Landmines by dreamtrove

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Landmines

POSTED BY: DREAMTROVE
UPDATED: Saturday, January 31, 2009 15:38
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VIEWED: 991
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Thursday, January 29, 2009 12:32 PM

I would like to humbly suggest that to avoid further self destruction, we should recognize problem areas and just avoid those threads. It's a problem. I think that the forum is very close to RIP. The posting has dropped to near zero, to a point where even in general there's almost nothing doing. And it's not the age of firefly, firefly has been cancelled for a while, it's the hate.

People who were here have been fleeing in droves. I was going to, and then I got very sick. And I was not up for that bs that just went down. I'm predicting the forum doesn't last out the month at this rate. Questions? Comments?

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Thursday, January 29, 2009 12:39 PM

WULFENSTAR

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

Landmines:

I think we should all recognize certain topics are going to create very extreme views and label them as such.

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Thursday, January 29, 2009 1:15 PM

DREAMTROVE

It would be easy to make the like, I did it in an earlier thread. I just want the free speech crowd to weigh in on how to do this. If we don't, there's just not going to be a forum.

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Friday, January 30, 2009 8:58 AM

YINYANG

You were busy trying to get yourself lit on fire. It happens.

This is what I would do if I were you, DT, if you want to improve things: Be the change you want to see in the forum. Take your own advice and avoid the landmines. Open up discussions that are more productive and less destructive.* Ultimately, you can only control your own behavior. Other people will either follow, or they won't.

I highly doubt the forum is going anywhere anytime soon. And, if it does, maybe it'll just be part of the natural order of things.

*Edit: I know you've already started to do some of this stuff. So, keep up with what you've been doing, and improve where you haven't. If you're interested in getting others to change, I think it's more instructive if you model that change as best you can; otherwise, it might seem like you just want to control things, or make a fuss, but that you're not actually interested in walking the walk to go along with your talk.

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"Pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, 'cause there's bugger all down here on Earth."

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Friday, January 30, 2009 9:21 AM

CHRISISALL

Let's just confine the discussions to religion & politics then.

The laughing Chrisisall

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Friday, January 30, 2009 10:16 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

And sex. Don't forget sex!

(Also drugs and rock-n-roll.)

If we skipped talking about everything controversial what WOULD we talk about? The weather? What we ate for dinner last night? There's a REASON we're all here, and it's because Firefly touched on the topics that we're apparently interested in: Politics. Power. Conformity. Freedom.

It's not the topics, its how peeps handle them. It's possible to disagree without being nasty. But I find that some peeps have very thin skin. A significant disagreement - phrased in reasonable tone- is enough to set them off into fear, anger, and invective. Also, some peeps don't come here to discuss, they come here to preach. Others come here to troll. My answer is the same all the way around:

You came here to discuss? Be prepared for the fact that people WILL disagree with you!

Did you just get flamed?

IGNORE IT! Responding in-kind, pointing out the hypocracy of peeps who fire the first shot and then whine when others shoot back... DOESN'T WORK.

That bears repeating.

IT DOESN'T WORK.

Peeps who treat discussions like bar-fights either are so emotionally invested in their POV that they CAN'T discuss rationally or they are simply interested in derailing the topic. Responding in-kind either meets their ego-needs or their rhetorical needs. Stay focused on the issues. ASK people what they mean: often its a definitional problem getting in the way. (I know, I have been accused of being a "nazi" when I do this but... sometimes I just don't "get" where somneone is coming from.) Bring facts and logic to the table. Stay low key. Repond to rational discussion rationally. Respond to pain with compassion. Respond to baiting with... silence.

This is in fact a real anarchist community. It's not Firefly. There is no captain to make us behave or stoke our loyalty. We are all here voluntarily, not by coercion. We can STAY together if enough of us are grownups to ACT like grownups. If not.... ppphhhhhtt!!! POOF!!! There we went. And we will have gotten what we richly deserved.
---------------------------------
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Friday, January 30, 2009 10:29 AM

DREAMTROVE

YY,

It's being fazed out by haken in favor of shinyuniverse, but I don't want to see the destructive behavior here ruin that site as everyone eventually migrates. I also think a lot of voices of reason have been chased away, leaving only cia.

There's some general threadjacking, and trolling that gets in the way. I think that, sure, we all have weaknesses, it's my fault for getting into those other threads, but I am trying. The whole thing is constructive. I want to get to the point where there can be a forum that will allow people to talk, which the people I talk to would accept as an ettiquette, but not a "moderated forum."

Essentially, this is anarchy, and it produces relatively little. I took maybe a year off, and I came back, and people were in the exact same lock horn battles they were in when I left.

Here's a more real world example: I joined the RPUSA and me and some others there were trying to essentially give Bush a kick in the ass that he so richly deserved, not because we wanted Kerry, but because Bush and his crowd should have been punished for abandoning america, the constitution, and their conservative voters.

But in the party, there was so much infighting and squabbling that nothing got done. Some people came in from the Rules Committee and tried to institute Robert's Rules of Order into all discussions, which was a nightmare on the other end. Eventually a group of us got together and called ourselves the coalition of the level headed. Our goal, to find and promote a candidate like Ron Paul as a serious splitter, to sink the GOP ticket. We couldn't get Paul because he didn't want to lose his GOP congressional seat, but we did get a fair number of interested parties. We ended up getting stormed by the Nader team, who wanted out states for their ballot, so I got to meet Mr. Nader whom I greatly admire, and talk to him and that was great, I talked with some other strong third party figures, and it was all very informative.

Now I compare this to that. When I talk to other people about this comparison, they think it's absurd: What? you're comparing a fan forum to a party that got 19% of the vote in '92? Yeah, sure I am, because a lot of the same ideas, same divisions, and same communication issues. I'm looking for the communications breakthrough that will end the bickering and infighting.

As an afterthought, if we had been more organized, and better communicators, we probably could have sunk the re-election of Bush. I don't think Kerry would have been any different, and I don't think that it would have changed the 2008 GOP ticket, but I think that it would have forced a change in the 2008 GOP platform. Issues like WTO, Federal Reserve, Constitution, Foreign Wars, etc. would have been brought to the table, and the more sane old McCain might have run. It would at least pull the party back in line.

I'm probably not looking to do that again, but I want to break that pattern of communication without ending up in a regimented society of a dictatorship, even the dictatorship of me.

Quote:
CIA
Let's just confine the discussions to religion & politics then.

The old line was race, religion & politics. I guess we've gotten somewhere. :)

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Friday, January 30, 2009 10:33 AM

DREAMTROVE

Sig,

1. A man has a right to defend himself against spurious accusations. If he doesn't, then the lies stand as fact. That's why flaming happens.

2. We already are dead, like a stroke victim, we've haemorrhaged over 90% of long term members, just no one has noticed. Anyone remember Can't Take the Sky, or Casual? I see even Finn dropped off. There's maybe 20-30 of us left. We're slain in pieces,

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Friday, January 30, 2009 10:38 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

DT, I think I understand where you're coming from, but a forum such as you suggest assumes that the ... attendees?... all have a common purpose, much like Firefly crew had a common purpose (ie scrape enough money together to get by, stay below the radar).

I find no such common purpose here... not even the common purpose of communicating. (Some peeps can't listen and others don't want to.)

So, without a common purpose all we are left with procedure.

Quote:
A man has a right to defend himself against spurious accusations. If he doesn't, then the lies stand as fact.

That's EXACTLY what Rue says and that is what she acts on. Is it successful?

---------------------------------
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Friday, January 30, 2009 11:05 AM

HERO

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
But in the party, there was so much infighting and squabbling that nothing got done.

Thats because the people who can get things done are not in the party. It stopped being a legitimate contender after 1998 and became a semi-legitimate haven for fringe elements and wannabee types who could not find fullfillment or legitimacy in the Libertarian or Green Parties.

I was in that party in 1998, then Buchannon came along and drove me back to the Republicans. Now I have an education and good job. Go figure.

H

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Friday, January 30, 2009 11:17 AM

WULFENSTAR

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

Ehhh, if people have cut an run, so be it.

I mean, if you cant stand to hack your way through a flame war online, what kind of coward are you in real life?

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Friday, January 30, 2009 1:33 PM

DREAMTROVE

Hero, I agree, the Buchanan crowd wrought havoc. I left to, but I still know those guys. There are some decent people in there with the same sort of agenda as here on FFF

Wulf, I disagree. I think many sensible constructive people left because the senseless infighting was wasting their time. See Hero's post about the reform party above.

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Friday, January 30, 2009 1:40 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Soupcatcher, HK Cavalier... where have they all gone? Driven away, I think.

---------------------------------
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Friday, January 30, 2009 1:51 PM

YINYANG

You were busy trying to get yourself lit on fire. It happens.

I just had a thought about this:

Quote:
I would like to humbly suggest that to avoid further self destruction, we should recognize problem areas and just avoid those threads.

Like Whozit's threads? 'Cause I'd be down with that.

----------
"Pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, 'cause there's bugger all down here on Earth."

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Friday, January 30, 2009 10:25 PM

AGENTROUKA

Am I the only one who finds it likely that the forum us loosing traffic because people are moving on fandom-wise, and those who do not simply can't discuss the existing material much further than it has already been discussed?

I love Firefly and all, but.. seriously, what are you expecting?

It's not unnatural for fandom to go sleepy and it likely is NOT related to anything going on in the RWED threads.

If you want to reform the RWED forum, lead by example, and avoid the threads that do not interest you. I don't see a need for rules like this.

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 12:32 AM

DEEPGIRL187

I see what you're saying dreamtrove, but things aren't quite as dire as you might believe, at least in my opinion.

Not as many long-term posters have fled as one might think. Take a look at the threads in the General Discussion area. There are probably over a dozen people that have been here three years or more, and frankly, a lot of the people in the RWE have been here awhile too. I don't know if it's so much that all of us old-timers are gone, I think it's that some people have never frequented the RWE that much. And that's not bad necessarily, it's just not their cup of tea.

And as far as the more controversial topics in this part of the forum, it's going to happen whether certain people want it to or not. The best we all can do is avoid what we don't wish to see, and leave it at that. Yes, some newcomers will probably shy away, but that's one of the prices we pay for being on an un-moderated forum.

I don't think the forum's dead yet. And I acknowledge the fact that even I haven't been around that much lately. But to me this is home, and I believe many other members here feel the same way. We'll probably never have the same numbers we used to, but I think that many of us are going to hang around here for quite awhile yet.

*************************************************

"This is my timey-wimey detector. It goes ding when there's stuff. Also, it can boil an egg at 30 paces, whether you want it to or not, actually, so I've learned to stay away from hens. It's not pretty when they blow."

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 5:33 AM

DREAMTROVE

Actually, I was watching pretty closely, including general. Most of the people are cross overs, users flee in droves when it gets nasty, and slowly some of them come back. I think it's not a gradual drift. If I was Haken I could have actual stats.

The General-only crowd doesn't suffer the same user loss, but RWED posters seem to flee the forum.
I'm not so concerned with reforming RWED. It's more of the same sort of thinking as my thread on World of Warcraft. Identify and recognize the problem areas and how to deal with them, without imposing restrictions on other users.

I'm more looking for ways to discourage some behavior if it were my forum, because certain behavior is detrimental to the userbase. Also, I think we should think about this sort of stuff before everyone moves on and takes the war to Shiny Universe.

New forums have all sorts of problems that this one doesn't: lots of trolls, spamming, and often way too many posts to read. The concept of some sort of stable communication is something that is worth considering.

There are probably a million or more forums online where people can get at each other's throats over some wedge issue. We were just talking about Buchanan and the destruction of the Reform Party, but the infighting of this same nature was just as much an element, imho.

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 8:31 AM

AGENTROUKA

I'm just wondering why you want people to stop talking about certain things. Yes, they will cause strong reactions, but that is why they are relevant enough for people to talk about them.

Would I like for people to be more polite about it and communicate better? Sure. But to speak for a general avoidance of the typical hot-button issues doesn't want to make sense to me. People should pick and choose in which discussions they want to participate. Don't like feminism, abortion or religion discussions? Stay out. Simple as that.

There is always the choice of starting alternative discussions about different issues. If people are interested in those, they will come and stay.

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 8:46 AM

DREAMTROVE

Rouka,

Oh nevermind.

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 8:46 AM

DREAMTROVE

Double post

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 9:42 AM

AGENTROUKA

Ooooooookay.

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 11:17 AM

CHRISISALL

We must also avoid talking of cavemen & astronauts.

The laughing Chrisisall

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 2:38 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Cause the cavemen always win, yeah.

Most amusing was siggys point up there about how RWED is in essence, a functionally anarchist community - and as such, I'd say it's not to everyones taste, which is fine.

Sure, some people are fulla shit, some can't take a joke and there's the occasional scuffle, but this differs from real life exactly... how ?

And in all honesty, you can learn quite a bit even from a topics degeneration into flameage - I'd be a liar if I said I never pushed someones buttons to watch them go berserk, and that information is quite valueable in an offline, real world capacity, knowin where those buttons are...

But there's a lot to be learned here if you only have the interest and choose to try - and yes, some folks have thin skin or want their discussions regimented and structured, but for mine own, gimme the bar brawl, cause I wanna see what you and your argument are REALLY made of, and without somebody to go crying to when things don't go your way - I *will* find out whether your argument is solid or not, even if I choose to disagree.

It's not for everybody, sure - but this is our ship and we love her, it's just that simple.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 3:02 PM

DREAMTROVE

Well, it's an exercise in communication, and that makes it interesting to me.

Cavemen.

Actual cavemen were far more sophisticated than we are, but they were beaten out by more primitive people. The human race is a hybrid of probably 3, cromagnon, neanderthal, and homo erectus, maybe some others. The old "one replaces the other" model doesn't hold when you study the genetics. Arguably the height of human evolution was CM1 about 40,000 years ago, and we've been on the slide ever since. What I find more curious, and have undoubtedly posted before, is that cyclical variation in intellect is common for species. Dogs, for example, are on the rise, and humans are on the decline, which is a recent trend reversal. Dogs were on the decline from about 150kbc to about 50kbc, while man was on the rise. The most curious part of this is that the evidence definitely supports the idea that at the time of the domestication of dogs, dogs were more intelligent than humans. By a decent margin. Might make one think.

Personally, I think he made a poor choice. It's not my balls that are in danger :)

There's an alternate history. Anubis credits the survival of civilization to the dog. Back when he was a human, not a god. What if dog had chosen another species as a hunting partner...

Planet of the BEARS!

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 3:38 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
The old "one replaces the other" model doesn't hold when you study the genetics.

Or visit the deep south.

Homo Redneckius is widely believed to be an offshoot of Erectus.

-F

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