Bart is completely adorable, but I believe him too. Because yeah, we've all done it.
Secondly, a mere six pages later, Sacha's question:
A strong community can deal with something like lil p's latest foray because it has the resilience.
True. How do we nurture that?
Now, I apologise in advance for being long and waffly. I have no problem at all if people want to TL:DR this.
When I started doing this kind of stuff (over a freaking decade ago now, holy hells) it was with a community of, well, refugees, basically, from a community where bitching, game-playing and bullying were really common. We reacted to that, and what we ended up making was a very restrictive, walled-garden sort of environment which was safe, but has ended up very slowly and protractedly dying from lack of fresh blood. Our users were basically starting from an assumption that People on the Internet were Bastards. So, IMO, over-protectiveness, over-modding, does not breed resilient communities.
But I'm going to assume that when Sacha says "we" he means "PA's commenters/community members" rather than mods/writers. So I'll just briefly mention the fantastic amount of work Russell puts in to making this a healthy, engaged community that feels like it has a sense of ownership, and feels cared about. And also I think there's a genuine sense that all writers are also a part of the comment community, that there's very little hierarchy.
I'll also note that it's (IME) really quite the testimony that we can have a conversation like this without it degenerating into people just whining about too much and not enough modding. So... trust your mods? Every now and then I've popped a quiet email to a user to say, "Look, I understand why you said X, but what you don't know is that behind the scenees, just quietly, Y." And every time I've done it the response has been really positive. We don't delete a lot, so y'know, what we do? You really didn't want to see. OTOH, sounds like Russell and I were both watching the "perverse entertainment" thread just to make sure it wasn't getting out of hand at any point, but didn't feel it needed intervening in more than it was.
The other thing I'd suggest is what Josh said, that sometimes the best thing to do is just let one go, y'know? You don't have to have every fight, or pursue one into the ground. People aren't going to think you lost just because you walked away. And if a comment can be taken two ways? Check if it's actually an insult. "It sounds like you meant" or "Did you mean to say" are quite useful phrases.
As are, while I'm on it, the conditionals. Some, sometimes, in my opinion, I think, maybe... Little words, but important. More important the thornier the issue is.
Now, I'm not saying YOU MUST be all kittens and bunnies and Obamacorns all the time, because frankly coming from me that'd be fucking RIDICULOUS. But if the question is "how can we nurture our resilience", I think part of the answer is "don't waste your energy on stupid shit".
Also: as people have said here, confirming comments ("yes, me too") are just as important as contradictory ones. It's not 'nothing to say'.
And (I'm going to shut up really soon now) if it's within your social, financial and geographical abilities, turn up to shit in real life. Great Blends, etc. Because meeting people face to face really, really helps. (As does PA's legendary Responsibly Priced Alcohol policy.)
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to BenWilson,
But I'm not sure if first impressions on the internet are so deep. Well, they're not for me, anyway.
Really the only thing I think someone shouldn't do with their first comment is be really aggressively negative. Without any previous context to gentle it, that comment will be seen in the worst possible light.
But I find it interesting how many borderline lurkers (and thank you so much for your comemnts, because lurkers are just the hardest people to get information on, by definition) are concerned about their comments being ignored, rather than strongly judged.
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to Paul Dowden,
and a whole new genus of pretty, witty, talking plants that look like Emma.
Dude, too early in the day for me to be blushing. Also? If we do this? I wanna see if one of those can mind my children for me.
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
When humans engage as individuals, without preconception, as Bart says, they're usually perfectly pleasant. The trouble being that those preconceptions can be pretty hard-wired, and that it's also a very human thing to want to categorise other people as soon as possible.
Hence the "oh but not you" stage, where a person will hold onto their prejudice against the group just fine, while excluding individuals they know who belong to the group.
Like Bart, I firmly believe people are mostly decent. "Decent" isn't actually a very high bar, it's not asking exceptional behaviour from them. From a Mod POV, if you have a community that believes people are basically arseholes, you get an over-protected seige mentality which is quite hostile to try to come into.
I can separate Emma from Plant Physiology.
But then I would have to follow you twice so I can still read your journal links, right?
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
which Emma insists is totally not about me, but is an expanded version of a comment she made a few days ago which is . . . about me.
Ohhhh no it isn't! (srsly, this is where we are now, right? And someone can just repost this whenever Danyl repeats his "oh yes it is!"?)
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
I assume, but really who the fuck knows, named after my blog
I can very definitely assure you that it isn't. Your assuming that it is is something people can draw their own conclusions from.
BETRAYAL
But not that, I really don't think. Danielle's tweets are public, or Danyl wouldn't be able to read them. It's not like passing on a confidence.
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to Russell Brown,
It's only "20+ hours a week". That makes me feel like I might have A Problem.