Since the video revolves around a lot of recent events and anecdotes, I am not sure how to even engage with it without resorting to the same "he said she said bs" that we have been specifically warned about. The video involves quite a bit of anecdotes of TFYC being attacked by people, and their telling of the events is something I don't neccisarely agree with - unforunately, both me and the video are then resorting to the "he said she said BS". Hence my statement that I would not engage with in order to make this thread less combatative. I pondered on removing the original comment, but I decided to let it stand after I fussed about it a bit too long and it was likely that people read it anyway - and it seemed dishonest to remove it.
This belies a fundamental way of thinking at odds with discussion aimed at being civil - and I'm willing to bet it's not on purpose, or even a conscious effort. The guidelines, much as I curse the sky at the day they became a thing (for reasons I'll enumerate later), state fairly plainly: Address the argument, not the person. I'm going to (provisionally) say that the same holds true for articles and evidence.
Address the point being made, not the person making it. It's okay to disagree. It's okay to say you disagree.
Your disagreement should not be based on who is speaking, but rather what is being said. If you resort to painting the speaker as the problem with the viewpoint, you will be given a warning and a couple days off, so sayeth the mod.
And now I'm going to explain why the forum guidelines are fundamentally flawed, and why
any attempt at formally regulated moderation is fundamentally flawed. HLP is full of intelligent, creative people, and those intelligent, creative people use their intelligence and creativity to skirt as close to breaking the guidelines as they possibly can with distressing regularity. I'm firmly convinced that this effort is ultimately unintentional, but consider one of the good pieces of advice offered here since the discussion of the guidelines: Be prepared to present evidence to support factual points. This is a reasonable point. HLP has utterly twisted this into some bastard form of: Be prepared to present evidence to support your personal opinion, when
evidence is neither helpful nor necessary. I'm going to use this thread as a fantastic example of that, especially in the last few pages before I tried to lay down the law.
My first attempt to steer the discussion back toward a Good Topic (tm) was based on finding a beneficial (or at least non-harmful) ideal within the morass of GG. Instead of actually addressing the point, the immediate response was to pick at the single part of my point that mattered the least (that GG could possibly agree on a good thing) and attack it. GG wasn't the point, and yet it was immediately the subject of discussion
because someone thought my perception of events was wrong and needed correction despite the actual events not mattering in the slightest. I switched the direction of my attempt, and was rewarded with another rebuttal relating to what GG does and does not say - the substance of the issue was completely ignored in favor of this. You all saw my frustrated response.
That frustration was not aimed at the fact that someone was disagreeing with me, it was aimed at the fact that someone was disagreeing with me
based on who did or did not say something, not because the point itself was disagreeable. That's what generated the declaration that arguing the person rather than the point is an actionable offense. The important thing to note is that
the person disagreeing did not even realize there was a problem, and strictly according to the guidelines, there wasn't. This despite the evidence that such disagreement and discussion tactics directly contributed to the degeneration of this thread despite the intentions of all involved.
The crux of the issue is this: Posters on HLP (and GenDisc in particular), consciously or unconsciously, deliberately or incidentally, are heavily inclined to subvert the intent of the forum guidelines while adhering to the letter. The exact method differs, and the "civility" of responses differs, but this is what I've noticed over the course of several of this threads as they degenerate into ****fests. Therefore,
until someone stops me I will moderate discussion in a fashion that adheres to the forum guidelines' intent of facilitating civil discussion, but I will be disregarding the letter of the guidelines. HLP is far too good at being
just civil enough to avoid inviting serious action to continue on the previous course of action.
