Policy Discussion: Insults, etc.
Jun. 28th, 2011 02:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanguinity posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
50books_pocI'm elevating this to a new post, because the mod team is small and we want a wider range of input than what we can bring to bear ourselves.
The topic under discussion is whether or not insults, mocking, jeering, and/or personal attacks are acceptable on the comm, in what context, and directed toward whom.
First: that's probably not a complete list. One of the things I'm noticing in the comments and pms is that people have different characterizations of what is in dispute here.
Second and related: not everything in the list above may be comparable to everything else in that list. We might choose to give a pass to some of the above and yet reject others.
Third: I'm expecting that there might be some context dependency in these decisions. My gut sense is that insulting an author is not the same thing as insulting another comm member. Being white and being POC is not symmetric. Being the original poster and being a non-OP commenter in an exchange may also change the context. There may be other factors.
So let me lay out some of the issues that the mod team has been discussing.
Because of the way the tone argument gets used, we have been reluctant to implement a blanket "no insulting, no jeering" rule. There are times when it is more important that something gets said than how it gets said; there are times when the clearest and most straightforward way to communicate an idea is to mock the original statement. Additionally, any given demand for politeness or patience made by this community is happening in the context of numerous asymmetric demands for politeness and patience; as mods, we strongly dislike the prospect of increasing those burdens as the price of participating in the comm.
We are trying to negotiate two conflicting chilling influences: one of them is the chilling effect of someone knowing that they might encounter insulting or jeering comments if they post; the other is the chilling effect of a "don't say it any meaner than this" rule. The latter can make people walk away from a comm just as the former can. (I personally have walked away from a comm because it wasn't worth it to me to deal with the emotional stress of trying to negotiate such a rule; I have heard more than a few similar stories from others.) What particularly worries us as mods is that who walks away because of either environment is often asymmetric along axes of privilege.
(Obviously, I would prefer a policy that doesn't have people walking away, if we can swing it.)
I additionally have concerns about how this plays into our sense of who the community is "for". There are at least three distinct ways that members use this forum. Some are using it for personal improvement, trying to correct biases or lacunae in their own personal education, environment, or knowledge. Others are using it as a tool to focus attention on authors of color, who face systemic biases in the publishing, reviewing, reading, and fan communities. Others are using this community as a social refuge, as a place where conversations about books are not forever reverting back to white authors and white norms. (Obviously, these uses are not exclusive to each other: there are many people who use this comm in two or more of the above ways.)
I am not at all sure that the comm serves the last group well. In the process of setting policy on this, I would like to avoid making this community serve those people less well. Unfortunately, it is not clear to me what would or would not do that.
So, the questions we have for you:
What constitutes a personal insult?
Are they never acceptable, sometimes acceptable? Are some more acceptable than others?
Does it make a difference if the insult is directed at an author or at another community member? Where another community member is concerned, does it make a difference as to whose post it appears in the comments to (your own, or someone else's)?
Do we want one blanket policy of acceptability for the entire comm? Should OPs moderate their own comments as they see fit? Some combination of the two?
Are we correct to be worried about an asymmetric effect on white and POC/chromatic members of the comm? And if so, what kinds of policies do you specifically see being a problem? What would be acceptable?
What are we missing?
If you wish to reply privately, you are welcome to PM me or send me an email (this username at gmail).
ETA (6/29): I've turned anonymous commenting off -- there's at least one person who is harrassing people. If you have something to say and need privacy to say it, you've got my pm and email.
ETA2 (6/30): My draft position on some of the interactions under discussion, specifically some of the earlier posts about N.K. Jemisin's books. Re everything else, I'm still reading, still digesting. I haven't begun replying to pms yet, but I'm reading those, too.
ETA3 (7/5): FYI, we're still working on the policy post; we hope to (but cannot promise!) to have it posted by Friday.
ETA4 (7/9): progress updates here.
ETA5 (7/13): Policy post is now up. Comments here are locked.
The topic under discussion is whether or not insults, mocking, jeering, and/or personal attacks are acceptable on the comm, in what context, and directed toward whom.
First: that's probably not a complete list. One of the things I'm noticing in the comments and pms is that people have different characterizations of what is in dispute here.
Second and related: not everything in the list above may be comparable to everything else in that list. We might choose to give a pass to some of the above and yet reject others.
Third: I'm expecting that there might be some context dependency in these decisions. My gut sense is that insulting an author is not the same thing as insulting another comm member. Being white and being POC is not symmetric. Being the original poster and being a non-OP commenter in an exchange may also change the context. There may be other factors.
So let me lay out some of the issues that the mod team has been discussing.
Because of the way the tone argument gets used, we have been reluctant to implement a blanket "no insulting, no jeering" rule. There are times when it is more important that something gets said than how it gets said; there are times when the clearest and most straightforward way to communicate an idea is to mock the original statement. Additionally, any given demand for politeness or patience made by this community is happening in the context of numerous asymmetric demands for politeness and patience; as mods, we strongly dislike the prospect of increasing those burdens as the price of participating in the comm.
We are trying to negotiate two conflicting chilling influences: one of them is the chilling effect of someone knowing that they might encounter insulting or jeering comments if they post; the other is the chilling effect of a "don't say it any meaner than this" rule. The latter can make people walk away from a comm just as the former can. (I personally have walked away from a comm because it wasn't worth it to me to deal with the emotional stress of trying to negotiate such a rule; I have heard more than a few similar stories from others.) What particularly worries us as mods is that who walks away because of either environment is often asymmetric along axes of privilege.
(Obviously, I would prefer a policy that doesn't have people walking away, if we can swing it.)
I additionally have concerns about how this plays into our sense of who the community is "for". There are at least three distinct ways that members use this forum. Some are using it for personal improvement, trying to correct biases or lacunae in their own personal education, environment, or knowledge. Others are using it as a tool to focus attention on authors of color, who face systemic biases in the publishing, reviewing, reading, and fan communities. Others are using this community as a social refuge, as a place where conversations about books are not forever reverting back to white authors and white norms. (Obviously, these uses are not exclusive to each other: there are many people who use this comm in two or more of the above ways.)
I am not at all sure that the comm serves the last group well. In the process of setting policy on this, I would like to avoid making this community serve those people less well. Unfortunately, it is not clear to me what would or would not do that.
So, the questions we have for you:
What constitutes a personal insult?
Are they never acceptable, sometimes acceptable? Are some more acceptable than others?
Does it make a difference if the insult is directed at an author or at another community member? Where another community member is concerned, does it make a difference as to whose post it appears in the comments to (your own, or someone else's)?
Do we want one blanket policy of acceptability for the entire comm? Should OPs moderate their own comments as they see fit? Some combination of the two?
Are we correct to be worried about an asymmetric effect on white and POC/chromatic members of the comm? And if so, what kinds of policies do you specifically see being a problem? What would be acceptable?
What are we missing?
If you wish to reply privately, you are welcome to PM me or send me an email (this username at gmail).
ETA (6/29): I've turned anonymous commenting off -- there's at least one person who is harrassing people. If you have something to say and need privacy to say it, you've got my pm and email.
ETA2 (6/30): My draft position on some of the interactions under discussion, specifically some of the earlier posts about N.K. Jemisin's books. Re everything else, I'm still reading, still digesting. I haven't begun replying to pms yet, but I'm reading those, too.
ETA3 (7/5): FYI, we're still working on the policy post; we hope to (but cannot promise!) to have it posted by Friday.
ETA4 (7/9): progress updates here.
ETA5 (7/13): Policy post is now up. Comments here are locked.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-06-29 05:28 pm (UTC)It's a tough line to draw, because tone-policing is absolutely a problem, one that was well on display in the comments to the previous post where things that were in no way, shape, or form personal "attacks" go labeled as such. OTOH, that same poster has a history of being incredibly aggressive towards other commenters who disagree with her responses to the books reviewed here.
FWIW, I use this comm as corrective action to my own buying patterns. I'm a multi-racial but mostly Asian-American identified woman and my fiction reading is distressingly white and male. I skim reviews, click comments if the book looks reasonably interesting to see other people's take on the book, and often find myself impulse buying something based on a review here. I don't write reviews because I'm rubbish at them and I rarely comment because I've rarely read the books under review.
With my comm usage in mind (ie, take this with a grain of salt since I lurk rather than participate), vitriolic, or even directly insulting, reviews don't bother me. Again turning to the recent post as an example, the only part of the review that bothered me was "you dumb fuck" since I definitely saw that as a racialized & gendered insult.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-29 07:42 pm (UTC)Because in my experiences combining an intelligence insult ("dumb", "stupid") with a sexual insult ("cunt," "fuck," "lay"), and "dumb fuck" in particular, is used mostly by white men towards Asian-American women, espcially when putting down another white man's girlfriend, an As-Am woman who rejected the man using the insult, or As-Am female service employees (cashiers, waitresses that sort of thing).
Of course, my experiences with the word are entirely a product of the field I work in (heavily older white male dominated with an industry-wide culture of people being complete shitfucks to each other).
no subject
Date: 2011-06-29 08:03 pm (UTC)I am aware (and was aware of that when I first read your post). My point wasn't to imply you are.
while I'm sure it's used against Asian-American women, I don't really see an association with it and Asian women in particular--or women at all.
On the face of it, no. But (again, IME) the people around me use a whole lot of demeaning language. I'm not particularly proud of it, but I'm fluent in several distinct dialects of abusive insults. But the formation I describe in my previous comment is noticeably and distinctively used by people of a particular race/gender against people of another race/gender. It's not nearly as universal as other insults that get tossed around.
It's also been my observation that "fuck" often gets used as a replacement for "lay" -- ie, passive reciever of sexual action, rather than aggressor.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-29 08:19 pm (UTC)And yes I would.
And I think we have strayed far from the topic of the mod's original question.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-29 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-29 11:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-30 08:55 am (UTC)WARNING: massive use of unexpurgated f*ck in explanation
Date: 2011-07-01 01:46 am (UTC)I have seen men slurred as "stupid fucker" ... but when his manhood was also being maligned, it was "dumbfuck" (which, written/thought-of thus is something that I will admit to having used in a sort of "douchewaffle/asshat" construction, but have started leaving out of my lexicon). I have never seen a woman called a "stupid fuck*er*", only a "stupid fuck", as an implication of passivity.
I personally bristle at Asian women being subjected to that sort of usage, as the "golddigging submissive whore looking for a white hero" trope is...let's just say not unfamiliar to me. It's not quite on the level of triggering to me, as I reserve that for PTSD issues, but it *is* a hotbutton.
That said? I'm in support of passionate reviews,
Re: WARNING: massive use of unexpurgated f*ck in explanation
Date: 2011-07-06 05:05 pm (UTC)Was there more to that sentence, or was that just a punctuation slip?
Re: WARNING: massive use of unexpurgated f*ck in explanation
Date: 2011-07-06 06:03 pm (UTC)Passionate reviews are awesome. I'd hate for this to become a community of constrained and "polite" perfunctory reviews. (I don't think anyone else wants that, either.) Personally, I'm not inclined to drop f-bombs even if I'm incensed with an author's work (or lack thereof), but I'm coming from a place of extreme privilege when it comes to facility with English.
Re: WARNING: massive use of unexpurgated f*ck in explanation
Date: 2011-07-06 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-29 11:09 pm (UTC)