To be fair combative means aggressive. Talking in circles is not the same thing as being aggressive or combative. Lots of thoughts were being repeated.
There have been multiple moderators coming in and making substantial announcements that leave us with more questions than answers. It’s confusing. Am I to understand that in order to risk more timeouts I can only respond to one post or make a reply one time?
And where did I disrespect anyone? Last lap is literally telling people they’re whining while being sarcastic, dismissive, and repetitive as well. All I did was justify my thoughts. The problem with digital text is you lose all tone and body language. When multiple posters said “we don’tknow what to expect” all I did was redirect to what moderators have said.
I didn’t want to talk on the phone or privately. Obviously many other long-time users have the same questions and if I had talked to you in private I would have had to play middle man to convert the info and I’m not on the moderator list.
As respectfully as I can say this, and reiterate my tone and language are not coming from a place of aggression or confrontation, this all would have been greatly tamped down if we members had been given more information and you had engaged with us. Instead you hovered and “liked” the posts of a poster who was actually being rude to us.
I appreciate your response and as I said I hope I am allowed to have this conversation without risking more timeouts. I politely as you to understand and give us some time as it’s literally been DECADES of us being able to interact and probe a certain way and then we are expected to change that in a matter of hours.
Perhaps little self reflection would do wonders. You feel my comments have been rude, then what on earth have the overwhelming majority of borderline hysterical posts been towards the mods/owners of Slowtwitch?
It’s not a stretch to say there has been a massive over reaction, people doing the airport ‘I’m leaving’ thing, people trying to organise a competing alternative website. The owners have even been accused of wanting to go down a religious zealot path. Sorry but it has been crazy and if that fact offends you then sorry not sorry
Me pointing this out has been meet with insults, aggression, rudeness…but hey let’s carry on with the pitchforks…
Even this thread is rude. You should be discussing bans/time outs etc via DM, calling out the mods publicly is bad form.
You do realize that @Barks_Purrs didn’t actually make that accusation, right? Might want to get your facts straight before accusing people of being offended by facts.
And to our new moderators, if correcting the record when someone misrepresents another poster’s statement constitutes being “too combative” please let me know and I’ll show myself out. I don’t care to participate in conversations where politeness is valued above honesty.
I’ve been introspective. And one of the things you should do is recognize that the thread we’re referencing reached 400 replies in a single day…one day. And it has a damn near unanimous agreement from many long time members. We are seeing agreement between users that traditionally has not happened before.
Part of being introspective also means “maybe my opinion is the minority one” and sometimes there is meaning behind the united majority.
Regarding your last point, I TRIED to ask the moderators in private. I reached out via PM. I was dismissed. I was told it didn’t matter and again I asked for details and said it was unacceptable to be dismissed so I couldn’t understand what behavior needs to change I was told “maybe this place isn’t for you.”
So which part was rude, exactly? What else was I supposed to do?
You’re conflating two separate events and you’re also dangerously close to gaslighting.
He asked me to discuss the forum changes via PM and I publicly declined. One of the other moderators PMd me offering to talk and I also politely declined. I stated why.
YOU were the one who said that this thread of mine was rude and I should have discussed this via PM. And I responded to you making you aware that I asked one of the mods via PM (Not E Dub) for more details (multiple times) and was refused (multiple times). So I took to the thread.
So take a step back, please, snd reread your own posts. Because you were the one who introduced this tangent and are confusing yourself even though I have been very clear.
That’s not the accusation you described, though. You are mischaracterizing her intent with your reconstruction. She raised a valid point given that “family values “can mean different things to different people. She’s a lawyer and she’s asking the right questions, to which we still don’t have answers.
Which do you think adds more value to this particular topic of discussion, her asking for that clarification, or your vilification of her comment?This is why the moderators need to err on the side of free speech and not more timeouts and bans, in my opinion, if this forum is to preserve its value to its long time members. I do understand that value means different things to different people here.
Two mods offered to talk to me about my reservations about the forum changes. That was BEFORE I was suspended.
WHEN I was suspended I asked a moderator (NOT E DUB) for details about WHY I was suspended so I could UNDERSTAND and AVOID it moving forward. They declined to give me any details and were dismissive of my concern.
And she is mischaracterising their intent by inferring them of being religious… Or did she vilafy them, lol I do have trouble keeping up with these catchphrases…
The term “family values” is a catch phrase among the political right in the United States. There’s context to her reading of the language. It is not unreasonable to ask, or make a statement understood to be a question, if that is the standard being applied. Keeping in mind that most of us here have absolutely no idea who bought the site or what specifically they mean by family friendly or family values.
Let’s not punish people for asking questions in the context of change and uncertainty. The owners are shooting for a family friendly site here but that should allow room for adults to communicate like adults.
I’d just like to point out that the moderators never used the term “family values”. They said “family friendly”. B&P used the term “family values”.
Family values I totally agree smacks of religious right undertones.
Family friendly makes me think overly sanitized conversation that is hyper-sensitive to being portrayed as rude or offensive. Instead of feeling like you’re having an honest, open conversation at the neighborhood pub, you’re having a calculated, reserved walking-on-eggshells experience at your child’s ultra liberal elementary school PAC board meeting.
I tried to make that distinction clear in my post, in my final paragraph. Shortly after reading her post about what they meant by it, I saw another post referencing someone dressing in drag, and wondered if LGBTQ conversations will be straying into the realm of unwelcome conversations here, as some families are not comfortable with that language or seemingly acknowledging that they simply exist. I think it’s not only fair to ask but necessary to clarify where the boundaries are on these kinds of topics, and I’m glad that her comments sparked this conversation because it does need clarification.
I live in a very conservative area of the rural south, and these issues are never talked about in a welcoming way but with derision and never around children. so while most of us can be adults and have adult conversations on the subject, other people may view it as offensive, and they may not want their children “exposed to it.” So if that is something on the moderators mind, it’s best we all know about it in advance. And I’m with her on this point: if the definition of “family friendly” Translates to, let’s not upset the social conservatives among us by acknowledging and communicating about things they don’t like or feel comfortable with, and there are no plans for an adult content subforum, then we need to know that. And I’ll need to pack my bags.
(For the record, because it’s apparently not very clear, that was a question, not an accusation.)
Yeah, broad range and we’re just gonna have to feel it out and test the boundaries like toddlers.
Like to start a new topic I was going to make a post on the recent Ig Noble prize given to the scientists who discovered mammalian anal breathing. But I found myself making a sophomoric title about anal vs. oral…breathing. Pretty benign. We’re adults. It’s about science.
But would some Google ad Orwellian overseer bot see the subject line and start bot-style hyperventilating and send a nastygram to our forum mods about them risking ad revenue? I don’t know! So I didn’t post…