Making Quartertothree a more welcoming place

Yep. As seen in all those pictures floating around right now with the people wearing the Trump campaign shirts saying “Trump 2016: Fuck your feelings”.

Correct. It sucks, but that’s the place we’re at right now. It’s still good that this thread exists and the other one too. There has been some reasonable discussion even if it doesn’t end well.

Overall, Qt3 is better than it once was IMO. I’ve lived through all the times here. This is probably the most reasonable it’s been across the board. Everything can improve, but be thankful for small victories is how I see it.

Whether you think it’s correct, or fair, or accurate, or whatever, i would bet the people here who are not “jumping on board” with making it more welcoming aren’t doing it because they don’t want Qt3 to be welcoming but rejecting the whole premise as a loaded question, like the old canard about “Have you stopped beating your wife?” (which if you haven’t heard it, is supposed to evoke a yes/no, which, either way, gets the person to admit beating their wife).

It’s the equivalent of showing up at Al Bundy’s house while he watches the big game, alone and silently, thumb in belt and beer in hand, and storming in going “stop ruining the world you male chauvinist pig!”. At least from their perspective.

Absolutely true, I can’t argue with your feelings because they are yours and yours alone. But at some point we (i.e., society) need to agree on some objective principles and definitions, otherwise crosswalks are going to become very dangerous as drivers and pedestrians rely on their feelings about whether to hit the brakes or step off the curb instead of that fascist, patriarchal traffic signal.

TIP: in Dallas, we are already halfway there, I recommend not being the first into an intersection after a green light, or blindly trusting that walk signal. I can’t decide whether this means I have picked a weak metaphor or the perfect metaphor.

I don’t mean to downplay the value in agreeing on a set of terms, but that’s kind of always going to be a moving target. We all have baggage of some sort, and we all carry our own interpretations of how we perceive words.

I mean hell, just look at this ongoing discussion over a relatively simple word like “shrill”. It’s got a basic meaning, but due to our own lives experiences can carry a lot of context. And if you and I bring totally different contexts to the table, it doesn’t necessarily mean that one of us is wrong. It means we have to work a little harder to understand each other.

Now from my perspective, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Just calls for a little empathy. I’ve been thinking a lot about empathy lately, what with trying to help raise a 3 and 5 year old. I’m finding it’s really easy for them to recognize when they perceive they’ve been wronged, but a much heavier lift to recognize when they’ve wronged someone else. Happens all the time, and not always by conscious thought. Just takes trying to look at things from someone else’s point of view to get a better handle on things. When I talk about making this place more welcoming, that’s mainly what I’m talking about. Not shifting the underlying meaning of words. Just realizing that the underlying meaning isn’t always the end of the discussion.

I absolutely respect your choice, based on your lived experience. You choose to forgive the transgressions. But some people choose to fight the transgressions. And I respect their choice too.

At the very least everybody should be free to choose, instead of being asked to conform. People being asked to “grow a thicker skin” is essentially being asked to conform, that whatever works for somebody else must work for everybody.

IMO there is no hard and fast rule on when to forgive and when to fight transgression. It all depends on circumstance.

It really isn’t though. Asking someone to listen compared to those people telling everyone why they don’t believe those experiences are real enough to care about is not the same thing. What’s the goal of this other perspective? There is a stated goal here. More diversity, more welcoming to all sorts of new members… what’s the goal of this other perspective other than to be counterproductive so they can get more of the same.

More of the same will result in the same, and if we want more people with similar interests but different life experiences, more of the same does not work.

The feature exists, it’s under Admin, Logs, Watched Words. When the word (or regex) trigger is hit, the possible options are block the post, flag the post, censor the word, or require approval for the post.

What doesn’t exist (and oddly enough has more legitimate uses than you’d think) is “silently replace this word with this other word”. So if you were looking for some gently touched shenanigans, that’s not yet possible.

That is why severe objection to a single word is so troubling to me. If we can’t give an inch on a single word… with thousands of words to choose from… then that’s just sad and depressing. Easy changes should be easy.

There was another thread here where someone used ‘raped’ in a negative way. Some people suggested that they not use that word. So then the OP pretty much apologized and the rest of the people in the thread thanked them for changing the post. It was blameless and pleasant. This is how it should work.

Agree 100%. Easy things should be easy.

(I don’t know that I have ever really used “gypped” much in conversation but I totally did not realize the derivation of the word was from “gypsies” until recently. Whereas “jewed” was clearly always an epithet.)

Keep whacking that straw man. I’ve already said I care little about the word shrill one way or the other, my concern has always been with “when should an objectively neutral word become forbidden?” That is literally what I typed upthread, copied and pasted into quote marks.

It’s clear that some people draw the line at one person, and others much higher. Fair enough, people differ. Consensus is not possible, because (IMO) there are varying degrees of personal tolerance for a claimed offense by another. Nor is there agreement on whose will should prevail (or whether will should be the deciding factor). Some can’t bear the idea of any hurt feelings, some question whether such claims are sincere or manipulative, and (where I tend to fall) some believe that micro-managing each others’ discourse is a bad idea in a heterogeneous society because it interferes with communicating in good faith.

And all I see you doing is humble-bragging about your perceived status and doing this playground shit where you follow me around and yell “you suck because you love THAT WORD.” It’s not the best look in my estimation, but I’m not not thinking things are going to change.

So things are going to change?

You know what makes a forum more welcoming?
Like buttons.

Or we could a page out of Discord’s playbook and have emote reactions people can upvote below each post.

🏆

(applause)

Well, I guess it depends on whether you care about one person or not.

So for instance if my friend were an Iraq vet who doesn’t like it when you bring up the Iraq war, then I would not discuss the Iraq war in their presence. So I suppose that means I draw the line at one.

Maybe you would treat your friends differently, and you would keep talking about whatever war you damn well please unless a certain threshold number of sensitive vets were present? Or maybe your attitude is that nobody on a forum really counts the same as an actual friend, so hurting people’s feelings on a forum is less of a problem? But if either is true, then people will likely judge you as an ass.

Your hypothetical: Private conversation, prior knowledge, personal presence.

This situation: Public forum, no personal presence, no knowledge of who is reading.

Given these differences, I don’t think we have an apt analogy. Particularly given how easy it is for any user of the internet to choose what to see and read.

I would be surprised if anyone does, but I suppose that depends on how closely one defines the word “friend.” If I recall, you prefer broad, inclusive definitions rather than precise ones, so it could very well be that you could regard many more people as friends than I would, including people who you have never met in person. That’s not the definition I would use. Real life is not 'net life and I don’t conflate the two.

That said, I’m favorably disposed towards the vast majority of the forum, and generally enjoy reading what they want to contribute. Unless what they want to contribute is their vision of how others should contribute. We already have reasonable rules, Tom put them on a sticky for all to see.

Now that I think about it, that’s what makes the 'net forum as a conversational venue interesting, all you know about people is what they choose to contribute. It’s also valuable experience in realizing that there are vastly differing approaches to things that you and the people around you take for granted.

All it takes is a quick look at some random Reddit subs to see that the level of discourse here is at a higher level than average. When it comes to the internet, I want to know what people think, and would rather they be honest rather than self-edit themselves into blandness. So I suppose I consider the responsibility for avoiding getting my feelings hurt on the internet to be mine, and expect that others do the same.

I suspect you don’t agree, but that’s just what happens when people interact at this level, people disagree. I also suspect that’s why a lot of news sites have been deleting their comments sections, they are tired of disagreement. Their sites, their rules.

Fantastic episode. One of the best, if not the best.

100% agreed.