General Lessons Learned in the Holden Discussion

Over the last few days many have participated in conversations around the net about Holden Karnofsky.  I have opened this thread for those who would like in good faith to discuss what we have learned from what we saw in that "crowd sourced" action and reaction.  As moderator, I impose the following rule: I will delete any comment that in my sole judgment seems motivated by malice, or by a desire to hunt, hurt, or hound any human being, guilty or innocent. Please use a live email in all comments, so I can get back to you if the comment is ruled out of bounds. You are welcome to write to me at my email if you would like to discharge venom that needs to be directed at someone.  I would suggest that we refrain from taking one another to task per se. We have gone about as far down that road as seems worthwhile. Instead, as we each reflect on what we have seen, said or done, what have learned about how the net works, about how crowds work, how philanthropy works? Have we  learned general lessons that might guide us going forward?

I have moderated comments and will be checking often to publish them. Thanks, all for keeping this constructive.

Comments

[Antoine Möeller]

what have learned about how the net works, about how crowds work, how philanthropy works? Have we learned general lessons that might guide us going forward?

I've learned mountains. Quite humbling, actually. Yet inspiring. I have every confidence in our ability to learn more going forward. Teachable moment? Indeed.

Keep your eye on the prize. That would be free and constructive speech with strength in its openness and greatest diversity.

Anomalies can be shrugged off if honorable action guides us. Be decent. Be strong. Be honorable. Be Kind.

Timo's cross-over touched me deeply. Thanks, my friend, and friends. I look forward to knowing you all. :-)

[Timo Sinnemäki]

I will have to question the premises here. The way I see it, one cannot learn the lesson without admitting the offense, and often one does not see -- much less admit -- the offense, without facing an accusation. You will have to tolerate accusations if you want anything to come out of this.

[Timo Sinnemäki]

And I'd wager that for most people I know, what I said above, they consider obvious, and that is one of the reasons why they have lost patience with this discussion.

[Antoine Möeller]

Hi Timo

Go ahead on. I don't think Phil is excluding accusations. Just asking that the tone be moderate for a while. "Interpretive charity," is how he put it, I think. We're all capable of that.

[phil]

Timo,

I am working full time by email with the parties in question, to the extent I can reach them. My goal is first to bring the emotions down and to make sure we are all working towards an honorable conclusion, not adding fuel to the fire. I am happy to respond to your emails if you wish to take me to task, suggest strategies, make accusations or express your concerns. Thanks.

Phil

[Timo Sinnemäki]

As it happens, what I think I was about to say seems to have already been addressed in the previous thread, after it had already been closed. So, have a nice day, and thanks for the kind words.

[phil]

Getting back to the general rule, or the question about the general rules, here are some quick bullet points on which I am going to reflect for myself, off line as well as online:

1. Go direct in painful situations. To what extent are accusations against another person when they "do wrong," perhaps do great wrong, on the net best handled with that person directly off line, before resorting to a group discussion? I am referring to issues that, if brought to a "conviction" might really leave the accused worse off in real life, losing a job, losing a reputation, blowing up a business, ending up in court, let alone losing sleep. Might we do better in those cases to "deal direct"? (I am trying to do that now with the burning embers of our prior thread.)

2. Maintain a nexus connecting each commenter to a real identity: Anonymity, masks and personas are like a pharmakon, a mixed blessing, they can cure or kill, they can help or hurt a communicative community, as can a relentless outing of those who for their own reason need or prefer to use a pseud. This is a huge topic. I believe web mores are changing and coming into focus to encourage a nexus of accountability. That need not, in my opinion, mean always using real contact info on line. Here in this community I have always felt it was enough if I had a live email to which the commenter would answer. I am now using that contact info to seek solutions and a sense of achieved peace all around.

3. The principle of interpretive charity. We can always assume the worst of another and ask they answer to this or that, and talk to them or about them in a hectoring way, adopting the tone of a parent chastising a truant child. I find it better if possible to recognize that others generally have their good side as well as bad side and if treated well will respond in kind. Those who don't may respond to banter, quiet reminder, or even a gentle rebuke. They may respond to humorous treatment, or a parable, or a story not directed specifically to them, or they might accept a story told in Types, a Fable. I think one good use of characters or fictionalized frames is precisely to take the personal sting out of satire or "spankings." When it gets too rough and tempers flare, as mentioned above, it is good to "deal direct" off-line. (Face to face is best, phone second best, email third best, online worst for painful conversations.)

4. Web democracy is a good thing. Using the power of the web to get the bottom of things through free discussion is a great good, particularly now when the media is so often lax in that role. But when another can be hurt, likely will be hurt, we have to ask, if we might err on the side of temperance, ("First do no harm.")

5. Try never to cross the street to stick your thumb in a stranger's eye. (Conversely, offer the other eye when the first is gouged by a challenger.)

6. Principle of reciprocity: Always ask how I would feel if others did it to me. Always ask when I question another's motives or character or actions how I look doing that? Am I the person who should cast this stone?

7. Confession and Apology (Given): When caught dead to rights confess and apologize. Do not palliate the sin, but appeal for mercy.

8. Confession and Apology (Accepted): When a confession is made, and accepted, call it quits, if possible. After confession, if the faults are significant the trial and sentence may best be left to those who are given that responsibility in some real world legal framework. (Board member, etc.)

9. When things are polarized against a person and that person goes to one knee, stop kicking him or her.

10. When five beat on one, or 500 on one, consider joining the one, particularly if he or she is not any longer able to defend himself or herself, even if he or she is guilty. (Jesus did not ask if the woman taken in adultery was guilty. He did not satisfy himself of her guilt then, as the one blameless person present, cast the first stone. He stood with the sinner against the righteous and even against the law itself. You could say he set a bad example and "What would happen if everyone did that?" I personally would like to see.)

11. Play for the shared win. Victory when the other must lose is far less satisfying than when we both win. A shared win may involve a defeat, but if followed by a beer together, real or virtual, may be the beginning of a friendship.

12. The rule of holes: When in one, stop digging.

13. Hate the sin and love the sinner.

14. Visit the poor, the impious, the vain, and visit even the condemned convict in a spirit of love.

15. Do not attempt to cure what you do not understand. Do not intervene too strongly in a community until you have some sense of its mores and traditions.

16. Prescription before diagnosis is malpractice. Even if you are able to cure others of folly and vice do not attempt that cure until you are reasonably sure of the diagnosis. This can require many questions, open and closed, and a gentle touch. We can seldom cure of folly or knavery people we hardly know.

17. Physician heal thyself! Takes a Fool to know one, takes a Knave to know one. Work on yourself as the nearest sinner to hand.

18. When shoeing a wild ass, do not hold the hoof to your crotch. (Yes, I did come up with that one. Aesop move over.)

I am sure I will think of much more, but that is a start. Judged by my own rules of thumb above, I can do better. No more work as a farrier for me.

[Sorting it out]

I (think) learned a lot from watching this unfold. I was reminded in some ways of the early days of e-mail, when people using the new technology would frequently end up inadvertently offending one another–there was something about the tone of a message, the use of a particular word, that kind of thing. The person writing to you didn’t have time to choose his words carefully, and you couldn’t see his face or read his body language. I don’t know enough about the history of these things, but I’m guessing that’s one of the reasons emoticons became so popular.

So what do you do when you’re writing on the web? You can (1) learn to write in a “plain” style, in propria persona, so you’re called out because you’ve been properly understood and have nevertheless been deemed a jerk; or (2) you become a different kind of reader, guessing at a writer’s intentions (since that’s what you have to do in any case), and adopting some maxim like, “When confronted with a text that strikes me as evil, pompous, vain, whatever, I’ll withhold judgment until I’ve gotten to know this person(a) better”; or … what? The first option has the advantage of minimizing misunderstandings and the disadvantage of narrowing the kind of discourse we can freely have on the web; the second option can enrich the discourse for some, but be a wall to others.

I saw a clash of two communities, with different styles of expressing themselves on the web, with different assumptions about which styles to tolerate and expect, and different assumptions about what the protocol should be when they met.

Perhaps I’m naïve, but I believe that if the two communities had met at a pub, there would likely have been far less animus. It’s hard to demonize a person who shows you a picture of her daughter, even if you have strong disagreements. You can have it out then and there, until you fall into one another’s arms in drunken laughter.

I don’t believe that it would be possible even for God to come down on the side of one community or another. For one thing, there would be too many posts for Her to read. [emoticon for “that’s a joke”]

I think the tribalism of the web encourages us to go back to our disembodied cyber-corners to re-open our wounds with our own kind. This idea saddens me, and makes me doubt the ability of the Internet to be, on balance, a civilizing force. I hope I'm wrong about this.

[phil]

Sorting it out,

Thank you, yes to the tribalism, very unfortunate in my estimation. But you are also quite right about interpretive communities in collision. You wrote,

"I saw a clash of two communities, with different styles of expressing themselves on the web, with different assumptions about which styles to tolerate and expect, and different assumptions about what the protocol should be when they met."

As a writer I was actually suprised that highly educated people, including Ivy educated professors of the humanities, had a hard time find their bearings in our Carnivalesque tradition here. But as writer's we have to share the responsibility for misunderstanding. Your point about the literal and sweet reason is duly noted. Misreading and getting others to misread is part of the game here. For smart people that would not, I would have imagined, produced such consternation, outrage and backlash. Any satirist worthy of the art always keeps the reader off balance, denying truths and assenting to folly until the reader wises up, laughs, reforms. That too is teaching, a cure, a pharmakon, but as this conversation has shown and as you note, a dangerous one. The satirist is a stand in, some say for a goat. And some say the goat stands in for a human sacrifice to purify the tribe. Something like scapegoat rituals seem to have been in play here.

[Jeff Doyle]

For what it is worth (and I hope this isn't violating anybody's sense of what constitutes undue self-advertisement) I posted some guidelines about the use of masks, personae, alter-egos, and sock-puppets on the Handmeon site. (http://www.handmeon.com/sojourn/home/78) It seems like some of the folk from MetaFilter might have benefitted from something like that here at GiftHub.

[phil]

Thanks, Jeff, a sensible approach and good humored as well.

[Josh Millard]

Phil, I appreciate you keeping some of the conversation going here, though I'm a bit sad to see the previous thread closed (however unweildy in length -- and obviously, judging by the length of the metatalk thread, I know from unweildy). I'm sad to hear there was ugly email going on, and hope you/Rachel get to the bottom of it.

A couple of things that are resonating with me. From your item, here:

15. Do not attempt to cure what you do not understand. Do not intervene too strongly in a community until you have some sense of its mores and traditions.

And Sorting it out's comment, to which you've responded already:

"I saw a clash of two communities, with different styles of expressing themselves on the web, with different assumptions about which styles to tolerate and expect, and different assumptions about what the protocol should be when they met."

I very much agree with both the principle and the analysis. I made a lengthier comment on the subject, over in Metatalk, which I summed up thus:

There's a lot of cultural baggage on every side of this that is hard to really objectively see, and it's a lot easier for us to ignore our own baggage than to ignore the strange stuff elsewhere. And it comes right back at us as well, from folks who find our conventions strange enough that they get caught up on our superficial oddness.

Cultural clash is an escapable challenge. It can be mitigated, and where you have counseled the idea of restraint and care in responses, and interpretive charity (something I've argued for on a regular basis in Metatalk discussions), I think we're very much in agreement. It bothers me to see anger carry over into vitriol in any discussion like this, especially on Metatalk, and more especially when that carries out onto other parts of the web. It is probably my very least favorite thing about Metafilter, and if I could sweep it away with a magic wand I would consider doing so.

However, I was dismayed to read this, from you late in the previous thread, having missed it the first time and finding it only on a second pass based on comments in the Metatalk thread:

That impulse, being bestial, is best tasted in crowd settings when individual responsibility is lost in the emergent mind of the wolf pack. The moderators at MeFi let it roll and roll. That is my opinion was a failure on their part. And a moral one, frankly. They did wrong not to moderate the avenging furies. They could do it, I did it here, and I am an amateur; they as I understand it are paid professionals.

To the extent I am right at all about this, you will feel soon a reflux of disgust. Disgust at your behavior and that of your friends. You will not confess, nor will I torture it out of you. You will not apologize, nor will I demand it. I will not make an example of you, Miko, Cortex, Jasmyn, Rumple, Stephen Dodson, RCM, or the others who ran in that pack keening like dogs who have tasted blood. But you will feel disgust and may even regret and feel shame for what was done in the heat of the illusion of your own virtue and within the mind of the crowd in full cry.

Here is culture clash, and the strange failure of perception, in play. You speak of a moral failure in mine and Jessamyn's and Matt's having, I guess, allowed the thread in Metatalk to proceed the way it did -- but you say so without any context for the history of Metafilter, or Metatalk specifically, or the decisions and compromises that have been established over the eight-and-some years that the site has been growing and evolving. I've already spoken to my dislike of the uglier banter that shows up in Metatalk, but we have over its long history taken a position of not removing comments lightly, even ugly or stupid or hurtful comments, unless they surpassed some exceptional threshold. Other portions of the site are more heavily moderated -- Metafilter proper sees minor cleanup on a regular basis, and Ask Metafilter much more so.

Beyond that, Metatalk exists largely as the part of Metafilter where self-examination of the community by the community is focused; it is a rough-and-tumble place, at times, but it's also a very honest and straightforward place for all that. From what I've read on Gifthub in the last few days, I get the impression that you won't find the idea of a correlation there surprising. Hurt, personal hurt, can come out of that ugly, unrestrained honesty, but it's generally very clear what someone is thinking and as far as getting to the bottom of a misunderstanding, it seems to work fairly well with a minimum of long-term damage.

To what good or what ill, letting Metatalk threads stand more or less as they are created, is a big discussion -- as big as the discussion of masks and personas here, and neither seems to quite fit the scope of this thread as you've presented it so I'll try not to go crazy on the subject -- but I think it's pretty questionable to declare a moral failure, there, because you dislike the degree of moderation (or lack thereof) as you see it in one part of a website with which you are not familiar.

Your objection, as in point 15, to barging in to someone's place without becoming familiar with the conventions, applies very directly to your own dismissive (and personally insulting) characterization of the metafilter side of this encounter.

I cannot speak for Rumple or RCM or languagehat's behavior or motivations in all the discussions here and elsewhere, as I haven't been following them as closely, but to suggest that Miko or Jessamyn or I have been treating this as a mob bloodsport is insulting enough that, were you not clearly putting a lot of effort and care into this discussion, I'd have written you off as worse than most of the ugliest stuff I've seen in Metatalk for making such a lazy, unread assertion. I care very much about Metafilter, obviously, and for both how it behaves and how it is perceived by the outside world.

The former is something I have limited control over on the site itself, as a moderator in a community that does not, as a rule, tolerate unquestioned, heavy handed dictatorial moderation; behavior of mefites elsewhere is something out of my control entirely, except as far as they're inclined to listen to what I have to say there and elsewhere when I have an opinion.

Perception is mostly effect, not cause, and I accept that. My frank desire would be that there had been more interpretive charity, indeed, in both directions as this encounter had unfolded, and that there will be more going forward. How to solve the problem of understanding and being understood in the cat-herding context of large groups of people, I don't know. It's one of the big challenges of the job, and a fascinating open question.

This has gotten rambly, so I'll close up. For all the rebuke, above, I'd like to reiterate that I appreciate very much your opening up here of an examination of a lot of these questions, and as frustrated as I have been in seeing some of the dismissive comments (here and in metatalk, by gifthubbers and mefites), I'm glad this discussion has gone and goes on. I feel like good has, among everything else, come of it.

[Josh Millard]

"Cultural clash is an inescapable challenge", that should have been. I'm surprised I didn't do worse.

[phil]

Josh, thank you for the comment and the obvious effort you made to be balanced. I will take this opportunity to accept your rebuke as stated here:

"Your objection, as in point 15, to barging in to someone's place without becoming familiar with the conventions, applies very directly to your own dismissive (and personally insulting) characterization of the metafilter side of this encounter."

Agreed. Please allow me to I apologize for the tone, and the insult. Now, as moderators, we have the chance to suit deeds to words and moderate our way back to normal. I see you doing that. And I sincerely thank you. By the same token, if I can help out in ways you can see to make this all end on a good note, please let me know either by comment or email.

[Josh Millard]

Thanks, Phil. Honestly, as bothered as I was by that specific comment in the previous thread, it struck me (and, judging by some of the comments in the Metatalk thread, others as well) as surprising off-note in what's been in my opinion a pretty fair and game (if at times culturally frictional) discussion. Your apology is absolutely accepted, and humbly at that since I have no illusions about my own infallibility on that or any other front.

I believe that what you're doing now -- having a discussion about the discussion -- is probably about the best thing that can happen, on this side. As frustrated as I've found some of the mefi characterizations, I understand where you're coming from and I don't think you or your regulars here have any responsibility to metafilter as far as seeing this end well; I hope that it does, and I'll be thinking (more than usual, heh) about how I can help it happen from the mefi side.

Jeff: thanks for being game about the cultural acclimation side of things.

[phil]

Josh, thank you. This is one of those web sagas that may draw wider scrutiny. As it wears on I may wear down and may already have, and become intemperate or rude, as I was in the comment you cited as out of key. My hope is that those participating in this conversation will rally to a positive note. I learned a lot and will need some time to assimilate the lessons. Thanks for the kind words.

[phil]

Also, Josh, to the same effect, I have been in touch with both Jessamyn and Michelle by email to make sure lines of communication are open.

[Gerry]

We may not have any responsibility for it, but I certainly understand the difficulties of moderating on-line forums. The way the development of network intelligence and networked institutions works is that it benefits all of us as each of the communities is stronger and it benefits us even more as we create stronger ties. In spite of the clash, and all the rest, if there are lessons learned all around, we are all growing, and won't have the same level of difficulty if hard conversations bridge these spaces in the future.

[Gerry]

Is this working? My last attempt to post went into the ether.

[phil]

Comments are moderated for now, as we get this back on a positive footing.

[JJ Commoner]

Would that we all could come from families and acculturating backgrounds such as that described herein ...

Dave Snowden:

"If something matters, it is worth arguing about; consensus is for the ordinary and inconsequential things of life. Of course it does need good [wo]men if argument is not to degenerate into bitter polemic. Exploring ideas, supporting a position you do not necessarily believe in to test an argument, taking a contrary view for the sake of argument are all mechanisms by which human knowledge can advance.

I remember from my own childhood that the dinner table was a constant source of debate on a broad range of positions. If we (the family) were not sure of you, then we were polite. If we liked you, then we argued with you. It was a great environment to grow up in and one too sadly missed in the over facilitated, over homogenised world in which honest disagreement seems to be outlawed and all opinions considered of equal value."

[JJ Commoner]

Footing ..

Did you mean positive, or rather constructive ?

[phil]

Yes, constructive is better, JJ. Thanks.

[Reed]

One of the things I've been really enjoying recently is taking note of discussions on behavior that I have together with my children as a parent (often about positivity in tone, as opposed to positivity in words said with negative tone; the challenge and value of holding an internal compass of positivity; identifying with integrity any potential target of criticism; depersonalizing, to the extent possible, in order to obtain better understanding together of processes and issues).

It is amazing how relevant these discussions with my children are to my work reframing a vision I have been developing on cultural evolution ( http://www.well.com/~rb ).

As with my parenting discussions, the reframing arrives at transparency and ethics as the main deficient elements (deficient elements of capitalism in the case of reframing cultural evolution); with a positive view permitting recontextualizing capitalist globalization as a first kind of adolescent global discussion between all global tribes (whose other languages and cultures, far more rich and diverse, succumb -- for a time at least -- to the more powerful common global language and culture of adolescent capitalism) ... suitable for (in fact, desperately wanting) maturation -- as the key root issue needing to be addressed in efforts at philanthropy or social enterprise.

Today's capitalism-induced cultural archetype involves a great deal of subtlety -- including pretexts sometimes necessary for success in the marketplace, intentional deceit and hypocrisy, and often an aggressive win-at-all-costs approach (thanks to our contemporary practice of capitalism, no?).

Perhaps there should be little surprise then that such memes might be found in our online dialogues.

There appears to be an opportunity today to not merely shift the dialogue about doing good (to a more positive tone), but that the objectives for philanthropy and social enterprise might embody more explicitly a strategic advancement of transparency, integrity and positivity in contemporary popular culture at large -- hence in business culture, which holds great hegemony over contemporary popular culture -- as a address-the-root-cause vs. address-symptoms approach.

Perhaps there may be a great renaissance on it way in which business culture (followed by popular culture) uses innovation to replace amoral capitalism with ethical capitalism.

[Luke Warm]

Rachel Tension is probably ....

Edited by Phil: The note came from a dead email. So, I am responding here. I did not publish your speculation about Rachel. The true Rachel has good, employment related reasons for wishing to remain anonymous. I posted a note that at the person's request this morning at Metafilter giving the reasons.
http://tinyurl.com/392swp

It would be kind of you not to engage in online speculation. Ok? The world is so full of sorrow. Let us not add to it.

[Jeff Doyle]

Having grown up in the sort of family that JJ Commoner refers to, I tend to agree about the value of constructive engagement. But I also think it is worth recognizing that even in such settings the rules of discourse may vary from family to family. Any social institution or arrangement inevitably favors certain personality types or interpersonal styles to the detriment of others. The people who flourish in one situation usually perceive their own rules and conventions as the normal and natural ones.

The distain displayed by some commenters concerning the use of masks at GiftHub is a case in point. These visitors displayed an admirable confidence in the authenticity of their own earnest personae, which no doubt serves them well in their accustomed haunts. Although I don't frequently use the sort of satiric props that Phil favors, I do rely heavily on irony, understatement, self-deprecation, pedantry, and humor to make my point. These too are styles that can easily be dismissed as elitist or effete. All poses and ploys have their limitations, including Popeye's earnest claim that "I yam what I yam an' tha's all I yam." Saying what one means is by no means such a trivial or straightforward affair as all that.

Just for instance. Apologies aren't so much about admitting that one has done wrong as they are about convincing the other person that one sincerely recognizes and regrets the wrong. People who are too deeply invested in their version of themselves frequently have trouble coughing up a satisfying apology. "I admitted I was wrong, now lets move on" doesn't always cut it. Sometimes we have to convince the other person of our sincerity with a performance. In a sense, that is what we are all doing now. Welcome to the carnival.

[Gerry]

"Lessons Learned" is so backward looking, and actually Phil already has framed it in terms of policy or resolutions for the future. How about "Proactive Strategies"? Maybe not.

What I'm searching around for is a more active response. We want to be able to heal the wounds as well as prevent anyone from getting hurt the same way in the future. I will suggest that laughter heals, and that is part of the rhetorical strategy of satire. When it works, the target will even laugh with you, and perhaps even reform his behavior. Or sometimes they cry with you in the pain and embarrassment of recognition.

If you re-read the closed thread with an understanding of this mystical power of satire to heal, you will have a more charitable interpretation of all involved. If in the process of re-interpretation you end up in the role of the horses ass, or the villain, then it is best to laugh at yourself and/or confess and move on now.

This little on-line culture clash is still small potatoes compared to the outright conflicts that afflict our world. I came across this (link):

In October, Dr. Johnston had the opportunity to present a "peace game" proposal to President Ahmadinejad at a dinner in New York. The President liked the idea and pledged his support. Very briefly, this concept can be viewed as the peace counterpart to a war game; but rather than a scenario-driven exercise, it would be more akin to facilitated brainstorming. Logistically, it will involve bringing participants from Iran and the United States together to chart a mutually acceptable course for achieving a cooperative relationship. Among the reasons for pursuing such a relationship, are our overlapping interests in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon and our mutual aversion to Wahhabism. U.S. policy options for bringing peace to the region will also be greatly enhanced if we are able to overcome our existing differences relating to terrorism and the nuclear question. Two summers ago, ICRD took a hard look at the individual obstacles standing in the way of improved relations, and came away convinced there is more room to maneuver on these issues than meets the eye.

We need to do more than just talk about lessons learned, we have to heal the wounds from what happened and go forward with a greater sense of ourselves as interconnected digital tribes. We need to get beyond petty arguments and misunderstandings, and start to heal ourselves and then the world. We need to see each others strengths as well as our own weaknesses and collaborate more effectively at every level if our world is to survive.

It really is unfortunate that the incident that closed the thread happened, because I think we were just getting to the point of healing. I really deeply appreciated some of the posts, Timo and others, that really opened that door. At this point we will need to give it some time before really trying to work out remaining conflicts. I want to thank everyone for the work.

[Antoine Möeller]

Here's a misreading of something the Tutor said.

Done right, art can bring us together around shared misunderstandings.

Give it a whorl. ;-)

[Maureen Doyle]

The givewell crisis strikes me as a play within a play, whose central theme is identity. But unfortunately till now, the discussion has skirted the issue.

Some of the identity threads in this play include the initial crime against the community committed by Holden at givewell, the role of Phil as “Fool” and ‘satirical morals tutor' talking about the givewell crime, the ensuing brawl between commenters over the question of anonymity and sock puppetry and the subsequent, mediated meta-discussion on Gifthub about the failed open discussion. Furthermore, the brawl has fueled the fire of the question of the initial question (“How to evaluate an NPO?”). (There’s an interesting, constructive discussion about this issue on Tactical Philanthropy: http://tacticalphilanthropy.com/2008/01/what-to-measure-and-why-in-philanthropy )

The funny thing is that in all this talking the question of identity seems to have been swept under the carpet. People are duking it out over some very important issues concerning community, logos and democracy, but not really engaging in the premise upon which these notions are built, the concept of a person's identity.

For me, the primary point of conflict is rooted in an implicit clash of cultures, the cultures of competing notions of "self". On one hand there is the foundationalist, rational actor, coherent version of the self and on the other hand, the social constructivist, irrational, incoherent version of self. I say "implicit" because people at the table are not saying but acting "as if"; some act as if they espouse the Enlightenment version of the self as unified, coherent, rational actor or others act as if they feel that model is deficient. But no one is yet pointing to the "acting as if".

Until we out this question, the question of "what's a self? an identity", it seems to me the conversation is doomed to turn in circles.

I for one hope that people will place in question the rationalist actor model of self and espouse something more like what I would describe as “socially constructed self”. As you know, finer and more articulate minds than mind have grappled with this question and generated some wonderful responses. Many of them so poetic that they are not often understood by the determined rationalist. Some of the stand outs in this line up in addition to Goffman, include Schelling, Austen (Jane and J.L.), Bateson, RD Laing, Derrida, Gide, Shakespeare (at least my version, Dominica), Pound, Wilde, Freud…

At the risk of sounding naively simplistic, I would say that these thinkers have in common the fact that their works have pointed to (among other themes) the deficiencies of the coherent, rational actor conception of “self”.

I’m not proposing to bury this rationalist conception, at least not without implementing a plan for backward compatibility, because our systems of justice, government and community rely on it. Let's perform 'epoke' on the systems question in order to perform a thought experiment on the notion of self.

I invite people to seek out examples from their own lives of ways in which there identity or self is not consistent, does not cohere, is not rational. Secondly, I invite people to imagine what would happen if they went around telling people this were so (t-shirts, bumper stickers, rejoinders like "My xxx self thinks but my yyy self thinks). Would such an experiment entail an imminent decline—in the person, family, nation, civilization, environment?

Standing on very big shoulders, I propose that on the contrary, an overhaul of the "self" might do a lot of good for each of us and the world. Imagine, for an instance, that we were to remake the notion of "self" as a player in a fluid, system-dynamics model of the world. Wouldn't we be better equipped to work through the multiple, incompatible versions of “reality”—past and present -- that confront us daily on the personal, professional, community, national, world and ecological levels?

[Nonprofiteer]

Phil, On the subject of clashes of culture, I hope one thing we learned/are learning from the GiveWell explosion is that people should not come into the not for profit community from the for-profit world and say, "Don't you people know anything? HERE's how you should do it." There's nothing particularly cross-cultural (to me) about the anger of an encounter between Person A and a group of people who take Person A at face value and then discover he's actually a shill for Person B: that's just how people respond--in any sector, in any medium--when they feel they've been made fools of.

The main thing that concerns me is what we might have learned, namely, that all the people in the charitable sector whom "we" (the general public) always suspected were frauds and jerks turn out to be actually frauds and jerks! Like "we" (the charitable sector) didn't have troubles enough to begin with.

[phil]

I have carried the conversation to MeFi, as noted on the main page. Much of you all have said above is born out there. We do have a class in part between those who are best when literal and those who do best when engaged in serio ludere, serious play. Both modes have their place. Let's hope both can be lined up to achieve some good real world results. (After Holden, what? What good will we do, towards what end? That, as well, as how? With whom? Can we build the network for good purposes? I am trying.)

[JJ Commoner]

Until we out this question, the question of "what's a self? an identity", it seems to me the conversation is doomed to turn in circles.

I for one hope that people will place in question the rationalist actor model of self and espouse something more like what I would describe as “socially constructed self”.

[ Snip ...]

At the risk of sounding naively simplistic, I would say that these thinkers have in common the fact that their works have pointed to (among other themes) the deficiencies of the coherent, rational actor conception of “self”.

I remember, a looooong time ago, when over at that discredited House of Shame known as Wealth Bondage when some one named The Happy Tutor mocked a posting of mine disavowing any rationally acted self that I might have pretended to have. I believe it was a lovely gentle satiric twist, a tip o' the hat, a nod and wink of recognition ?

It was (for me) one of several important moments leading to an important friendship.

[Michelle Moon]

The distinction ends, for me, with legal identity. I am legally responsible for everything I can be shown to have done. In our society, that neatly undercuts all discussions of constructed selves.

[phil]

Michelle,

"Dura lex, sed lex." The law is harsh, but it is the law. Employment law as well. A person can be fired or their career side tracked by good and brave things said online. Hence Carnival or Masquerade turns the world upside down. You can't stop people from having serious fun (serio ludere). http://tinyurl.com/2pkmr3 Right under the noses of the police, on feast days and holidays as allowed by law. First Mardi Gras, the Lent, or are you in favor instead of a Grand Guignol? http://tinyurl.com/24rng9

[phil]

Maureen,

Yes, to this,

I for one hope that people will place in question the rationalist actor model of self and espouse something more like what I would describe as “socially constructed self”. As you know, finer and more articulate minds than mind have grappled with this question and generated some wonderful responses. Many of them so poetic that they are not often understood by the determined rationalist. Some of the stand outs in this line up in addition to Goffman, include Schelling, Austen (Jane and J.L.), Bateson, RD Laing, Derrida, Gide, Shakespeare (at least my version, Dominica), Pound, Wilde, Freud…"

Maybe we could add Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy to your list? The postmodern fractured self goes back a long way. Swift's Tale of the Tub dissolved self just this side of madness.

Why are so MeFi rational actors so incensed? Because the theory of the self as rational actor is precisely what they share in common with Holden. They are fighting their own shadow.

[JJ Commoner]

that neatly undercuts all discussions of constructed selves.

I understand the neatness of your construct, and I may be way off base here, but I think that we all have "sense of self" that play out in our heads and hearts, aided and abetted by interaction with others, that come into play during the human / social aspects of discourse.

And yes of course that is why a system of laws exists .... to draw lines, for better and worse, under tangible human behaviour, whether rational-actor selves or socially-constructed selves.

But really, I am out of my depth here.

The closest approximate situation online I can remember that might illuminate your point clearly is last years' Kathy Sierra / Mean Kids dust-up. Libel, defamation and / or death threats by an anonymous or pseudonymous actor would no doubt be able to be prosecuted is the IP address and other elements of proof were available to demonstrate indictable behzaviour(s).

[You Never Know]

I feel that if we admitted to ourselves some of the things that I discussed in the comments on the Chronicle of Philanthropy's Give & Take blog below, we would all be much better students for the Happy Tutor:

http://philanthropy.com/giveandtake/article/424/givewells-self-promotion?commented=1

We are all dubious liars on the inside, if we're worth the salted meat that they feed us in this dungeon.

[Antoine Möeller]

Maureen

I have homogeneity panic. Do I just need to relax into it?

[phil]

When the self is prematurely whole, it is very often in my experience also violent. The parts that get excluded tend to projected on The Other and attacked: Jews, Blacks, Muslims, Secular Humanists. The list of Others is endless. The thing is to have an Other who can be attacked in the name of psychic unity and group solidarity. Holden perhaps got caught up in this kind of polarization of Self and Other. My Tribe/Their Tribe. I am surprised to see how much of this has played out among intelligent people as us and them. And it is still unclear to me who the Other, the Them, is supposed to be. I feel like I should be hating someone at this point, attacking someone. I just can't see who it should be. Michelle Moon is a huge resource. Don't want her for a foe. DW is thoughtful and erudite. Holden was ok, just new and a little pushy and with tendency to polarize things. RCM, Rumple and Co got on my case, but that all worked out. Who should we go injure? Got to be someone. Now we are all so worked up, has to be someone we can hurt. (Did you know in Sparta, the nobles put the helots in a big pit to let them fight for the amusement of their masters?)

Well, Diogenes has a dog. Let's go kick her. She is old and has no teeth.

[Maureen Ward Doyle]

Homogeneity panic? Feeling out of your depths? If you're "sincerely" interested in a conversation between friends and friendly acquaintances about the notions of identity and self, take a look at this sojourn on Handmeon: http://www.handmeon.com/sojourn/home/78

In the spirit of full disclosure, my spouse is one of the founders of Handmeon and the blogger hosting the party is Jeff's dog.

Also in the spirit of full disclosure, I've just inserted my legal middle name "Ward" to my post name. Ward was my last name until after the birth of our first child, when I decided to join the Doyle club. Jeff, by the way, offered to flip me for the last name.

[phil]

So who won the coin toss?

[JJ Commoner]

MWD ..

I went to the link provided (http://www.handmeon.com/sojourn/home/78)

and read the whole page, down to "bien dans sa peau"

I do not want to be mean (and I suspect that several of the GH denizens would vouch for me as being not-mean after several years in this community) but was there supposed to be something profound or enlightening there ? Goffman's work was part of my undergraduate thesis (mind you, it was quite a while ago ;-), and the other stuff I think I pretty much "got".

[dw]

DW is thoughtful and erudite

I wanted "Fair and Balanced!" Sigh.

[You Never Know]

His crime was getting caught. I have personally done this exact same thing many times. I have written letters to the editor from fake names that are very complimentary of my organization. I have blogged in response to my own anonymous blog comments. I have called in when my CEO was on the radio to offer praise and throw out softball questions that he knocked out of the park.

I, like Holden, have simply tried to do my job: get the word out about my organization and try to build our brand.

The only thing that makes me better than him is that I did not get caught.

Forgive him and forget it. He’s a fool for getting caught, but he should just be slapped on the hand for sloppy guerilla marketing, not thrown in the Dumpster with Master Cubeta.

[Antoine Möeller]

Thank you, Maureen, I will peruse. :-)

[Josh Millard]

The law is harsh, but it is the law. Employment law as well. A person can be fired or their career side tracked by good and brave things said online.

A person can also create a purely pragmatic barrier between a pseudonym and their legal identity, without affecting any rhetorical persona in the process, if their sole concern is being unjustly restricted from straightforward discussion of their work and their field.

I think what a lot of folks from outside the Gifthub-etc community have found off-putting about the defense of masks and pseudonymity here is not that someone would elect to mask their identity for practical legal reasons, but that they'd use that defensible tactic to excuse lousy or convoluted or rhetorically evasive pseudonymous behavior.

If my concern was with sharing facts I felt needed sharing and crippling ramifications with having such comments associated with my name, it'd be sufficient to create a technical barrier -- IP spoofing, an arbitrary handle, the care to not mention or link to personalizing details about my legal identity. Anything beyond that, any persona or mask play or what have you, is a separate question entirely, and propping the latter up as part of the former feels like convenience and sophistry, not pragmatism. Not security.

Obviously it's a complicated topic; and obviously there's a lot of disagreement about what does and doesn't qualify as either 'lousy' or 'anonymous', with the cultural distance between Gifthub and Mefi being being a live-fire case study over the last few days. But I think that's a big part of it. It certainly is for me, and there's no question that I have somewhat charged feelings on the subject.

[phil]

Hey, Josh, thank you for your comment. Your comment is particularly welcome since you are yourself a moderatgor at MeFi. As moderator here, I am interested in your considered thoughts on how we got into the tangle we did and what we should learn from it going forward. Call it post mortem analysis.

You are obviously reining yourself in and that is generous of you, not to provoke another flap. I can see there are real cultural difference between the GH and MeFI tribes. I think we can also agree that Rachel Tension's comment, the one that provoked the flap was like a drive by shooting. It came out of nowhere and jarred us all. In retrospect, I am certain that Rachel Tension would want that one back, that is, would prefer not to have made it at all, or in that way. I made an error then too in explaining that the real Rachel is a significant real world player in philanthropy. I also made an error, I think, in taking some of my own emotional energy from Rachel. Some of what she was trying to get said may have been important, but it was inflamatory. The masks just led to confusion, and it went down hill. I should have made clear that I felt her comment was over the top, or incendiary. I should have absorbed energy at that point, rather than adding to it. It would have worked better if the mask had not been used and the real author had used a real name, and made a more moderate comment. I know the writer well enough to believe that the writer would agree.

So far so good, right? Now, would you be willing to help me understand what else is packed into your assessment of "lousy and convoluted"? Some of this will come down to understanding Carnival, or Masquerade. We take fun seriously. Serio Ludere. It really is a long tradition. Carnival, Rio, Mardi Gras, Venice, Bahktin on Rabelais and Medieval Carnival, The Festival of Fools, etc. This can work to good effect or be abused. A taste for serious silliness is not univeral, but that is a matter of taste. Some love Oscar Wilde, some don't. Some like Monty Python, some don't. T'aint a matter of stamping out silliness, I am sure.

Example of good effect: Rumple finds that Crumple is posting here. Rumple himself probably found that amusing (judging from a remark he made afterwards at Mefi). It lightened the tone and took tension out of it. The old fashioned term for it is banter, chaff, or badinage.

One other small point, Josh, I know that the Rumples and DW, and DNs, etc are handles at MeFi and do tie out clearly to a real world identity. Since they were new here, for us too, it was bewildering to see a swirl of so many people whose handles were unfamiliar. It was a swarm where we here are used to a slower pace.

Let me contact you by email, maybe we can find a time to chat by phone. As we said earlier in the thread "Go direct" when issues may be vexed or contain misunderstandings. Let me follow my own advice and discuss with you, to make sure we are all smiling by the time this conversation ends. Thanks, Josh.

[JJ Commoner]

I think what a lot of folks from outside the Gifthub-etc community have found off-putting about the defense of masks and pseudonymity here is not that someone would elect to mask their identity for practical legal reasons, but that they'd use that defensible tactic to excuse lousy or convoluted or rhetorically evasive pseudonymous behavior.

Very good point, I think.

I also think it's fair to say that at least in my experience here lousy, convoluted or rhetorically evasive behaviour carried out by some one or other here (or prior at Wealth Bondage) has almost always been sniffed out, highlighted and addressed.

It has been one of the key learning points for me re: serious play. There are comments that will appear completely inane or absurd to an outsider that in context often carry a key point, make an important inflection in a conversation, or stitch together much of what has gone before.

The problem for a recent arrival to such a scene is that the context has been built up from before the beginning of that conversation .. it can be somewhat like walking into a reasonably complex play halfway through the middle of Act II by an author new to you after having just grabbed a rush taxi from the airport.

Of course the better the satire, the less opaque, presumably .. but some of us are much too earnest by more than half.

[Josh Millard]

The only thing that makes me better than him is that I did not get caught.

No, that's the only thing that makes you less caught than him. To Holden's credit, there's some indication that he might actually grow a bit from this; you put yourself out there are smugly resigned to being part of the problem, and to hell with the right or the wrong of it.

[Gerry]

I think what a lot of folks from outside the Gifthub-etc community have found off-putting about the defense of masks and pseudonymity here is not that someone would elect to mask their identity for practical legal reasons, but that they'd use that defensible tactic to excuse lousy or convoluted or rhetorically evasive pseudonymous behavior.

If that is the case, then they are mistaken. The message transcript clearly shows that we do make distinctions between proper (masks) and improper (sock puppet) behavior. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference, which is the advantage of the satire. If you think something is fishy and make it the target of a satire, then the perpetrator has a chance to clarify if it matters and continue the ambiguous banter if it doesn't.

[Antoine Möeller]

Speed is king. The market is king. There will be no pause.

[phil]

Josh, I dropped you an email, would hope to have a chance to chat with you offline under the "go direct" doctrine above. Maybe we can agree on key points and make sure we bring this whole conversation to a conclusion in which many are smiling, at least as many as possible, with as few lingering misunderstandings as possible. Thanks for taking the time. I look forward to talking with you.

[Gerry]

The only thing that makes me better than him is that I did not get caught.

No, that's the only thing that makes you less caught than him. To Holden's credit, there's some indication that he might actually grow a bit from this; you put yourself out there are smugly resigned to being part of the problem, and to hell with the right or the wrong of it.

So here we have a lesson in interpretation. The post you quote is from "You Never Know". Do you think it is meant to be read straight or as a satire? If it is a satire, then how would you interpret?

[Antoine Möeller]

Anonymity is the dead horse on which we've ridden in.

"Transparency," the chill wind that shall blow us out.

[Josh Millard]

Phil:

I think we can also agree that Rachel Tension's comment, the one that provoked the flap was like a drive by shooting. It came out of nowhere and jarred us all.

And that jarring was probably the biggest source of headache in the whole interaction, yeah. But it happened, and a lot of heat came about from the back and forth and now we're cooling down on the far side of it.

I came late to the Rachel part of the discussion, and as far as I can tell it's been largely dropped both here and on mefi; if there's been more traffic in private correspondence that needs addressing, let me know, but otherwise I think it's pretty much done.

So far so good, right? Now, would you be willing to help me understand what else is packed into your assessment of "lousy and convoluted"?

A lot of conflicting views from a lot of different people, essentially. I'm neither on board with, nor railing against, Serio Ludere and such; it's not my bag, but I don't fault any of you for enjoying. In the last week we've seen people who feel much more strongly about it, however -- both sympathetic and antipathetic, largely but not entirely split between Gifthub et al and Mefi, and that's what I'm getting at.

I'm not sure I expressed it all that well with the sentence you're citing, but I'll try to unpack it here. I think there's a distinction to be made in the strong negative reactions some folks have had to the mask games, between (a) reactions to the idea of anonymity (a conversation that has gone both ways, again mostly as shared culture-shock) and (b) reactions to the seeming misdirection or responsibility-evasion that comes with not just 'anonymity' in the sense of a non-legal-name handle but a fluid and affected non-identity that could be anyone of you expressing something with any degree of sincerity or satire.

In short, for the people who believe more in a one-person-one-handle, 'say what you mean and be straightforward about it' mode of conversation (which is the norm over at Mefi), I think the persona games were perceived as unnecessarily misdirecting and evasive and convoluted, especially where the heat of the Rachel situation had people wondering what the heck was going down.

Again, not a firm judgement of the Serio Ludere stuff, just my best estimation of how it was being perceived, and why so negatively so, during that hottest part of the culture clash.

Example of good effect: Rumple finds that Crumple is posting here. Rumple himself probably found that amusing (judging from a remark he made afterwards at Mefi). It lightened the tone and took tension out of it. The old fashioned term for it is banter, chaff, or badinage.

And that's fine with me! Rumple seems a bit more comfortable with the games, and all the better if some of that variety in the represented mefi culture helps in dispensing the heat. I don't have a problem with the idea per se, whatever my personal preferences and the dominant discourse culture at mefi might be.

One other small point, Josh, I know that the Rumples and DW, and DNs, etc are handles at MeFi and do tie out clearly to a real world identity. Since they were new here, for us too, it was bewildering to see a swirl of so many people whose handles were unfamiliar. It was a swarm where we here are used to a slower pace.

I hear you there. Among whatever frustration I've felt about the perception of mefi (and, at that, the comments of a few mefites) in this whole thing, I can imagine that it might have seemed like a bit of a storming of the gates from your perspective, and I'm sorry that that contributed to some of the clash.

Not as an excuse by comparison of degree, but you might, if you're interested in what I think of as an internet swarm or mob justice, look into some of the history of a site like SomethingAwful.com -- a site that's comparitively both larger and much more vigorously (and habitually) activist about cross-site crusades. Metafilter, for its relative girth, is one of the quieter little islands on the web, which is why it has struck me as so odd to see some of the 'mob justice' angles in writeups about this whole Givewell arc.

Let me follow my own advice and discuss with you, to make sure we are all smiling by the time this conversation ends. Thanks, Josh.

Absolutely, and likewise thanks. I'm feeling pretty much through the tunnel on this, at this point, so no worry about smiles.

[Josh Millard]

JJ:

It has been one of the key learning points for me re: serious play. There are comments that will appear completely inane or absurd to an outsider that in context often carry a key point, make an important inflection in a conversation, or stitch together much of what has gone before.

The problem for a recent arrival to such a scene is that the context has been built up from before the beginning of that conversation .. it can be somewhat like walking into a reasonably complex play halfway through the middle of Act II by an author new to you after having just grabbed a rush taxi from the airport.

Yeah, and I can dig that. See comments re: swarm in my reply to Phil, above -- I see it as a problem of culture shock, not of anything inherently wrong with enjoying that mode of discourse. It's not my preference, generally, but so what?

So I follow you, and don't really disagree. Obviously, dealing with visitors when there is such a context is likely to be a rough road, but I see that going both ways as well; I left a fairly lengthy comment in today's Metatalk followup outlining some of the context for Metatalk's rough-and-tumble culture, and one of the key themes of that comment is the acknowledgement that none of this is posted over the door there. We have our own culture that can be striking and off-putting to visitors, so there's a humbling symmetry to the interactions both here and there.

[Josh Millard]

So here we have a lesson in interpretation. The post you quote is from "You Never Know". Do you think it is meant to be read straight or as a satire? If it is a satire, then how would you interpret?

Ah, but there's the tricky bit; this is materially identical to an argument posted under the same name at the Chronicle of Philanthropy, in a conversation markedly different (and more straightforward) in tone than the one here. Is the comment section of CoP posts part of the established mask-play family? Is satire somehow so priveleged that the onus is on someone not in the game to bow and step back and allow it to plant the flag whereever it likes and to hell with anyone trying to have a simple conversation?

Which is a heated way of putting it. More benignly: yes, it could well be read as satire. It could well be read as earnest and ugly. It could well be read as something different, what in the wider vista of the internet would simply be called trolling. But that ambiguity is a frustration to conversations that most people, again in that wider vista of common practice, would assume are otherwise straightforward attempts to speak plainly and say what they mean rather than evoke some sentiment through satire or whatever else.

I don't know or care who You Never Know is; if they are a student of the Tutor or some independent soul doesn't really matter, and I suppose my only regret is bothering with an earnest reply to something that struck me as suspect in the first place. This is not really my game, and I should avoid stepping into it, probably.

[Josh Millard]

And a quick coda: I'm low on sleep (ha!) and just full of comments, apparently. I'd like to reiterate that culture clash and at this point some communication fatigue notwithstanding, I'm pretty much okay with where things are. I hope nothing above comes across as too strident; if it does, my apologies. I should know better than to freestyle when I'm punchy.

Cheers.

[Gerry]

Is the comment section of CoP posts part of the established mask-play family? Is satire somehow so priveleged that the onus is on someone not in the game to bow and step back and allow it to plant the flag whereever it likes and to hell with anyone trying to have a simple conversation?

That's the point, isn't it. You never do know. If there is nothing to stop someone from assuming a mask and posting at CoP, then they will. My gloss on the point being made by the post you commented on is similar to one I made and was passed over in the now closed thread. You don't know that some of Holden's critics are not also his competitors?

If "You Never Know" is for real, then we won't ever know who it is unless they screw up. We can assume that the criminals caught always represent the dumb ones disproportionately, so the smart ones are still posting.

Let's say that "You Never Know" is an insider raising money for one or more charities and observing that kind of thing left and right. He could name names, but better to assume the mask of the type and demonstrate just how depraved they might be.

[Gerry]

One thing that the outsiders fail to realize that is referenced in JJ's post above is the depth of the relationships that can grow from this sort of long term give and take. If you stick with it, in the end it is healing.

I briefly read a few MetaFilter posts from the TinyUrl link Phil gave above, and can't help but be startled by languagehat's response to Phil's explanation of pedantry. Just because he gets it in one or two tries doesn't mean everyone does, the lessons have to be repeated for new students. On the other hand, just one brief post from Stavros reminds my why I would instantly trust this guy even though I've never met him in person.

The claim is that this more playful and convoluted style is actually more conducive to building deep relationships without a lot of preliminaries and/or posturing. I'm not saying one is superior to the other, but it should be clear that I and probably the rest of us whether long time Dumpster Dwellers or the few who have dropped in recently don't have a lot of patience for the dismissive tone of many posts at MetaFilter.

The lack of rhetorical discipline is even more shocking. As if pointing to ones tradition were to compare oneself to its historical masters. Is every Christian comparing herself to Jesus? (Ok, well some of them are, but that is a defect that would be satirized as well.) I'm not sure that we can resume the debate after the audience has crashed the stage, but it would be much more satisfying to be able to get to the end of this debate rather than leaving each side to their own conclusions. What rule of order could we adopt to make it work?

[Antoine Möeller]

privacy?
Privacy??
PRIVACY???
PRIVACY? ?
PRiVACY? ?
PRiV CY  ?
pRiV  Y
  iV  y
  iv

  i

[Holden Kornbeefski]

Yes, sir, in my pajamas, correct. Sir? Well, they say I invited it in, but that's contested. I'm sorry I shot it but it kept coming at me. It was big. And gray. With tusks and a funny trunk. That's correct, sir, no circus at all.

[Josh Millard]

The claim is that this more playful and convoluted style is actually more conducive to building deep relationships without a lot of preliminaries and/or posturing. I'm not saying one is superior to the other, but it should be clear that I and probably the rest of us whether long time Dumpster Dwellers or the few who have dropped in recently don't have a lot of patience for the dismissive tone of many posts at MetaFilter.

Sure; it's a two-way street, and you folks have just as much leave to be taken aback by our culture as vice versa, so you've got no argument from me on that front.

One of the differences that's been a key point of discussion here is the relative sizes of the groups. Metafilter has thousands of logged-in members checking in every week; I don't know how big the active Gifthub/Bondage/etc crew is, but my impression is it's a couple of orders of magnitude smaller. Which puts you in a position of being able to foster a more esoteric, more tightly-knit mode of discourse.

Where I see friction coming from that choice of mode is where it wanders out of the established covenant of your tight-knit group. It's one thing to say "this, when understood, is a good and healing method" and another to try and apply that to anything like the dynamics of larger groups and less cohesive groups. It doesn't make the method wrong, but it does make the results of the method awfully opaque to the folks who aren't part of the small group -- and there you have a kind of conversational asymmetry sprout up that, whatever your intentions, is likely to generate conflict and resentment from the larger and more general population.

And I think it's that perception, in part, that's generating a more negative response from the mefi side regarding the persona play than either of us would probably expect from a neutral analysis. That's, at least, the best sense I can make of it.

In the case of mefites and others wandering into this blog, I can understand any amount of frustration on your part, even if you accept my modeling of the situation above -- we barged in.

Where there's questions of things like You Never Know, it's less clear, and I think the responsibility for taking care to consider context and group norms falls much more to the esoteric speaker than the straightforward one.

As far as mefites discussing Gifthub on mefi, or Gifthubbers discussing mefi on Gifthub, we're bordering into the weird grey hopeless lands where there just ain't no justice; preaching to the choir on our respective home turfs is probably the worst possible framing for fair analysis, because we're comfy in our respective homes. C'est la vie.