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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 9 of 9. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Dinah on January 5, 2011, at 10:33:27
That may be what Dr. Bob is going for. He's encouraging us to remind each other of the civility guidelines. He's gone for extended periods of time, and if he reads notifications at all he doesn't act on them in a timely way. He eventually shows up and hands out admin actions. I think it would be more useful to hand those out in a timely fashion rather than wait until things have died down and then stir them up again by PBC's and blocks. It can start the unpleasantness for the incivility recipient all over again as people rush to defend the person he's PBC'd or blocked.
Perhaps that's his vision for Babble's future. A vision without poster/deputies, where all posters are essentially called on to do deputy duty themselves. But without the power to actually effect change.
I don't wish to feel the responsibility to stop a bad situation without the power to do so. Notifications certainly don't have any power. I don't know that they bring a quicker response than doing nothing does.
The negative feelings engendered by the situations get in the way of my responding positively to people needing support. All my emotional energy is tied up in the negative situations.
It's not to my taste. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. But it's not to my taste.
Why am I suspecting that Dr. Bob's response will be "Babble can't be everything to everyone. I wish you well." which always sounds to me like "Don't let the door hit your backside on your way out."
Posted by Solstice on January 5, 2011, at 13:52:48
In reply to I don't think I like a peer moderated forum, posted by Dinah on January 5, 2011, at 10:33:27
Dinah -
I am so sorry about my post inadvertently playing a role in brushing against something that is the source of great pain for you.
I have areas of trauma within me that at this point, don't disrupt very often. As the spaces between events have gotten longer and longer, I've at times thought that maybe they've gotten less sensitive. In some ways they have, but I DO get caught off guard by how quickly and deeply some things will affect me. I've described it in the past to others as being like being a burn victim with extraordinarily sensitive and damaged tissue.. and someone comes by and touches it softly, or even just breathes on it, and because of the extraordinary pain underneath that damaged tissue, I react as if a hot, searing iron has been slammed into me. What's been so tricky about dealing with it is this:
1. I didn't' deserve the trauma that created the injuries in the first place
2. In some ways, I think anyone coming near me should just 'know' that they are near all that damaged tissue (it's clear to me - how come they can't 'see' it? Are they blind? Do they just not care?). So I think they should make sure they don't touch it or even breathe on it.
3. In other ways, I really do know that it's unreasonable to think that my painful tissue damage is visible to others. So maybe it is not even logical for me to think others can be careful around that stuff.So how do I deal with THAT? It's a never-ending struggle. I have had a great deal of trouble knowing how to protect myself.. how to protect my injuries without isolating myself from caring relationships. My therapy has helped a LOT. What I've noticed, is that some areas of sensitivity have become much less sensitive - primarily because of my therapeutic experiences with rupture & repair. It was fairly recently that I related an IRL experience to my therapist, and I didn't even realize how big of a deal it was until my therapist pointed it out! My trauma is rooted in authority figure perpetrators. Without going into the blow-by-blow detail, this IRL authority figure experience had all the dynamics that maybe even a year ago would have sent me into a tailspin and collapse. After telling my story, T went through every detail of it pointing out at each and every turn how I negotiated that thing with startling skill and competence that led to an extremely gratifying result. And I hadn't even noticed it. At the core of my response in that situation was that my defenses were not at all triggered by a series of things that a year ago would have triggered a catastrophic reaction in me that would have ultimately been self-destructive.
So T asks: "So Solstice, what prevented your defenses from being triggered?" I remember it being like a slow-motion rush of recognition that was thrilling to put words to as I said "I don't think I knew any other way to respond!" T looks at me with curiosity and says "What do you mean?" As I continued to talk about it, I told T that during the last three years, as I've holed myself up in a cave of therapy where I was mortally afraid of putting myself at risk outside of that cave, over and over and over again I experienced multiple times where I challenged T - without even once encountering a defensive response. At times, my T got pretty frustrated with my reluctance/refusal to leave my 'cave.' T worried about it creating over-dependence, etc. But what I realized when we discussed that whole thing, is that as a result of my experience over a three-year period of time of gradually experimenting with ever-increasing levels of stressors on the interpersonal dynamic of me the 'small' patient coping with T, the powerful authority figure... bit by bit I increased the pressure on the relationship without ever encountering defensive/UN-therapeutic responses. It's like it filled up the memory card with new data. So in an IRL event of great stress, immersed in a sea of things that would have been huge defense-triggers, I responded to it without a single defense being triggered. No anxiety to swallow up my competence. It was like I just automatically responded from the only way I now knew to respond. The trauma that had plagued me for so long had been starved - and a healthier 'me' was directing me. And it was based on the imprinting of my therapist's non-defensive responses to me over a long period of time - even when my unsophisticated way of communicating would have merited a defensive reaction from T.
Anyway, my point in all this, Dinah.. is that I know what it's like to have trauma triggered. And I wish I had not played a role in calling up painful things for you. It would be arrogant of me to think that just because I've had some recent successes that I am somehow out-of-the-woods. I know better. So please don't think I see myself as 'cured' and you as 'not cured.' I don't. But I do think that our being triggered and re-experiencing painful trauma can interfere with our being able to see our strength. You've got lotsa strength Dinah - and if you can't believe in your ability to weather this situation, then I will believe it for you. Your staying may not be about you needing babble, but I believe something deep inside you won't let you leave because you care an awful lot about the well-being of the community. I would sure feel a lot of loss if you left.
Solstice
Posted by SLS on January 5, 2011, at 13:58:32
In reply to I don't think I like a peer moderated forum, posted by Dinah on January 5, 2011, at 10:33:27
Me neither.
Unfortunately, we can only guess at what Dr. Bob has used us for. Your guess is as good as mine, but there is a lot of material here to work with.
Is it idealistic to work towards a website of self-moderating idealists? Are the rules of civility changing the way we speak? Of course. The bigger question is whether or not the rules change the way we think.
It may be that, for the sake of an experiment, Dr. Bob must remain unworried about individual posters leaving if they are leaving because they don't choose to conform or just can't understand what is being asked of them. The doctor might be counting on attrition to weed out the people whom will not conform and add to the homogeneity of the population.
Lately, I think the good doctor has been increasing the magnitude of the experimental pressure being applied.
Lots of material here...
- Scott
Posted by Maxime on January 5, 2011, at 14:10:27
In reply to Re: I don't think I like a peer moderated forum » Dinah, posted by SLS on January 5, 2011, at 13:58:32
Scott, your post was amazing and hit the nail right on the head! Were you a writer before you started to suffer from depression? Because your post are always so well crafted.
Posted by Dinah on January 5, 2011, at 14:16:52
In reply to Re: I don't think I like a peer moderated forum » Dinah, posted by Solstice on January 5, 2011, at 13:52:48
Please don't see yourself as in any way responsible. You aren't.
I do care, or I did care, I don't know.
But at some point I do need to protect myself. I lost an entire morning's work to Babble this morning. I can't afford to do that. I can't afford to be upset.
I may have some sorts of courage. But I don't think I have this sort of courage. I'm not sure it's healthy for me to have this sort of courage.
I became involved in Babble and learned to care because it was a moderated forum. It still is, I guess. But not very regularly. I don't think it's healthy for me to be in an environment such as Babble is now.
Posted by Dinah on January 5, 2011, at 14:20:17
In reply to Re: I don't think I like a peer moderated forum » Dinah, posted by SLS on January 5, 2011, at 13:58:32
Dr Bob has never let himself worry overmuch about any poster or group of posters leaving, that I can see anyway.
I guess you can't if you're going to run a website.
It's up to individual posters to decide whether the present atmosphere is one where they wish to post. If what made posting here agreeable changes, it may no longer be the right place for them to post.
I can only infer what Dr. Bob intends. I don't have a really good grasp of what he wants, even when he tries to explain.
Posted by SLS on January 5, 2011, at 17:52:00
In reply to Re: I don't think I like a peer moderated forum » SLS, posted by Maxime on January 5, 2011, at 14:10:27
> Scott, your post was amazing and hit the nail right on the head! Were you a writer before you started to suffer from depression? Because your post are always so well crafted.
That was a well crafted compliment!
Thanks.
- Scott
Posted by SLS on January 5, 2011, at 17:55:42
In reply to Re: I don't think I like a peer moderated forum » SLS, posted by Dinah on January 5, 2011, at 14:20:17
> Dr Bob has never let himself worry overmuch about any poster or group of posters leaving, that I can see anyway.
> It's up to individual posters to decide whether the present atmosphere is one where they wish to post. If what made posting here agreeable changes, it may no longer be the right place for them to post.
But I feel powerless when I believe that I can't accomplish anything to make this website what I want it to be.
;-)
- Scott
Posted by jane d on January 5, 2011, at 22:47:39
In reply to I don't think I like a peer moderated forum, posted by Dinah on January 5, 2011, at 10:33:27
I've been thinking for a while that one of the problems is that the site is neither a heavily (and continually) moderated one nor a totally peer moderated site. I think that causes some threads to get really unbalanced. Who knows what a truly peer moderated site would look like here? One where half the posters weren't waiting futily for Bob to handle offensive posts in accordance with the current rules? I do think we have a situation here where the voices of people who respect the goals of civility (if not always the actual implementation) are selectively filtered out.
I know I will sometimes refrain from responding to totally outrageous posts because I expect them to be handled by Bob. And then they aren't - at least not promptly. And someone who should have been supported appears to have no support. On an unmoderated site I might (and sometimes have) jumped in myself with posts that while fair would probably be considered uncivil here. I'm not saying I haven't seen witch hunts on unmoderated sites. I certainly have and they are ugly anywhere they happen. But they aren't quite as one sided as they tend to be here. It's certainly struck me over and over again that some of the posters crying loudest about the unfairness of being asked to be civil are, at the same time, gaining greatly from the protection of those same rules.
I have to admit my personal tastes have always run towards way less moderation than I think you (and others here) prefer. But I have accepted that this is a moderated site and I can live with that. I can even appreciate the good things about it. But I do wish it was a little more clearly defined.
In rereading your post and mine I think the delay in official response is a big part of the problem. While there is no response this is an unmoderated site. Then, much later, the response comes and it's suddenly strictly moderated again. I know that's a logistical problem with a volunteer moderator. I'd certainly hate to be deluged with pop up ads everytime I came here in order to pay for moderators or for more of Bob's time. I'd also hate to see this become a site restricted to those who could afford to pay for it. I don't know how you fix it. I do wonder if relaxing some of the rules would make the transitions less jarring.
This is the end of the thread.
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