[theforum] Brief notes on the sanctity of theforum, and double-standards relating thereto

[Martin Burns]

On Sun, 17 Sep 2006 20:37:20 -0400, "Matt Warden" wrote:

> 
> Martin wrote:
>> I'm planning on doing what I did with the previous episodes: ignoring
>> and moving on. We could spend the time & effort towards being super-
>> nice and all, but I think it'd be unproductive. Once it's got to this
>> stage, it's not going to get pulled back.

> Yes, being "super nice" would be very unproductive -- much more so
> than being a total dick to people who want to volunteer their time to
> help this community.

Well aren't *we* the 'making an effort on the people side' one.

Matt, like most everyone here, I have very limited time to be productive
for *evolt*. So forgive me, but I will spend that time on areas that
effect *evolt*, which effectively means people who have high levels
of influence, and where I can make a difference to their thinking and/or
behaviour.

rn, Alan isn't in *either* of those categories, so I could either get
stressed about it, or not. 

At the end of the day, I have neither the time, nor the energy, to babysit
the emotional state of every highly strung evolter. Alan's a grownup; he
can make his own choices. If he comes back in a productive frame of mind,
great. If not, there's little I can do, and even if there were, it wouldn't
accomplish much.

And do you know, I don't apologise for that one little bit, because
while I have a large number of evolting mates (who I like to think will
be mates with or without evolt), when I'm responding here, I'm responding
for the good of *evolt*. And I hope others have a similar outlook. If
I defaced the homepage of evolt, and responded in any other way than
"I screwed up royally" then I'd sincerely hope for the kind of slap
that John meted out to Alan, because it'd be *entirely* deserved.


> We effectively kicked someone out of the community for adding 1
> paragraph of text to the homepage. 

Really Matt, I'd have hoped you'd have understood the difference
between an article, and an unsigned mission statement for the whole
organisation, particularly as it's been pointed out a number of times
in the last few days.

(I'd have also expected you understood the difference between being
kicked, and walking off in a hissy fit)

> I remember when we used to approve
> articles that were more or less crap, because we all agreed that evolt
> was for the free exchange of information, and gatekeeping on our
> personal quality terms is directly contrary to that.

Personally, I'm glad that the high number of crap articles have
gone away (and I say that as the author of many of them), and 
I see the vitality of evolt as greater than a simplistic doomsday
watch of the volume of articles.

> The skills to reproduce the evolt that once was 

I think that's your major cognitive error - it's not 1999 any more,
and evolt has to live in the context of 7+ years of history. That
that history doesn't make life easy is in no small part because 
of destructive, negative behaviours from both inside and sniping 
from outside. 

We are where we are; you can be glibly nostalgic for the past as 
much as you like, but I'm not sure it gets us anywhere other than
beating ourselves up when we could be achieving something.

So, if you're offering something positive here..?

Cheers
Martin
(the INTP one)

-- 
"Names, once they are in common use   | Spammers: Send me email to
 quickly become mere sounds, their    | -> yumyum at easyweb.co.uk
 etymology being buried, like so many | my filter. Currently killing over
 of the earth's marvels, beneath the  | 99.9% of all known spams stone dead.
 dust of habit." - Salman Rushdie     | http://nuclearelephant.com/projects/dspam