Claudia .. thanks, you inspired me to throw in $.02 I'm only an amateur when it comes to social psychology, but I am pretty sure scapegoating always happens in groups sooner or later. When you study scapegoating (e.g. the French anthropologist Rene Girard) you realize scapegoats usually bring it on themselves (more or less), they are never randomly drawn from the population ... so the group is also a participant.
While I understand the desire to "vote" on whether one person should be excluded, I will not do it. It feels too ugly to me. ALL groups end up with someone who we think deserves to be kicked out, but I would rather try to buck Girard-like "human nature" and fill posts with other threads. I think it's a signal-to-noise ratio issue. I do not want to start a tradition of voting on exclusion. I think it is a bad road to start down. Also, the internet is inherently open and that will not change unless TIPs becomes a gated community which I would oppose. That being said, most posters on ANY group will tick others off sooner or later, and some people will routinely tick off most everyone. It's the nature of the medium. FINALLY, let's take advantage of social diffusion. An email stares at YOU in the face, but it is actually directed at no one person in particular, it is - electronically - diffused across all members of the group. Remember the old zen habit of visualizing a person's comments as an arrow that may be aimed at you, but then flies past you. One more finally: maybe there is something in human nature that always itches for a fight. I am (half) mystified why people cannot resisting responding to posts they want extinguished. If one person is voted on, there may be another next year and that's not a tradition I want to see started. -------------------------- John W. Kulig Professor of Psychology Plymouth State University Plymouth NH 03264 -------------------------- ----- Original Message ----- From: "Claudia Stanny" <[email protected]> To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 10:58:28 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: [tips] Reclaiming TIPS I am violating my policy of refusing to respond to any post initiated in response to an inappropriate off-topic post or posts that use offensive language. I am saddened that TIPS has devolved into a sandbox of abusive and semi-abusive posts. I am offended by the posts that initiate these threads. I am ashamed of the manner in which some members respond to these threads. I have been ashamed of some of my own responses to these threads. I may yet regret this response. However, if it serves to assist Bill in his efforts to restore civility and purpose to the culture of this list, I will take this risk. Thanks, Bill, for all you have done to create this community. It has been a beneficial component of my scholarly community over the years. If I can help contribute to sustaining that community, I will do what I can. At present, I’ve adopted silence as my strategy, but I realize that this strategy also creates some unpleasant unintended consequences. Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D. Director, Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Associate Professor, Psychology University of West Florida Pensacola, FL 32514 – 5751 Phone: (850) 857-6355 or 473-7435 e-mail: [email protected] CUTLA Web Site: http://uwf.edu/cutla/ Personal Web Pages: http://uwf.edu/cstanny/website/index.htm --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
