Community Direction, Rules & Privacy
Oct. 12th, 2010 04:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flourish posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
laughing_medusaFirst 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 willlaughingmedusa, 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.]
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.]
no subject
Date: 2010-10-13 01:41 am (UTC)to me, all the things covered in the various "how not to derail" resources are 101
To me, those are more advanced. I spend a lot of time on a forum that is *oblivious* to social activism, and every time the topic comes up, there's a flurry of exchanges pointing out that yes, racism and sexism still exist in the US, and that no, having a Black History Month does not become racist because there's no White History Month. The "how not to derail" stuff comes in after people have been convinced that (1) legal rights are not the same as social equality; (2) privileged people are *not* more qualified to speak on these topics and (3) no, it's not creating/supporting __ism to point out that it exists.
Maybe those are remedial topics. I'd been thinking of "101" as meaning "has no previous education on the topic," but maybe 101 means "no *specific* focus on this topic, but has some background in the right general concepts." I don't mind adjusting my internal sorting to different parameters; I'm muddling along here.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-13 04:30 am (UTC)I think it's like the difference between Freshman English and Remedial English.
Intersectionality, to me, is about being able to talk about related topics without falling into derailing. An intersectional discussion is one where one brings up class, or fat acceptance, or disability rights, in a way that adds to the discussion rather than detracting from it. It's not easy for anyone, is it?
I don't want to be divisive for no reason, but if it comes down to it, maybe the right thing is to have a small relaxed community where that's *not* the goal, and having a different community where the goal is talking about non-remedial, 101 and beyond stuff. I don't assess *myself* as able to do Intersectionality 201. I'm hoping that's what we're building toward.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-13 06:20 am (UTC)Maybe we should have a different kind of intro post, or a poll, that says "what topics are you fluent in, what are you comfortable talking about, what are you familiar with but not really sure of, and what are you totally lost about if they come up?"
there really needs to be a "must be this clued in to have discussions" going on, if there's anything interesting and productive to come out of it.
It sounds like everyone's clued in enough to have these discussions, at least in their own topics, and they're aware that outside of that range, they have things to learn. (We all have things to learn in our own topics-of-choice too, but that's different... we're passionate about those; we want to learn new things there.)
Sorting out what is/is not considered "101" might help with that-- and we wouldn't have to agree with the rest of the web, or even each other for more than it takes to establish community guidelines. (We could agree that here, for the sake of discussion & tagging, "101" posts include the "how not to derail" concepts.)
no subject
Date: 2010-10-13 08:13 am (UTC)I'm actually uncomfortable with the "what topics are you fluent in, what are you comfortable talking about, what are you familiar with but not really sure of, and what are you totally lost about if they come up?" concept.
Not in general, but in particular. I've seen cases where people feel like if they've done enough study, even if they're not insiders in that group, they can speak with authority. And certain kinds of authority assertion are really hard to deal with. (In my own experience, it really bothers me to encounter experts in Japanese culture or history who are not Japanese, if they're saying things that I think are incorrect. Because I am not a scholar of those things, I'm not in a position to assert that they're wrong. And they may be right. I may be wrong. But it's disconcerting, and feels like erasure and colonization.
I'm hoping that goodwill and fellow-feeling (empathy, I guess) and an awareness that we will *all* screw it up at one time or another, that we're all products of the culture(s) we grew up with, and that apologizing and learning will help a great deal, will get us through the difficult topics. What I'm seeing is a potential collision between wanting to feel "safe" and wanting to learn things. I respect the desire for "safe", but that can end up precluding a place where one is challenged to grow.
Our first major hurdle as a community seems to be to figure out what we really want.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-13 03:19 pm (UTC)::Ponders the number & type of people who've declared themselves experts on Wicca::
Eeep. No, very sorry, didn't mean that self-evaluations of fluency were a good thing.
I'd like to believe that we're all mature and considerate enough to deal with being told "that subject you think you know so much about, you have some gaps in your awareness." Especially if it relates to oppression or identity politics of an identity that's not theirs. Asking "what are you fluent in" could be a way of sorting out "which conversations are you likely to jump into; what terms & issues are you aware of; on which subject can you rattle off blog posts & wikipedia links like whoa to support your claims," contrasted with, "which topics are going to send you scuttling to Google to find out what the hell an FSM is?"
Maybe more, "which intersections are you consciously aware of, do you keep track of in the news/blogosphere," and "which ones are you aware exist but that's about all."
no subject
Date: 2010-10-13 01:39 pm (UTC)I think that later today, I am going to make a top level post about this, because I think that we all need to define our terms - what do we mean by "intersectionality," what do we mean by "101"? How far do people feel comfortable allowing white allies to educate (even though passing out links and discussing them with people) - and if people don't feel comfortable with that, then how can we have discussion at all, since feminism naturally brings up issues of intersectionality if you're doing it even halfway right?
Obviously people have put their answers to some of these questions in the comments to this post, but I think that it might be good to summarize what's been said in a top level post and have another, more focused discussion about that...