Posted by so on May 26, 2005, at 11:58:32
In reply to Re: Internet Hunting ... I just have to jump in, posted by Camille Dumont on May 26, 2005, at 8:26:18
> If one cannot state what one feels about certain things, then what good is a board. Is a discussion not the exchange of views, opinions, arguments?
These are interesting questions. If you find a reliable answer I would be interested to read it. I would think if a person inquired of the admin, on some days, some people would get an answer somewhat to the effect that "That's what a discussion can be but not here."
> To me there is a difference between stating an opinion and attacking someone because they have a different opinion than you. For example :
>
> "I find it discriminatory that gay people can't marry". To me thats an opinion.I would tend to concur, but based on my reading here, and my direct interactions, there is some fine difference between a finding and a statement of a feeling. It doesn't leave room for personal findings, sometimes. I've been told that stating what something is "To me" is not the formal "I-statement" preferred of writers here, and even then, some "I-statements" though I don't know for sure which ones, are not tolerated. Well, the statements are tolerated becasue the administration continues to publish them on the server he rents, but the people who write them are sometimes not afforded as much tolerence as others.
> From what I understand we are free to post our opinions and to challenge that of others here but not allowed to attack others because of their opinion.
A governing concept, not reliably applied as I've been able to measure, is that to "put down" an idea can tend to put down people who hold that idea.
> When I write "you" its just a way of writing ... I did not write "so" because I was directing my post to the reader, not you in particular.That would seema reason to use second person voice, but I am a reader, too. And I or other readers might kill their pets in ways they don't want to die -- I don't want to die held down to a table with a needle in my arm -- but whatever the comparison, measures of traits such as other's decency have sometimes been cited as inappropriate for this board.
> My view of what is decent is just that ... MY view, the view of Camille Dumont. Nothing more nothing less. The reader remains free to subscribe to my view or not.People's implicit views of what might not be decent have not always been tolerated here.
> I don't follow all your posts on here, perhaps you've had weird or contradictory reactions from the administration.Quite possibly.
> I have not read that thread on suicide bombers. Maybe the whole issue was handled in a peculiar matter.
Yes, maybe it was.
> Again, maybe its an issue distinction between stating an opinion and attacking someone who has a different opinion.Someday someone might count all these interventions, but until then I can only say "many" are targeted at people who call a contrary opinion wrong, or actions based on a contrary opinion less than honorable.
>It might also have to do with the level of language ... or perhaps more appropriately the strength of words employed and to which degree the comments were directed at someone in particular.Or whether the admin thinks the person needs what he has said could be seen as a therapeutic intervention. Not addressing someone in particular is often an inadequate device to avoid administrative intervention, though.
> Perhaps this is biased by my own pet-ownership experience.Exactly
> > > How messed up is that?
> >
> > I do not understand that I am allowed to say here how messed up I think other people's choices might be.Through the years, the archives show, people have been held accountble not for what they intended, but for strict interpretations of what they wrote. Though prestigious individuals have been cited as offending against the rules, I believe community presitige and allegiance to the administration has also been a factor, nonetheless, the idiom "how messed up is that" conveys a the idea that it refers to something generally messed up.
> I find IT, the situation, the occurence of such suffering messed up. I am in no way saying that people who do not thing the same waht that I do are messed up themselves.And again, if that were the way the rules were consistently enforced, I would have nothing to say about your opinion -- I might exploit it to rile to into some political action whether I totally agree or not. But my attention is held by a cognitive dissonance developed by reading what seemed to me to be inconsistent enforcement. For example, if a person rights "benzos kill brian cells. It is messed up to prescribe benzos" a typical response in my experience would be along the lines of "it can make people who think otherwise feel put down."
> A world in which nobody expressed any dissent or where everybody thought the same would be a bit bland no?And so could a message board where nobody expressed dissent. But a recurring theme here is that "This is not for everybody" and the admin has published here and in professional literature his opinion that there are other places people can go if they want a different environment.
poster:so
thread:498173
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20050509/msgs/503174.html