With regret, Canadian Watcher has been banned.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Yes, if there's anything we refuse to tolerate here at RI, it's definitely questioning authority.

[stevie ray]

yes well worldsastage i guess maybe someone might have stepped in to help her then if she was being hurt but no one did (even you and you obviously saw what was happening.)

anyway like I said I'm not about to be subject to arbitrary applications of shaming and banning and whatnot. I thank you all for indulging my questions and few posts but I'm going to find greener pastures.

[barracuda]

Arbitrary shaming? How do I get in on this?

Stevie Ray, we hardly knew ye.

[worldsastage]

Families do argue and disagree but after while when it becomes more of the same 'ol without any change, something has to give. I've had to distance myself from people I once saw as family due to the repeated cycles of bullying then make-nice back to bullying... It's was unhealthy for all involved and someone has to make the choice to move on. Maybe CW was also sick of it but didn't have the strength to stop it, who knows for sure. There were instances of folks stepping in to defend and help her. It didn't work either. Hence, I guess for the moderators it was with regret....

[Searcher08]

yes well worldsastage i guess maybe someone might have stepped in to help her then if she was being hurt but no one did (even you and you obviously saw what was happening.)

anyway like I said I'm not about to be subject to arbitrary applications of shaming and banning and whatnot. I thank you all for indulging my questions and few posts but I'm going to find greener pastures.

Many people here have gone through horror stories in their lives that have left painful scars. I try and remember that when I post and, sadly, sometimes I forget it.

Most people have a personal sensitive zone, where anything going into that area gets nuked. It might be dealing with arrogant goodwill-free skeptics; dealing with pretenders "we are not racist/anti-Semitic/etc etc - we are just asking questions"; dealing with perceived non-citationed accusations; dealing with racist injustice mocked by the media.

There is a balance - between knowing whether an environment has become toxic for oneself -or whether one is just being butthurt.

I had a sad but freeing experience like that on a board I had been on for many years - I had to leave for my own health and it was like a breath of fresh air for me when I did. I didnt blame the people there (wrote about it in the Breaking through the Fourth Wall post)

On the other hand, there is the knowing that one is doing the best one can - and sometimes that isnt enough. Despite ones very best efforts, others may still not understand, get, give a fig about what one has said...

One can be in the stands arguing the game or on the field playing it - my own experience is the two dont mix - arguing with the refs ends up slowing the match down.

So stevie ray, if you want to vamoose, obviously that is your choice, but I think you would find life more interesting with R.I. in it than not...

MODS: P L E A S E would you delete that C_W post with the 'T' word in it ???

[Wombaticus Rex]

MODS: P L E A S E would you delete that C_W post with the 'T' word in it ???

I have just done so. Of course, it's also been quoted repeatedly since then and I will not be deleting those. After all, if someone were to undertake an independent audit of our moderation -- which might be quite interesting and education for all involved -- we can't be memory hole-ing the reasons for suspensions/bans.

[Searcher08]

MODS: P L E A S E would you delete that C_W post with the 'T' word in it ???

I have just done so. Of course, it's also been quoted repeatedly since then and I will not be deleting those. After all, if someone were to undertake an independent audit of our moderation -- which might be quite interesting and education for all involved -- we can't be memory hole-ing the reasons for suspensions/bans.

Thank you

[worldsastage]

edited my quote of CW's T. Sorry

[American Dream]

I like the posting guidelines, in general. They are a thoughtful set of principles whose values I embrace wholeheartedly.

Avoiding personal attacks seems like the most relevant one here- I would suggest that we could all do more, work together more and self-monitor as much as possible to take things to a higher level.

Real differences do exist, and granted there's a very fuzzy gray area where the clash of ideas can feel personal. That said, while I think the mods can support the process they are, as previously noted, human beings with limited time and energy to monitor each thread. So I think we ourselves could do more.

I'm thinking first of self-awareness where one could notice if something is really triggering and maybe take a break and/or ask another poster to turn their rhetoric down a few notches, veer away from the personal back towards ideas, etc.

We all could help take the temperature of the "room", too.

Doing this more consistently and inclusively could really help things a lot around here, I feel.

[seemslikeadream]

maybe it would help if we had an Israeli/Palestinian....you maybe an anti-semtic if you post that ....no I'm not...... sub-forum?

[compared2what?]

get out of my fight. Who the fuck do you think you are?

are threatening.

I would dare say that these types of discussions were also harmful for CW, given

good lord, how much of this am I expected to endure? seriously.

. It appears that she felt pain was being inflicted upon her.

No doubt.

She had the courage of her convictions, more than practically any other poster on the board. That's not an easy quality to live with, either for the people who have it or for others. But it would be a better world if there were more of it around. And I respect the hell out of her for it. And like her. Value her. Admire her. Enjoy her. All that stuff.

But I'm sure everybody does. She deserves it. And she earned it. It's really painful to lose her.

I'm not sure ^^those are the most material examples, though. Because the thing is...

The above were from the recently locked thread that preceded the banning but there were other instances previous to that in which the discussion had a threatening feel. It included emotional manipulation which is threatening. I feel odd dredging it up and apologize but you asked.... I took a cursory look at some other locked threads and CW was involved in quite a few. I liked some of the questions she raised even if I disagreed with a bit of it but the antagonism is a bit much.

...expressing a little personal antagonism over personal stuff (as above) from time to time is just human. Some people might be more prone to it than others. But it's usually not that big of a deal among friends. And....82_28 always puts what I'm trying to say much more better than I ever could. So. What he said.

I think the real issue was more with responding to topical stuff as if a difference in opinion was a personal attack that called for payback and/or punishment. I mean, no matter what your own convictions about Holocaust revisionism happen to be or what -- if anything -- they mean to you, you should be able to come to terms with the general concept that when other people think differently than you do, it's not because they're doing it at you. It doesn't make them bad people. It's not an act of aggression. It's just what they think. Same as you. So if they're not expressing scorn or hostility towards you for thinking as you do, you shouldn't do it to them. Because doing that prevents people from saying what they think. And this is a discussion board.

Nobody's perfect, though. I'm sorry this happened. And I hope it gets resolved somehow. But I'm sure everybody does.

Cheers, C_w, if you're reading this. Also, I apologize if it comes across as [condescending/annoying/didactic/repellent]. You're the best. So try to have mercy on a fool.

[Jerky]

To my mind, that makes her perma-banning all the more ridiculous.

Why not a month of having her posts be approved before they appear?

YOPJ

My decision had nothing to do with "fear of Big Brother" -- it was a severe broach of respect, not to mention basic grown-up conduct.

I did not, at any point, think Brekin was in actual danger from the panty-sniffers of the NSA. That was not the logic here, at all.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Why not a month of having her posts be approved before they appear?

You cannot be serious.

I was under the impression we were all adults here.

[Jerky]

Jesus Christ. This post...

It really does seem like a case of five against all, here.

Something stinks, and it ain't last week's lobster.

YOPJ

I'll miss Canadian_watcher. I enjoy having someone like her around who, in my opinion, is so monumentally wrong about things, that is to say, people possessing a wildly differing perspective from my own.

But she was not one of my favorite posters. She went out of her way to start fights. She was intolerant of differing points of view, even sometimes mild and innocuous ones. She had, by her own telling, a large ignore list she never tired of reminding the board and individual posters of, something I find completely ridiculous and childish in this context. The ignore list is a form of self-bannning: particular posters within the community piss you off so much you don't even wish to be reminded their writing exists, so you hide their posts from your view? That sort of behavior is small. People have built-in ignore functions, don't they: turn away from the machine, go to another thread, skip the post and read on. She was a grudge-holder, though, and certain usernames were never gonna escape that clutch.

Worst of all, I think, she cultivated animosity and cliquishness by flattery and insincerity. She was a bit manipulative that way, imho. It's a strategy one has to guard oneself against, because in the end, there's a tinge of cruelty about it.

I read everything she ever wrote here, I think, most of it more than once, the way you might re-examine the actions of an abusive spouse, or a petulant and spiteful child, in a search for rationale. But she hated rational thinking, and I knew that usually even my most measured responses to her would inevitably be found by her to be counter-productive, stupid, or even insulting. And so we wound up fighting, because many of her worst faults are rather easily located within myself as well.

I sometimes flag 'em, but I don't mind the personal attacks so much. They don't add to the final analysis, but they do sometimes aid the throughput. Some rules have to be meant to be broken around here, for we are discussing the cracking breakage of the world at its joints. Canadian_watcher's barbs never stung so much as her points well taken. But whoever says that "words can never hurt me" has never been in love. And I guess I love this place now. Ugh.

Anyway, as a general rule - don't ban long-timers. Mete them out long suspensions, weeks and months, but don't outright ban. I say that less out of self-interest than sympathy, I really do, even admitting my need for people around here with whom I can get into a throwdown. I sympathize with the aggravation, with the quickly posted thoughtlessness, with the words in haste later regretted. Mostly I sympathize with the face at the closed window never to be re-opened.

Somebody, let the cat in. Even if it pissed on your favorite new shoe.

Okay, I'm done with my back-handed eulogy

[Jerky]

Hence you taking your little forum ball away from CW and heading home with it, tongue protruding, raspberry flapping in the breeze.

Why not a month of having her posts be approved before they appear?

You cannot be serious.

I was under the impression we were all adults here.