On Thu, 9 May 2002, J. van Baardwijk wrote: > I disagree. Such attempts are made exactly to silence someone, and such > behaviour is an implied threat that more attacks will follow if the victim > refuses to shut up.
I agree that if listmember X calls me a Nazi or a bigot or a fool, then it's reasonable for me to assume that X wants to intimidate me into shutting up. However, if all listmember X does is to insult me on-list, then I have the freedom to reply in a variety of ways and then continue saying whatever I need to say. If he keeps insulting me, he might make me angry but he can't actually force me to stop, and he will lose the respect of the Brin-L community. However, it's true that if we allow people to repetitively insult someone, then we allow those individuals to create a hostile atmosphere on the list that interferes with open discussion. It's worth it to put a stop to that kind of behavior for its own sake, regardless of whether the threat of a web-of-shame hangs over our heads, which is why I offered the "general apology and amnesty" idea. In other words, Jeroen, I think your grievance has merit whether you threaten us with a web-of-shame or not, and I hope people will buy into the "apology and amnesty" idea just for the principle of the thing and not regard it as a capitulation to your web-of-shame threat. The purpose of my idea was to help everyone lay down old baggage and agree on how we ought to conduct ourselves on Brin-L. If the point of the idea were simply to appease you, Jeroen, then I'd spend a lot more time cajoling Gautam et al. and a lot less time trying my best to persuade you that a web-of-shame is a bad idea. Because if the web-of-shame *does* go up, I will unsubscribe so fast that the packet suckage yanks the network cable right out of the listserver. By the same token, if in a few weeks I discover that we're back to calling one another Nazis and anti-Semites and what-not over the same old topics, then I'll probably reach the end of my tether and unsubscribe anyway. My patience with Brin-L is just about played out. In the meantime, though, I'm still willing to do my best to act as mediator and peacemaker and general conversationalist. It distracts me from my real problems. > > >But something like a web-of-shame has teeth. It cannot be blown off as a > >bit of hyperbole, nor can it be ignored as a simple breach of manners. It > >has to be taken seriously as a threat to livelihood and reputation in real > >life. > > Again I disagree. It is no more of a threat than the existence of on-line > archives. People seem to fear that messages on a Wall of Shame will be read > out of context. Well, the exact same thing can happen with messages in > on-line archives. Therefore, you should be equally opposed to the existence > of such archives, and demand that (in our case) Yahoogroups.com and > Mail-archive.com remove their Brin-L archives, and demand that the Great > Brin-L Archive never be put on-line. > > > >In other words, I have no control over how your web-of-shame might impact > >my real-world life. > > You also have no control over how messages in on-line archives might impact > your real-world life. Do you want to see them removed as well? No. I'm willing to let my public on-line discussions be public. And I'm willing to take the risk that someone looking for dirt on me can dig their way through the archives and find a post that puts me in a bad light. I'm 100% confident that I can respond by digging out dozens and dozens of posts that are innocuous and that reflect well on me, if need be. And if someone's going to go to that much work to find my dirt, then that person has already judged me and won't care what other good things I've written. The problem with a web-of-shame is that it distills listmember X's on-list activity into his very worst moments and then presents them to the world as the moments by which listmember X should be judged overall. As another listmember suggested, an employer, say, doing a quick search for information isn't going to bother to study the archives for full context (who has the time?). Rather, when winnowing out a long list of applicants, he'll just toss the people with easy-to-find negative remarks and keep the ones who don't. A web-of-shame assists a person hoping to judge listmember X poorly, but it doesn't help a person hoping to judge listmember X fairly. If someone wants to find dirt on me in the archives, they're going to have to do a lot of work. By contrast, a web-of-shame puts the dirt right out in the open and suggests it's acceptable to judge me by my dirt, even if the dirt is only a small fraction of my Brin-L activity. That just plain wrong, in my opinion. It runs entirely contrary to the principle that people, in general, should be judged fairly and given the benefit of the doubt when possible. What's more, there's nothing I can do about it. I can put up a web-of-shame of my own that attacks you, but who knows if the person who sees yours will also see mine? The one thing that I can do to remove myself from the sphere of your unilateral judgment is to cease to be a member of Brin-L. That, and never speak to you again. I'd rather not do either. Jeroen, you've argued that you have no reason to believe that people who hold themselves morally superior to you will refrain from attacking you in the future. That's a valid concern. But from where I'm sitting, if you erect a web-of-shame, then you've decided to hold yourself morally superior to me and everyone else on Brin-L. Why should any of us believe that someone willing to broadcast judgment to the world with a web-of-shame will consistently judge us all fairly? We have no reassurance at all. Nobody with any self-respect will allow himself to live under such a threat if he can help it. That's why I believe a web-of-shame will hurt you rather than help you, Jeroen, and I think it will destroy Brin-L if you decide to erect it. By the same token, nobody with self-respect should expect to live with a constant stream of insults, either, not on a list where civility is allegedly the ideal. Which is why I still hope people will assent to the idea of a general apology and amnesty no matter what Jeroen does about a web-of-shame. If he does erect it, then I'll be gone and I won't care anymore anyway. But surely we can agree that, on a place that's supposedly devoted to free speech and civility like Brin-L, nobody should repeatedly be the subject of insults and cutting remaks, even if many of us don't like what he sometimes says? Marvin Long Austin, Texas "Never flay a live Episiarch." -- Galactic Proverbs 7563:34(j)
