Posted by allisonm on February 7, 2001, at 18:08:45
In reply to Re: Wow...... » Greg, posted by Rzip on February 7, 2001, at 16:41:17
I don't think it's the article at all. I think the current climate change has been coming for some time for a number of reasons.
As the board population grew, a less intimate feeling was bound to crop up. That was exacerbated by unusually disruptive posts and the myriad emotions that followed.
The current fallout (IMO) seems to be over two strong opinions -- that people should be candid but civil; that people should always be supportive. I think the approaches always have been here but were able to coexist well before. Maybe the recent disruptions have rubbbed things raw.
Everyone has different definitions on what is objective, supportive, civil, hurtful. I always just ignored the posts by those whose "technique" I found irritating. It just seems to me that everyone now has less tolerance than they did last winter, for example, and both types feel freer now to criticize if something doesn't fit their definitions. i.e., the gloves seem to be off.
Personally, I was always a little nervous about posting, but found myself saying more than I should have (in retrospect) in one emotional moment or another. My nervousness got blown into temporary horror when someone once searched the archives for all of my posts and pretty much read up on and pieced together my life story. Very unnerving. When I read that Cindy W's posts were used against her by someone outside this "community," and that someone (at one point) named boBB was taking advantage of people's volunteered email addresses, using them to spread strange and sometimes very personal messages, I also felt less safe.
Add to that the length of time I've been here and my shared weariness of seeing the same questions coming up over and over ad nauseam because no one wants to bother to search the archives, and yes, I must say I have been posting a lot less.
To blame it all on one article that showed up this late in the game is too easy.
poster:allisonm
thread:586
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20001124/msgs/597.html