Personally, here are some of my opinions. These are not a mod decision and they are not necessarily what is going to happen:
1) I think that we should allow and even encourage some private posts. For instance, I think that we should have a privatized introductions post, so that everybody can feel free to share identities that they may not wish to share with the greater world. (This has been brought up to me by a couple of folks as a concern.) This might also foster trust among us, one hopes.
2) We need to be very careful about defining "civil discourse" in the rules and also emphasizing that the tone argument is not welcome here. I think that it's still important that we emphasize the need to give everybody the benefit of the doubt, remain calm, and try to rant elsewhere if possible - but we also need to make sure that nobody gets silenced or squashed by these things.
3) I feel very strongly that we should include at least some "101-level" discussions in this comm, because 101-level ≠ "not hard or important." Perhaps I feel this way because on some issues I am still sometimes floundering about - for instance, the other day I commented elsewhere about how many queer organizations I know include transpeople and immediately got thwapped (appropriately!) by someone pointing out that lots of trans folks don't want to be called queer. And that's after years of trying to learn to be an ally. In retrospect, that's totally 101 level stuff. So it seems to me that it will be very hard to keep all of the 101 level discourse out of the comm, and also like it wouldn't be a good idea to try, as long as the community is small enough that we don't get besieged by lots of people needing lots of guidance - and as long as nobody feels like they have an undue burden of education. (If that started happening, hopefully, as a small community we could work together to try and solve their problem. I mean, that's my theory.)
4) Clearly we need a really good Resource Roundup and a really good reading list, and I think that these things can help us deal with 3).
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2010-10-12 09:22 pm (UTC)1) I think that we should allow and even encourage some private posts. For instance, I think that we should have a privatized introductions post, so that everybody can feel free to share identities that they may not wish to share with the greater world. (This has been brought up to me by a couple of folks as a concern.) This might also foster trust among us, one hopes.
2) We need to be very careful about defining "civil discourse" in the rules and also emphasizing that the tone argument is not welcome here. I think that it's still important that we emphasize the need to give everybody the benefit of the doubt, remain calm, and try to rant elsewhere if possible - but we also need to make sure that nobody gets silenced or squashed by these things.
3) I feel very strongly that we should include at least some "101-level" discussions in this comm, because 101-level ≠ "not hard or important." Perhaps I feel this way because on some issues I am still sometimes floundering about - for instance, the other day I commented elsewhere about how many queer organizations I know include transpeople and immediately got thwapped (appropriately!) by someone pointing out that lots of trans folks don't want to be called queer. And that's after years of trying to learn to be an ally. In retrospect, that's totally 101 level stuff. So it seems to me that it will be very hard to keep all of the 101 level discourse out of the comm, and also like it wouldn't be a good idea to try, as long as the community is small enough that we don't get besieged by lots of people needing lots of guidance - and as long as nobody feels like they have an undue burden of education. (If that started happening, hopefully, as a small community we could work together to try and solve their problem. I mean, that's my theory.)
4) Clearly we need a really good Resource Roundup and a really good reading list, and I think that these things can help us deal with 3).
I've got more, but I'll leave it there for now...