People, I know it's the holidays and a lot of us are feeling bouncy as fuck, but I've just had three threads go majorly not-safe-space this week, and I'm feeling deeply stretched trying to maintain a safe space here for myself and others. I was already planning to take next week off because of my illness, and this latest spate of bouncy castle unsafe comments is not helping.
Here is a reminder post about the blog policies and how not to make my life harder, that I expect to be taken to heart.
On policies: The comment policy is required reading to post here.
On receiving moderation: If I have to call you out for breach of the comment policy because you made a poor word choice or were temporarily possessed by internet demons or posted before coffee or made a genuine mistake like we all do sometimes or whatever, the right thing to do is acknowledge the correction and do better. The wrong thing to do is grind the thread to a halt to defend yourself into the ground, gripe about how awful it is that I assumed the worst of you, and complain that I don't hand out benefit-of-the-doubt cookies on a board with over 1,000+ uniquely named commenters. I expect and demand good behavior here, and when I point out that you fucked up, you have the decision about whether to accept the correction and do better or to argue the point into the ground and take up all my spoons for the day.
On posting: Post responsibly. Accusing people of logical fallacies or of insincerity or insinuating that they don't know what they are talking about is going to be taken by a lot of people as fighting words, and should be avoided if what you really mean is just a plain ol' I-don't-like-that-opinion. If you disagree with an opinion on the board, try offering your own opinion onto the pile and see if it convinces anyone to change their point of view, rather than accidentally engineering a flamewar with accusatory words. I spend a good deal of time on choosing my words carefully, and I expect others to do the same.
On framing: Posts on this board are not "attacks" on authors or characters. Authors and characters do not need to be "defended". Moderation decisions are not me being annoyed or emotional or hysterical or angry. Statements about authorial intent must be tempered with the knowledge that Intent Is Not Magic and that Death of the Author is a valid deconstruction approach.
On pressuring: Speaking of, do not tell people how they should think or how they should write or how they should approach the literary texts on this board. YOU can share how YOU approach texts and what works for YOU and why it works for YOU, but the minute you start pushing your approach on other people is the minute that you're crossing a line.
On language: Points can and should be made about fictional characters without reaching for marginalizing language against commonly marginalized groups. If I can't tell that you're using the term deconstructively, then we have a language issue that needs resolution. When in doubt, discuss the offending behavior rather than reaching for name-calling as a conversational shorthand.
On binaries: Please refrain from characterizing complex discussions into two discrete buckets: your side and everyone else's (whose side you are now going to helpfully summarize for everyone reading along). This is the LaHayean fallacy, where atheists and Wiccans are identical because we both don't believe in Jesus, and it's also silencing when you interpret other people's opinion for them.
On mind-reading: Speaking of which: do not tell people what they think or how they view things. Responding to people's words is engaging; telling them what they think based on your interpretation of their words is silencing. There is pretty much never a need to sum up another person's position on an discussion before adding your own to the fray (see "addressing comments" below).
On addressing comments: When possible, try to address the thread at large instead of the OP writer in specific, and try to write comments that don't request a response from the OP writer. (Like, "How do you explain...?" or "What do you think of...?" or "How does this compare to your book where...?") Instead, contribute to the discussion by making I-statements. ("I explain it this way...", "I think of it this way...", "I see a parallel between...")
People on this board, myself included, have a limited amount of time to respond to specific questions, and are up against strong cultural conditioning that says that "ignoring" direct questions makes for a rude person. Whenever possible, please respect others' time and spoon-budget by allowing them to decide if they want to respond to your comment rather than asking them to do so directly.
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Please do unto others here as you would have them do unto you, and don't make me brush off the banhammer over the yuletide holidays. Thanks.
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