Community Direction, Rules & Privacy

[flourish]

First off: since I'm bumping it off the top of the page, everyone take a second and go share some links at the Resource Roundup post that elf kindly made for us! We're hoping to develop those resources into linkspams about various topics, so that in future, we can point to other people's words and not just rely on our own.

As we've had the first couple posts in the community, laughingmedusa and I have been talking a lot (and talking with some of you) about what direction the community ought to go. As some of you may know, the community was started based on several incidents in the feminist blogosphere, wherein it seemed like all possibility of constructive discussion was destroyed because of the huge numbers of people getting involved - people who didn't know each other at all, and therefore didn't share anything or feel any accountability to each other about their actions.

That was the rationale behind creating a small community, really more of a discussion group: the idea that, if everybody has a chance to get to know each other, civil discourse will be easier, even when we are angry and frustrated and ready to snap. But almost immediately, the comm got much bigger than we had expected. We should have known better - in retrospect, we should have realized how many people from our flists and drolls would be interested, how few friends we actually shared in common, and how quickly things were going to snowball. Most of all, we should have workshopped the rules and profile info more carefully. But at the beginning, it looked like it was going to be me, laughingmedusa, verity, jlh, and maybe five or six other people - so it seemed like we'd have plenty of time to discuss the rules later, and it seemed like surely we would share so much knowledge and awareness of each other that we wouldn't need to explain ourselves too thoroughly.

Obviously, our assumptions were wrong. Now we need to actually, you know, define what the hell we're doing, since it obviously isn't what we initially set out to do.

As a result, we've decided that, as of noon EST tomorrow (13 October), we are going to close membership to this community. The goal will be to allow people who are currently members to get to know each other without adding new folks - limiting our growth so that we can begin to understand each other and build up trust. It would be foolish to try and kick anybody off, and we don't want to, anyway: everyone who is here, we think can and should be an excellent member of the group.

This is not a step we take lightly. Obviously, there are costs to it: the primary one is that the group will remain more or less at its current demographics, which are fairly white and cis and USian. But, laughingmedusa and I have agreed that it's the only way to get some amount of stability while we determine what the hell is going on. We will probably allow people to join again at some point in the fairly near future; we just need to give everyone a chance to take a breath, learn some names, learn some usericons, and figure out who's interested in and able to speak to what.

We also would like current members' opinions on what our rules, now that we're formally writing them, should be. Fuzzy statements like "give people the benefit of the doubt" need to be clarified, because the audience is no longer the ten people who have been following the situation all the way. We also need to decide on some pretty important things. For instance: Are we interested in using private posts sometimes, that only community members can see? (Benefit: people who are in the closet or uncomfortable talking about personal matters can discuss these issues with the community without fear. Cost: Further locking down, people who are not members of the now-not-open community cannot possibly get access to the posts to give their perspective, which might be sorely needed.) Or, are we interested in engaging in discussions about what some people might call '101-level' anti-racism etc? (Benefit: People who are tired of having those discussions don't have to have them; people who have too few spoons to deal with it don't have to deal with it. Cost: Some people can no longer take an active part in the group, even though they may be awesome people who just have not ever encountered this stuff before.) I'll put my own perspectives in a comment to this post, and so will laughingmedusa, but we want to know what you think, too. If this comm is going to work, all members need to buy into the premises.

So: What are your thoughts? What should our rules be, and where do we go from here? (And our private inboxes are also open, if you would prefer to talk that way.)

[Co-signed, flourish and laughingmedusa.]

Comments

[laughingmedusa]

I can't speak for flourish, but I think we were using 101 as shorthand for intro level and not meaning comprehensive--but I hear you and I agree with you. Though I think it is OK to use 101 as shorthand for intro level and people will probably tagging posts as 101 level so that people interested in more advanced discussion of a particular subject can skip--does that make sense? And is that a problem? Am I misunderstanding your objection?

[holyschist]

I think it's fine and important to have intro-level discussions, but I think we need to be very aware that we're not all qualified to talk about all topics on an intro level--and that will probably end up placing a greater burden on some members of this community to be "authoritative", so yeah, I'm still kind of worried about it with the current makeup of the community.

[flourish]

IAWTC, although I am to some extent struggling with how we should separate 101 issues from other issues.

It seems like we could cover classism, sexism, issues surrounding homophobia, and issues surrounding religion fairly well. Trans issues, race issues, cultural (meaning national - I'm not sure how to phrase that better) issues and (to a lesser extent, given that I'm not sure I want to put it on exactly the same level as the above) issues surrounding asexuality, I'm not sure we can cover so well - it's not that we don't have members who represent the various groups in question, but that there are not so many members who do. I think that most people would probably agree with this assessment, but from a mod's point of view, I'm questioning where we draw the line on what counts as a 101 issue/how we divide this out. It gets even more complex when we're talking about questions that directly address intersectionality.

I don't mean that as a derailment or to suggest that we should not draw some kind of line, but just that from a mod's perspective - I need to figure out some hard and fast lines, and I'm not sure where those are yet. I am really glad that quantumdani spoke up and I hope that some of the other POC & trans members of the comm will do so as well, because they are the ones who are most likely to end up being under stress in this matter.

[laughingmedusa]

OK, I was thinking we'd all just be muddling around together in 101 level posts. For instance I might bring up an article I read or something and see if anyone else has read it/is interested in reading it/discussing it. If several people say yes and that it's something they wanted to learn about I could tag the post 101 and that way people more learned in a particular area could feel free to skip the post instead of wading in and getting frustrated as ithiliana said below.

Someone who has some academic experience, self education experience, or personal experience on a particular subject and who wants to try leading a discussion? We'll have a specific tag or subject header or something for those discussions. Does that make sense? I think those lead "authoratative" discussions will be few and far between.

[trinker]

I see your model as fraught with ...hmm, I don't have a handy name for it. Token-error? One representative of the group is really not a good sample, and a lot of stress on the rep.

[laughingmedusa]

Right. Which is why I was thinking that discussions led by experts or knowledgeable persons would be difficult for a variety of reasons. And I'd like to avoid them unless someone really wants to do one.

I'd like there to be discussions about specific articles, or to ask an opening question about why our comm skews so white cis female. What can we do about that?

[trinker]

I really don't want this to end up as "here, a series of 101 lectures, turnabout". I'd hope the issues came up organically. But limiting the discussion to published articles means limiting the discussion to well-represented in media-or-scholarship groups. Which is problematic in terms of privilege, again.

I think the answer to the solution is to open up the comm a bit, to make the enticement intersectionality, offer various people with inside experience with various -isms a chance to learn about someone *else's* issues, while giving to the community by sharing about their own. Within a reasonable range, multiplicity guards against fatigue and also illusions of uniformity.

But that's a very, very different community than exists here now.

[laughingmedusa]

I think that would be great, but we'd have to grow into that.

[trinker]

Just noticed I didn't answer this.

I talked about this a little with flourish offlist...

[trinker]

What has worked for me in my LJ, if discussions about my entries in other journals are any guide, is to clearly mark off which entries are designed to be 101, so that anyone who is not up to dealing with 101 issues can avoid them. I'm currently doing the same thing with a "this is not all about 101" entry, to see how that works. (The caveat there is meant to let people know that if one says "should have learned in 101" stuff, one will not necessarily be dealt with gently.)

I think "past-101, skippable" is a potentially unproductive concept, as a lot of people want to believe they're past 101, when they still need it.

[laughingmedusa]

I honestly believe we're all mostly at a 101 level on some subjects, if not most so I would step in and speak to someone who was trying to be too authoritative or a know it all.

I guess I come at pedagogy a little oddly since I went to a college that advocates asking questions and tells you you can never know enough about things and to keep reading and rereading and questioning and requestioning. I honestly believe you can always learn more about a topic or an idea.

[trinker]

I don't think I was clear enough.

I get what you're saying, and it's true on that level.

I was more thinking about what is often expressed as "ambassador fatigue". (Which is the big issue with having a mainly cis-white group discussion intersectionality.) It can be tiring to do the same things repeatedly. It's nice when there are more people to carry the load. At that point, marking "101-racism" or "101-transissues" can alert people to either gravitate toward or avoid a discussion. But "I know it already" is kind of antithetical to the purpose of this comm, yes? (I think we're in agreement there...?)

[laughingmedusa]

"Ambassador fatigue" is a great term. I see what you were saying now. Thank you for clarifying.

Yes, I think we agree.

[livrebleu]

IAWTC. A lot.

Marking posts as 101 might be a good way to take off some of the pressure for people acting as ambassadors, educators, and experts. I think that's going to be important.

[quantumdani]

On the other hand, I think ambassador fatigue often results from, "I really don't want to, but if I don't, no one else will." I don't think I'd comfortably by-pass 101 subjects that directly affected me, if only because I expect that the narratives within them would affect other conversations that go on here. And in fact, if they don't, then I worry about the other conversations, right?

[trinker]

Yes!

All of that. I think there's a different level of weary that comes with "I feel compelled to monitor the conversation by reading it, at least" vs. "If I don't speak up, no one will..."

(Spork Theory...has anyone brought that up yet?
http://jimhines.livejournal.com/512271.html?thread=11692815)