I was going to write this in the morning but the thoughts are whirling around my head and I can’t sleep so I will write it now.
I am shortly going to take a break from this site, but before I do that I feel the need, as one who has stood beside you, behind you and for you these many months since the site began, to give you my frank assessment of the site and it’s problems.
My assessment is that the continuing problems have been as result of several things, your inability to handle situations before they get out of hand, your contributions to situations that help them get out of hand and your lack of having and enforcing firm rules.
I still wanted to give it the good old college try this weekend and see if I could help you come up with a better method of handling things here, so I did the diary and spent hours and hours on it yesterday. I hope you will find some things of value in the comments and the contributions from members.
By the way, the current rule ‘Don’t be a Prick’ (and especially if you keep it as such) is in my mind pretty sad that a group of educated people cannot use a non gender biased genitalia pejorative to determine errant behavior, so I sure do hope you change that if nothing else.
I have an observation about swearing on sites that I want to share, that if people are using swearing to express themselves in their comments, then it’s pretty easy to take that same swearing and toss it around a little bit and have it come out loaded with venom aimed at other members.
Also I must tell you I have a great problem with the recent fracas and your handling of the situation, your treatment of 2 members of the site that I thought was far beyond the pale and a horrible example of the site over something which you should have taken off site in the first place. I think you need to reflect on all of that and hopefully you will some day apologize to both the site and to those with whom you were so offensive. This more than anything is leading me to take this leave.
Over these last few days I have had to weigh whether I could be on such a site or not and I find it difficult at this time to be involved based on the above mentioned fracas, so I am taking a break.
Not being one to easily give up, I gave it a last ditch effort to help you bring some order to the site in the diary I did Sat. but now I am done. I hope you find some value in the contributions members made.
I am just too tired of going through this and spending nights when I cannot sleep because I’m writing this kind of diary in my head.
I gotta tell you tho Boo, you are losing the heart of the site, bit by bit and I really hate to see that happen.
So, after four or five days of intense concentration and way to much typing on this site I think that will about do it and I can go and rest now.
Well I wish you and all members of this site well and hope you can solve these problems.
I hope the diary makes sense as I am writing this late at night as I said and I’ve done some moving things around but finally I said stop and just hit post.
Made perfect sense to me.
You did your best – heck, went above and beyond the call of duty. Hopefully you can take some comfort in that.
Be well.
If you are becoming too stressed, then a time out is warranted. I know that you have invested a great deal in this community, for which I am very grateful. I hope and pray you will return. I will miss you.
Frankly I’m not the best community member here. I spend a lot of time on trying to decide what to write for the FP, and trying not to make it suck too badly, that I often fail to participate enough in other people’s diaries. And, of course, life gets in the way too.
I try to make up for this by promoting members’ diaries to the front page, but that pales in comparison to the active day to day work of those like you who help make this a community and not just a way station. I’m very sorry that you have felt so much anxiety over these issues, most of which I am only now getting a belated understanding of via email. I’ve lived with intense anxiety at times, that gut wrenching feeling that churns one’s stomach and leads to thoughts racing through the mind late at night, and if that is what you have experienced, I am most sorry, both for the suffering itself, but also for any failure on my part which might have contributed to it.
I am not here to defend or comment on Booman’s behalf, btw. He can do that more than adequately himself. These are merely my own thoughts here. I will say this about him though: he has never interfered or censored anything I’ve written for the front page, nor that I stop focusing on certain topics (which I can do on occasion as you all well know). Not a lot of younger men (and to me he’s a young man) would have avoided interfering in that regard. When I was younger, I probably wouldn’t have been that open minded, especially if this was my business, as it is for him.
Well, I know this is an inadequate response to what you have written, and the grace and generosity you have always demonstrated here. I will be thinking of you and hoping for a rejuvenation of your spirit, and a return to this site, if you can, but mostly a return back to that place where you can feel joy rather than pain at your participation in the community of souls who share your aspirations and goals for our country and for each of us whom your spirit has touched.
Be well.
Steve
Ps. If you change your mind and stick around we would all be blessed.
with your writing alone.
Well, thank you. <<blushing>>
A comment on swearing–It doesn’t bother me personally, but you are certainly not likely to impress others who might be lurking, considering your opinions, etc…it’s a conversation stopper! There was a period of about two weeks where half the subject likes on DailyKos had obscenities in them.
I always look for good info to try to impress my Rush-addicted father. I know it’s comfortable to think of “community” only, but we also need to try to open other minds. The swearing doesn’t do it for the over-30 crowd.
And BTW, thanks for this discussion on all sides. I can feel the warmth of this “cafe” across the country.
Hey I’m a member of that crowd! In fact I’m a member of the over 50 crowd.
Does that mean I can’t swear anymore?
<snark>
So am I…I’m not saying we don’t swear, but there are certainly some more likely to read a diary that begins in “standard English.”
is enough to make a saint swear…but I understand what you’re putting forward; some of the language can be a bit off-putting for those of the right-wing persuasion.
Maybe just keep the swearing out of the titles?
The problem is we’re all blabbermouths and silence really is the best cure. I think we all need a “read not write” break, including me.
Pax
Yep. I can’t add to this, diane. Take a break and be well.
But if the present rule does continue, it must be applied uniformly. All should have to answer to it, or none.
Thanks for all Diane. See ya round.
You know when Diane leaves, the party is over. I’ve gone mainly into lurk-mode since last summer when I saw the beginning of the end of our placid pond. Now I’m going into super-lurk — I’m logging off so I’m not even going to be tempted to comment. I’ll still stop by to read the FP and diaries; it’s hard to break a habit and the content is still good. But, my days of referring to this site as “my community blog” are over.
In the same way I withdrew from dKos until I found the Pond, I’m withdrawing from BT and looking for a new place to call home. It might be http://everybodycomesfromsomewhere.wordpress.com/ or it may be some place I haven’t found yet.
I want to be clear about the reason for my withdrawal: Martin did not ban Military Tracy. In a reply to Supersoling, she crossed the line of civil behavior by a mile and should have had her ability to comment stripped a.s.a.p. She then ran over to dKos and put up a diary accusing every member of this site of hating the military. At that point, Martin should have banned her and put up a front page diary explaining why. Certainly, she deserved public shunning more than Marisicat did. Instead Martin chose to value his friendship and “compassion” for Tracy over his own rule.
The message derived from the events of this weekend are quite clear: “Don’t be a prick” really means don’t piss off the owner and doesn’t apply to slandering every member of this site if you are his friend. “Serial blog-wreckers” didn’t cause this disruption; Tracy did. Martin chose loyalty to a crazy person over the well-being of his entire membership and that’s why I’m not going to participate here anymore.
Thank you sjct for saying what I have been thinking for days. I haven’t posted my take on this, because in the end the direction of this site is not in my hands. Therefore, I have felt that my thoughts are, for the most part, irrelevant.
MT should have been banned, period No warnings, just sent home to be with her family who obviously were (are) worried about her. I was stunned at the silence here that greeted her pity party at D-Kos – perhaps at my own silence, too. Then, after all her disruption, she is allowed to have a farewell diary, like she’s Micheal Jordan retiring form the NBA. If only everybody in the world with problems and serious issues could be treated with such deference.
I will still likely read the many fine writers who remain here and I am sure that I will pop in, occasionally, at the FBC. But I have to say that the day has passed when I would call this place a true community.
I want to respond to this with a little bit of history.
In the history of this site, not a whole lot of people have been banned. As far as I can remember, no one has ever been banned for making personal attacks on members except Brinnainne, and almost all of her attacks were directed at Susan and at me. Brinnainne was warned, she was suspended for a day, she was suspended for a longer period, and she just kept getting angrier, so eventually I banned her.
No one else has been banned for making personal attacks, but that is largely because not many people have engaged in them.
Back in July, Tracy was warned, she was convinced to take a voluntary exile, she came back and was warned again, and convinced to take a permanent exile.
People have been banned from this site for disclosing information about other members, or for refusing to stop posting attacks on, not members, but other bloggers, after repeated warnings.
When I banned Parker for refusing to stop making baseless and scurrilous allegations about Chris Bowers and my ethics, I got very little sympathy from the community. We actually lost about 50% of our traffic (although it corresponded with a general dropoff in blogging activity in December 2005).
After that experience I became much more reluctant to ban anyone. And very few people have been banned.
There have been several sustained attacks on this site that have been taken to other sites. They have all coincided with outside events.
When Welshman and Jerome couldn’t agree on how to set up ET, Welshman launched an attack on Soj. When Susan’s mother died and I was finalizing my divorce and offline, Parker attacked.
When I was offline for the evening (announced) the Muslim cartoon thing went down, driving Susan from the site.
Then there was the Ductape flare-up in July, where other sites were set up on both sides to flame each other and me and the site.
And now, we have the last instance.
You will find some of the same people were involved in each and every one of these flare-ups. I happen to notice stuff like that, while few others were involved in all of them.
I find it disturbing for a segment of the community to insist on the banning of a member even after I have explained my reasons for not banning them. There were a smaller number of people that wanted me to ban Brinnainne. I listened to them. I sympathized with them. But she was someone that a lot of us cared about and I let her go on in a vain effort to reconcile and work through our issues. It was okay as long as the only recipients of her abuse were Susan and me.
If people would have relaxed a little in their call for swift justice they would have realized I was working toward convincing Tracy that the best thing for her is to walk away voluntarily, as she did once before.
I find the calls for blood to be disturbing. Why all these calls for blood. Why a whole other blog site set up to criticize me and vilify a troubled member of this site because I won’t pull down the guillotine fast enough?
Because she gives me some stipend? Because my girlfriend tells me what to think? Because I’m afraid of criticizing the military? On and on they go…questioning my compassion, questioning not just my judgment, but my ethics and my character.
And all the while posing in the character of people that really care about this community and about me (never mind Tracy, who they long ago decided they loathed).
I have to vent on this, because this is how I see things.
I see a lot of well intentioned good people that really care about this community who think I honestly have made bad decisions. I am glad they care enough to say it and care enough to stick around and try to make things better.
But I see a lot more than that. I see a lot of ill-will and bitterness and obsessive-complusive behavior, and yes, intentional malice.
I don’t care about all those other issues (stipends, girlfriends, etc.), but this one (the fight between two posters) was simmering for a long time, from what I remember.
I teach high school – I often witness Springer-like episodes. Once a “discussion” has denigrated into the type of screaming match that readers witnessed here, it is irrelevant who started it. Both parties must be stopped swiftly and with the same amount of “force.”
In my job, it is easy to get “caught up” in the many incredibly sad stories that make up the lives of my students. I have students who have parents in jail, parents who have left children in the care of aging grandparents (in order to deal w/substance abuse problems), alcoholic parents, etc. Sometimes those students break the rules and require some type of punishment. I have witnessed kids who have those sad stories get a break. And then another break. And then another and another, ad nauseam. The kid, without the sad story watches this and resentment builds up. If that now resentful kid breaks the rule, no break is given.
Calls for blood? Lowering the guillotine? What’s that about? We’re not talking about people dying. We’re talking about sending people away who won’t adhere by the rule that is in place.
being banned is like dying, metaphorically speaking.
Sometimes in your teaching, I am sure that you find it best to convince a student that the best way for them to get out of a rut is to change friends, or go on voluntary hiatus through some program like Outward Bound. The best choice is not always expelling them. And even if a student ultimately decides to go to a private school, it might be better for them if it was voluntary and not imposed by the state.
As long as we are playing with metaphors…
In a building of 900 students, it’s what’s best for the whole. Sometimes that means expelling a student who gets a wake up call – like “damn, I really screwed up.” If we send a kid away and that student can get help, then that’s the best result – but that student must first go away. Usually, that student doesn’t see the need to go away. Expulsion in public schools doesn’t mean forever.
I understood the metaphor, I just thought it was conflated too much.
No, it’s not that melodramatic. It’s more like being bounced from a private club.
You may get bounced for a good reason, or you may get bounced because the bouncer doesn’t like you for some personal reason.
There are a lot of private clubs around the internet.
Also – private clubs don’t last forever. Fashions and trends come and go. Clubs that have overly aggressive or unfair bouncers don’t last very long. Only a certain type of person wants to hang out at places that are run by bullies.
I find the calls for blood to be disturbing. Why all these calls for blood.
It’s getting lonely and chilly in BooMan’s Place. It’s imperative the blog needs a quick answer when someone has become disruptive and to implement damage control. A temporary ban of one week should cool matters down and avoid the hurt that has caused many fine community members in recent days. I do hope you heed Diane101’s suggestions.
Still with admiration for your political insight and writing, however to manage others writing on your blog is a different cup of tea. On occasion I have written you an email offering a warning for a serious disruption on the site, always disappointed for not receiving a reply. So what’s the point to offer future support.
Don’t let traffic volume (Dec. 2005) become a guide whether to ban a disruptive member. Always fly a straight arrow in life and find succes or end up manipulating your own rules some day.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."On occasion I have written you an email offering a warning for a serious disruption on the site, always disappointed for not receiving a reply. So what’s the point to offer future support.
I’ve tried to do the same thing, in a different way, Oui, but was never given the benefit of any definitive action. Until someone personally pisses off BooMan himself, it’s not ‘banning’ but ‘compassion’ or being ‘tolerant’ of differing ‘opinions’. Parker basically told me off in a very harsh and personal manner long before BooMan got pissed off because she attacked his friend. I basically forgot about it and moved on, being one of the few who were happy about Parker being ultimately banned, for whatever reason. When eastcoastmoderate decided to slander several regular and committed members, that wasn’t enough reason for BooMan to ban him/her, because he had sent BooMan an email of some sort. Since ecm didn’t piss BooMan off directly, he got to stay.
Now, we see that Supersoling is not enough of a friend for BooMan to protect him. Tracy deserves ‘compassion’, and Super deserved to be scolded, when some of us know that Super deserved some of that compassion a lot more than Tracy did, regardless of the status of Super’s memory about something that happened seven months ago, when he was in a world of freaking hurt over lots of things, some of which he made known here and some of which he did not.
Recently, spambots get to post diaries on teethwhitening and hemorrhoids, and a very sicko right wing diary that Teach313 says he emailed BooMan about gets left up. I think that I see a pattern here. Anything goes until BooMan gets personally pissed off. It doesn’t matter if a user is trashed, because we are basically not worthy enough to really merit any protection under the ‘rule’ enforcement ‘plan’.
And when a large number of committed and valued community members tried to put together a plan to shield BooMan from at least the appearance of partiality, he basically ridiculed the effort with a snide remark about a TV show…
Why bother with having a ‘community’ or any air of impartiality? The FAQ should say “Stay until you piss BooMan off” and be done with it, that way everyone knows what the rule is and there will be no illusion that this is somehow a ‘community’ and everyone can decide to stay or not according to the one rule that really matters around here.
Jesus.
I don’t even know half of what you are talking about.
Parker was warned by me repeatedly, over and over again that she was violating the prick rule regarding other members. She got me really angry when she started spreading libelous lies about my friend, but she had been warned many times.
And what got her banned was a vicious diatribe against SusanG while I was off-line. But only because of her long history.
I have 97 emails in my inbox right now that are unread. I try to respond to as many as I can. I can’t respond to all of them and it says in the ‘contact’ page:
As for your comment about a television show:
I blogged for 12 hours straight and then was relaxing watching a TV program. I occassionally refreshed the recent comments while I watched. I saw a troll rating, looked at the parent comment and thought it was uncalled for because it appeared to me to be a civil comment that addressed the heart of Tracy’s issue. I didn’t read the whole thread to understand the context or lack thereof. So now I am being criticized for watching TV?
Which points to the fact that you might need the suggested committee of site moderators so that you don’t need to be here every moment and others can help with your benediction rather than going out there and fending for ourselves in our efforts to calm and restore order.
The rehashing is not helping on either end of this, a clean slate has to be found and brought forth, Booman, a State of the Union type diary needs to be done by you with your plans for the future of the site.
Booman, this is a business for you, is it not, you really should apply a business model to this site and consider it in that way. Right now all I can see is a bad or non existent business model, your cost/profit ratio is way off and I am talking in terms of having contented membership, but I am sure it effects your financial model as well.
Stop the bleeding….
write a plan of reconstruction and reconciliation and publish it to your members, involve members in the decisions, take polls, seek council of the many wise members, lead the site out of the mess.
Don’t hate me for using this term but clear(the past), hold(the present) and build(upon a new foundation may apply here.
I don’t even know half of what you are talking about.
That’s pretty clear.
I won’t respond to questions about other people’s posts.
I’ve only written you maybe 2 emails over the past year and a half, only one of which would’ve been nice to get a response to. Neither of which was about anybody else’s post. When someone sends an email about an ugly or useless diary from a brand new user, I would suspect that they wouldn’t care for a response, just some action. If the queue is too big for you to get to those type of requests in a timely fashion, something must be done about it, imho.
So now I am being criticized for watching TV?
As for watching TV, that’s great for relaxation, And I’m not intending to criticize you for that. However, the appearance and the timing of that comment was extremely unfortunate, at best. After dozens of people had sweated through hours trying to formulate something that might help out, you appeared in that diary only to intervene once again on Tracy’s behalf. Do you respond to every troll-rating like that? Or just some? Why, above everyone else, does she get your personal defense when others have not? She was clearly hijacking the diary to turn into being about her personal disputes. And the TV show was named “Curb Your Enthusiasm”? I didn’t even know such a show existed, quite frankly, until I googled it just now. I was not alone in viewing that comment as commentary on the whole effort. But, I’m willing to take you at your word about it that you did not intend it as commentary, merely as information about what you had been doing in your personal time, and I apologize for and withdraw accusations that you intended it as commentary on the efforts contained in that diary.
And I hope that I am wrong about your general willingness to embrace some reform as far it comes to keeping things civil around here. Some commenters have asked about why people think there should be enforced civility and why do people have such thin skins, etc. I think it is because the site is advertised as A Progressive Community and that is what many of us have experienced and embraced. It is not advertised as A Blog For Thick-skinned Progressives, Take It or Leave It. If the site really is at least partially about community, then there have to be ways for community members to have grievances addressed and for arbitration to happen when disputes occur and timely action taken when inappropriate material or comments are posted. Since the site is up 24X7, there need to be enough Admins to cover the time.
And, if I were to make one overall assessment of the whole experience with disputes and such, it would be this: While your attempts to be tolerant and to not outright ban people are laudable in one sense, in another very real sense they are ultimately self-defeating. One way in which these attempts are self-defeating has got to be that they take up your time when you could be generating high-quality content. Another way is that they drag out the amount of cumulative damage that any one individual can perpetrate. Another is that you will always encounter the problem of appearing to be unfair to someone, even if you are trying your very hardest not to be. The harder you try to preserve a single member or group of members the worse the entire outcome will be.
As others have said recently, the whole cannot be sacrificed for the individual. Mr. Spock said it best in that Star Trek movie where he died to save the Enterprise: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” I used to have to hire and fire people and I know how hard it can be to sacrifice the needs of one or a few in order that the needs of the many can be best served. It’s hard, isn’t it? Nonetheless, it must be done from time to time.
And when it happens, justice must be fair and swift, or it’s not justice at all. When I had to fire someone, I gave them warnings if I could, but I have had to fire people ‘on the spot’. It happens that way sometimes. It’s not easy for a community of workers and its not easy for a community of bloggers, but they get over it and move on if they know the reason, it’s clearly stated, and it’s enforced fairly. I might also note that when I did have to give more than one warning, it inevitably led to firing. People rarely change back after they start showing lack of respect for other human beings in a community.
Someone else here also said (and I paraphrase heavily) that if you stick to your principles of not allowing “prickish” behavior, regardless of the concerns for collateral damage, the collateral damage will likely be a lot less than if you try to bend to accomodate some bad behavior here and there. I agree.
Do you see booman in your above litany, that there are a series of innefectual actions, warnings and more warnings, and apparently leaving and coming back requires new warnings which then are left go far too long.
Direct and quick action last July would have prevented the following reactions, sadly now even this even will have future reactions, bet on it….
I think you need to listen to what your mature members are tring to say to you, management is fouled up and you need to rethink a lot of things if any order is ever to come.
This all so reminds me of the greater world at large I can’t help but comment on it again, and I now can’t imagine how Iraq will ever solve it’s problems if we civilized and educated people living in a practicing democracy can’t.
I still believe that what the site needs is for you to say you may have been wrong in how you have handled things and quit trying to justify…take responsibility, it did not all just happen to you.
This is what Tracy needs to do also, take responsibility that between the two of you have led this site down this path. You enabling and her disabling.
I also believe more than ever think that at the very least you need to appoint an advisory committee or panel just for yourself to offer advice and feedback and perhaps some wise new ideas and to be able to tell you when you are heading down a wrong path.
You can keep it a monarchy without representation, but in the long run I don’t think it will work at least in any way in which I would care to participate.
Do not discount the people that entered the fray in the latest debacle, if you look beyond your present wall you may see that most of them were loyal readers of your site, whether or not their presence was known to you.
They have been attempting this for months now and I can tell you how hard it is to step out of the shadows and speak up even when you know some will condemn you for your audicity..they and we should be applauded.
There comes a time in each person’s life, when they must stand and speak for or in behalf of others if not to lose ones intergrity and what one stands for in this life. Perhaps that is what I find currently most lacking in this site and that is integrity.
I was up till 4 this morning with all of this running around in my head and couldn’t shut it off, that is just so sick….yikes…. and I’m still trying to shake it off. I wonder how many others have been thinking and feeling the same.
Ok enough said, my back is killing me and I have to rest.
Diane, I applaud what you have been doing and what you have been attempting to do. You are great at reconciliation and I would be a fool not to listen to you. So, be sure, I am listening to you and I will go through all the comments your efforts produced when I get a chance and I’ll give my feedback and go from there.
But in the process of reconciliation, I feel like I have the right to tell people how I experience things too.
I’ll just give you an example from July. No one was banned in that. Not one person got banned. If we had had a suspensions system in place it might have worked, or worked better. I think so.
But I want to point something out. The pro-military side of that fight left. All of them. Tracy did come back, but she left for a long while. The pro-ductape side of that argument all left. Some of them trickled back and participated a little, but they mostly stayed gone until this new dust-up. Back in July I did my best to get them to see past an argument about one diary (admittedly a diary raising a larger issue).
To me, I can’t understand how someone can quit a community because it is anti-military when there are less than half a dozen members making anti-military comments. And I can’t understand why someone can quit a blog because one-two-or-three members lose their tempers and attacks ‘pacifists’. How could they project a localized disagreement to the whole site and the whole community and then go off in a huff and write the BT is chock full of militarists, or chock full of dirt-munching troop haters?
But that is the way things go sometimes. People think an unanswered attack means everyone agrees with the attack. I don’t know, it’s group dynamics and psychology and a lot of other things.
All community sites suffer from these things from time to time.
I think you have made and encouraged others to make a lot of good suggestions about how to better guard against these things.
But I want people to understand also that there are people that do want to hurt this community. Figuring out why is hard. Some are jealous, some are bored, some want vengeance, some are weird, some are kind of creepy. But we can’t ignore that we have to protect against the intentional sowing of discord.
That’s part of my view from the top, so to speak.
This site has never been pro-troops or anti-troops. It’s been both. It’s been neither. It’s a lot of voices that mainly share two passions: hating this war and wanting the GOP out of power.
I’ve never banned anyone for breaking the prick rule without repeated warnings. If people think a member got too many chances, I can totally respect that opinion. But blame me for it based on a fair assessment of my character, not on some theory that I take kickbacks or can’t think for myself, or secretly side with one side of the argument. If I made mistakes, they were mistakes of compassion and friendship and concern and stubborness in the face of what I considered to be a lynch mob mentality.
If my actions over two years haven’t proven my basic character, then I’m sorry. I have a hard time reconciling the view that someone can hold my character in extreme low regard and still be a loyal concerned member of this community that only wants the best for it. If that causes me to grow unduly angry, I apologize for that too.
Two things you said here that I see differently:
your argument on point one should be carried over to your argument on point two. Things in point two are a lot more nuanced too.
It’s part of what I pointed out to Tracy. She and other military families experienced attacks on the troops as attacks on them, on thier families. And they reacted by attacking the people personally.
There is no doubt that they violated the rules. But they experienced the attacks as personal, even if the rest of us did not, had a hard time understanding the vitriolic responses, and couldn’t make rules that could accomodate their worldview to make both sides equal.
And we can’t forget that the situation quickly devolved into personal attacks from both sides.
So, by the time I got involved it was impossible to sort out who started it. I couldn’t ban everyone. I couldn’t ban just one side of it. I think suspensions would have had the best chance at working. Broad and wide-sweeping suspension are the only thing that might have defused it.
We can set that up for the future. But I didn’t have that then and didn’t think of it.
Point well taken on the nuance. But I think yesterday most people agreed that attacking an institution and attacking a person are two different things.
If we all went off the way they did everytime someone criticized an institution we hold dear, this site would have died a long time ago.
I remember someone on dkos (I think that is where it was, but can’t remember now) writing a diary about how f’ed up non-profits are. Given that I’ve devoted my life to working in and promoting the work on non-profits, it pissed me off. But I just ignored it and walked away. That, or a strong argument against the idea, is what we should expect from all – not STFU and die. The latter is the definition of being a prick in my mind.
yeah. if you had taken a diary against non-profits as a personal attack and lauched a diatribe it would have gotten you a warning and we’d all be wondering what happened to your kind personality all of a sudden.
Can we try to be clear about at least one thing?
If you say all people that have served in Iraq are war criminals if they didn’t quit in protest or refuse to go in the first place….
And if your husband served in Iraq and didn’t quit…
That by logical extension your husband just got called a war criminal?
Can we all kind of see that point of view?
Now, if I said your spouse was a degenerate adulterous child pornographer you’d take that as a personal attack.
We have to understand how these original comments were felt by military families. We do not have to agree with how they responded. We can even deplore how they responded.
We don’t even have to agree that they should have been so offended, as long as we understand that they found those comments every bit as prickish as the ones the formed in response.
But as we’ve discussed, I can’t define criticism of the military as a violation. In other words, I couldn’t treat their pain as equal to the pain they inflicted in return. That is why they all left and all left thinking I was siding with the ‘troop-haters’ even as the other side insisted I was taking the military families side.
And in the last case, all I wanted was for Tracy to follow her own daughter’s advice, voluntarily, on not on a rail.
There are legion of us that tried to understand MT’s feelings – as a matter of fact, there might have been whole diaries written to try to reach out and console her, knowing her difficult situation. And in my memory – to no avail.
And, I might be getting on dangerous ground here, but the position you describe her responding to was one that might have been attributed to one member, who left almost immediately. Subsequently she took off after many who have been most dear to this site, including DJ, BJ and super, to name just a few. None of whom had espoused that view. From what I saw, she projected onto them one side of a battle that was raging in her own soul. Many of us were willing to join in supporting her in that battle, but she would have none of it.
Lastly, we might be finding some meeting ground here. It remains to be seen.
It’s not dangerous ground…I think that is basically accurate, although, again, our perceptions are not the same as the perceptions of military families (not just MT).
I am going to cut off MT’s commenting abilities now because she has agreed that she needs to move on. It’s not a banning exactly, but more just a way of enforcing her own intentions. I never wanted to permanently lose MT from this site and I didn’t want to be the one to make a decision I thought she should make for herself. I’m glad she realized it herself. It’s a sad day for me.
For those of you that have disagreed with my approach, I apologize. I wanted it voluntary and because she knew it was the right thing for her. I did not want it because she was being run out on a rail.
Can I get a HELL YEAH!?
Hell Yeah you can!!
But I want to add that I join with Booman in the sadness. As I told him a few days ago, I have had to do the equivalent in firing people from a job – even though I know they are good people and need the job. Its tough stuff, but being in a leadership position often calls for that.
Now if we could just find some common ground about those “blog wreckers,” I for one would be ready to take a nap and give it a rest.
I”m thinking an easier thing would be to resurrect Christopher Reeve, have him put on the Superman suit and fly really really fast counter-clockwise around the earth to go back in time about, hmmm, 5 or 6 days. Voila – it never happened!
He might need to go back a bit farther.
heh. if I could just get you to capitalize my name (capital M) correctly.
Keep an open mind on that issue. Going forward.
Sorry BooMan – I knew someone would point out my errors before this was all done.
And I just KNOW that both you and all those folks have good hearts. We all make mistakes and sometimes people get hurt. The point is whether or not we can keep our minds open, admit mistakes and learn from them. Sometimes apologies help too.
I’m sorry, that is just too mature. Off with your head. 🙂
Ok Booman, good start, and I am going to offer a new suggestion, if you want this site to work, you yourself cannot be above reproaching…I am beginning to see how all of this relates to the world in general, indulge me for a minute and let me paint this scenario….
You are ruler of a kingdom that is know as Booman Tribune, for a long time your kingdom was content to let you rule in absolution, but then the day began to dawn when the citizens of that kingdom stood up and said we have a voice to be heard if we are continue to live in this kingdom. If they were not granted that voice in a real way they will either move to another “kingdom” or seek to restore order and establish some sort or representation and the rule of law to the town,. In real life the king may be then overthrown and thus we have civilization marching on.
If this were a democracy, you would not be reelected, methinks.
I think you are going to have to go to a modified monarchy in any case and perhaps you could begin with
a Member Bill of Rights, all the attention has been on the few and not the many and I think Teach has been making some excellent points on this.
And for what it’s worth, this site needs a goal or a project or something to give people something to do besides just report on and rehash history of every sort,i.e. picking an issue and then finding ways to change or effect it.
It’s going to take a lot of work booman, and I hope you can pull it together, but you need to spend the time and considering that Teach and I put in about 30 hours together working on this, we should expect some immediate and strong effort from you.
Also I would strongly advise you to put all these past conspiracies and ones you think are going on to rest and move on for heavens sake,…..give the benefit of the doubt but depend on the rule of law, which you absolutely need at this point. I think all blogs must go in this direction eventually…for the benefit of all.
Truly a sad state of affairs that I stumbled on after the fact. Now as I try to trace what happened, either I am inept, or selected passages in the comment threads of several diaries from last Wednesday-Thursday are missing. I get the drift of it but not all the detail, which is probably just as well. When I read this thread tonight, it sounds like a bad “B” movie. I think I will take your path Toni. Take care, have a good second semester with your students. I have enjoyed reading your pieces here and appreciate your thoughtful comments and support. Hope to see you again.
Thank you, and all who were here in the beginning and helped create this online community, so it was here for me (and a whole lot of others,) to stumble into when a welcome by warm hearted people was badly needed. For all that hard work then and since, you all have my deepest gratitude. And my full support in doing all you need to do now to take care of yourself.
It was also heart warming to see so many members step up to the plate this last week and work their fingers off trying to help salvage this online community. That’s committment. Thats putting your money where your mouth is. That’s what “community” is to me: people pulling together like that. And that’s what it takes to keep a group of folks together in that elusive bond called “community”. Hard work, equally shared by those most invested in keeping it healthy and viable.
Be at peace, sistah, you gave it your best shot and then some. See you at VB!
On using the term “prick,” asshole is not gender specific.
Lots of Bulletin boards have them- if a member is horrified by another member, they should be able to go into preferences and set things up so that posts by the offending member <insert Beavis and Butthead guffaw here> are invisible to the offended member.
Everyone will be able to “ban” anyone from their own perception of the site.
and before I did, here:
http://www.boomantribune.com/comments/2007/2/4/13431/78299#58
Yup. Akin to the old killfile option that I recall back from my usenet days. That can be a useful means of preventing at least some flamefests.
Yes, a good idea. I don’t know if the site’s oftware has that feature, not being a software person, but I would be all for it.
Thanks for your efforts over the weekend!
I give up on the real right wing. But there are many in the middle who are so concerned about the war that they are amenable to reason. And it’s just a sign of dearth of vocabulary…
…although I just saw Lieberman on TV and the air went blue around here.
I have basically stayed out of this little brouhaha. I know and like some of the people involved on a personal level, have less than no knowledge about some of the others, and have NO idea why any of the participants think that they are “mad” at any of the others. I have not even read most of the meta posts. Really .
However, here is my own broader take on what is happening here.
When in a highly stressful situation, a group of people who have formed an alliance based on the desire to survive tend to bond very well. Very tightly. There is an effective outside enemy to be fought, and most negative emotions (At least as soon as the losers among the group have been eliminated…YOU know, the ones that truly threaten the success of the mission.) are directed at the enemy.
But once the enemy is defeated…which at least appears to be the case right now on any number of levels (More on that below.)…the normal flow of negative emotions that runs almost every human being on the planet demands to be redirected and suddenly the warts and body odors of the person next to you in the foxhole start to seem highly offensive.
So it goes.
Now you may take issue with the idea that the war against the right is over…I do not believe this to be the case, myself…but the general run of information currently flowing through the media is WAY over the top as far as what we could have expected as little as one year ago.
Things of which we could only dream then are now front page news.
Cheney is essentially on the edge of being on trial for treason. None dare use the word (yet), but there it is, hanging on the back of the tongue of all the asshole pundits while they watch Libby try to squirm out of his noose as he swings in the DC wind.
The Dems won in November. The vote was a referendum on Iraq, and the bad guys lost.
Big.
They will lose again in 2008. The Dems could not fuck this one up even if they ran a CORPSE. Or Small K kerry, whichever one was less attractive to the average voter.
Global warming is now an accepted “common wisdom” meme. Hell even DRUDGE has been forced to get neutral behind it.
Short of an attempt at a true coup that would assuredly meet with failure and/or a backdoor attempt at a nuke strike on Iran (Either by attack dog Israel or the 3 or 4 remaining high ranking members of the armed forces who are still living in some kind of Dr. Strangelove/Henry Kissinger dream) the Neos are through for the moment, and most of the money interests who backed them are scrambling around to find the least threatening set of candidates who show the most promise of winning on 2008 so that big money can continue its own “business as usual” program and get even MORE filthy rich.
So it goes.
And suddenly…fights break out in the foxholes of the presumptive.winners
“She SMELLS BAD!!!”
“He’s a fucking liar!!!”
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
What a SURPRISE!!!
All over some REALLY bad beer.
C’mon folks.
Back to the trenches.
The war’s not even HALF over yet.
Don’t fool yourself.
We fight shapeshifters here.
BET on it.
Stop all of this.
They’re laughing at you.
AG
Bootrib Bullshit Meta. STOP IT!!!
AG