Wha! Huh? Yeah? What is it good for?

Westprog wrote:

B-Lar wrote:
Of course! lets hypothesise. You are running a project of some kind and have a team who have looked at the goals and strategies for acheiving these goals. Suddenly some guy turns up and wants in. he has lots of ideas, but he has no knbowledge about the goals or strategy of the project. Now imagine that its not just one guy, but hundreds. You cant educate them all because resources are tight, so you educate those who are willing to learn. the rest are going to be counterproductive. If you havent made any efforts to understand, your criticism is going to be only fit for the bin.

Suppose that you're the guy who wanders in off the street. There's a big sign up saying "all welcome - discussion on subjects that concern you!" He walks in the door and says hello to a receptionist, who tells him that there's a special room for people who've just come in, where questions will be answered in a non-judgemental way. He joins a discussion where he sits listening for a few minutes, and then when there's a moment of silence, he asks a question, with a little joke thrown in. Suddenly everyone in the room turns and stares at him. A woman starts crying. A large man looms over him, swearing. He gets annoyed, and defensive. "I didn't do anything wrong," he shouts. Two more men creep up behind him, throw a bag over his head and drag him to a corner. "Sit there and shut up," one of them tells him. An hour later he's released. He goes to the complaints room and starts talking about what happened. The man who swore at him comes in and tells him that he's gone too far, and the same two guys grab him by the arms and throw him into the street. The next day when he walks past there's a six foot high picture of him on the front of the building labelled "TROLL".

Wouldn't you say that the mistake was to ask him in in the first place?

This This This This This!!!!!
Westprog!

Zampano wrote:

Eowyn wrote:
Relevance: we have several PTSD sufferers and several more with at least some of PTSD's symptoms as members of A+safe, and according to A+safe's ethos, they are welcome and valued members who will be met and treated as they say they need to be met and treated. They will not be told, by anyone, to do or be anything in particular related to their own healing, especially not on anyone else's timetable or for anyone else's convenience. They also do not need to report what medications, therapies or other interventions they are currently using or have gone through.

That doesn't fit with my experience at all.

Sorry, I should have been more specific - see the addition in green.

A+safe has a rather strict communication protocol, with pretty absolute "don't do that" rules and better-safe-than-sorry approach to implementing them. At least two survivors have gotten a cold reception because of that, you and Cuduggan2K2. That is a real pity, yet I also have understanding for why and how the miscommunications happened.

As I see it, the manner in which you posted was not meant to be generalizations or speaking for (undefined and abstract) others, but still looked a lot like that to many enough of the readers to elicit a negative reaction. It really stinks that you had to suffer from that your posts resembled really many posts from people that had proved to be little more than trolls. I don't believe that you are a troll. I don't believe that you meant to be condescending towards others or stir shit, but unfortunately that is the way your posts got interpreted. I see it as a communication breakdown - as if one person was speaking German and another was speaking Dutch - the languages are closely related, but if the speakers believe that they are both speaking the same language, some pretty weird misunderstandings are bound to happen sooner or later.

I warmly recommend https://www.ptsdforum.org/ and/or http://www.mysexabuse.com/ for anyone suffering from trauma-related mental pain. Both are incredibly tightly run ships (the rules are about 100 times pickier than those of A+safe), but if you can stand the nit-picking about grammar, punctuation and capitalization, it can be a very good place to support one's healing. One needs to be prepared, though, to meet a lot of xians, crystal healers and other woo peddlers (many survivors and supporters believe earnestly in whatever appears to ease their pain, and criticizing that is a seriously non-cool thing to do - or at least was when I was still active there). And for goodness sake, never, ever talk back to a mod or admin there, not even to explain - they might not answer you, and you could be permabanned immediately.

Why anyone would want to be on fora like that? Because there are 1.500+ fellow PTSD sufferers, sexual abuse survivors and supporters of them on those fora. The members grok what living with never-ending fear is, and that understanding and empathy enabled at least me to feel truly heard for the first time in my life (my first and second therapist both sucked, though the second one thankfully sucked a lot less than the first).

Zampano wrote:I joined A+ really hopeful and was willing to be as open as I could be about my experiences, and I was kicked out for responding to demands from mods with any sort of reservation.

The PTSD forum and the sexual abuse forum both draw their membership from people who have been raped, otherwise abused or have been in one or more disasters and/or combat (and some have experienced all of these - be prepared for some utterly hair-raising stories, and do remember that trauma is not a competition!) or are supporting someone near and dear with PTSD and/or sexual abuse issues. Because of this shared background, the understanding for reluctance to get personal is greater there than on a mixed membership forum like A+safe. They also actively discourage outsiders, also researchers of PTSD, from joining. Health care and medical professionals are tolerated but must not try to advice or otherwise take a prominent role in the discussion - these fora are meant for peer support.

IMO A+safe is doing a nigh impossible balancing act between openness and protecting the (most) vulnerable members, and if the membership stays as heterogeneous as it is now or the membership heterogeneity still grows (which I hope to happen), that balancing will become even more demanding. As far as I know, nobody has ever done anything quite like A+safe on the Net, so mistakes are pretty certainly unavoidable.

Zampano, I am very sorry that you got a raw deal due to how difficult a task A+safe has undertaken. I hope that you will find places where you can share your pain, while communicating (mostly) in the way that you instinctively/naturally do.

Well, I'd like to say how refreshing it is to see someone from the other site not blame their interlocutor (like is standard practice over there), and offer a reasonable explanation of what went wrong and an apology. Thank you Eowyn.

Here surely is the nub of it.

We have a description of A+ as below

Eowyn wrote:A+safe has a rather strict communication protocol, with pretty absolute "don't do that" rules and better-safe-than-sorry approach to implementing them..

And we also have a description as below :

In the forum, atheists discuss social justice issues (within atheism, and in the world at large), organize action, seek and provide support, and just hang out.

Surely these can't possibly be descriptions of the same forum.

I know that this post marks me down as an 'anti', but please note that I have never posted on the safe space, because I'm perfectly cool with different spaces on the internet, some of which aren't interested in my opinions. That's totally fine, truly. I wouldn't post on the ptsd / abuse survivors site, Mumsnet, IChurch, Conservapedia and many others either. My observation though, is that the other sites in this list make it clear that I'm not in the demographic which the site is designed to serve. Usually I don't even have to read the blurb because it's in the site's name. In the case of Atheism+ this isn't so.

Reading Eowyn's post, it seems that what she would ideally like is a forum just like the survivor's ones which helped her so much, just without all the supernatural content. I can see the sense in this because there seems to be a level where support 'from a supernatural place' is incompatible with those whose support comes from understood sources only.

I can see that this is a good objective to have, and that such an internet space would be useful. I just don't see how that is compatible with the objectives that others have for A+, as evidenced by the second quote. I'm sure that the survivor's sites don't attract people by suggesting that they're a place where 'atheists' can 'just hang out' for example.

The question raised is then what direction is A+ going to move in ? As Eowyn indicates, if it is to truly compete with the survivors' sites it needs to be moderated more strictly to 2 orders of magnitude. Perhaps there are others who want it to move in the other direction - increasing the emphasis on 'discuss social justice issues' and 'just hang out' which would indicate a reduction in the level of moderation.

As to this question, I'm neutral. I've never posted there and I don't recommend they take the advice of someone who doesn't want to post there anyway, but I can't help but empathise with those who are getting caught up in the crossfire that this confusion has caused.

piginthecity wrote:Here surely is the nub of it.

We have a description of A+ as below

Eowyn wrote:A+safe has a rather strict communication protocol, with pretty absolute "don't do that" rules and better-safe-than-sorry approach to implementing them..

And we also have a description as below :

In the forum, atheists discuss social justice issues (within atheism, and in the world at large), organize action, seek and provide support, and just hang out.

Surely these can't possibly be descriptions of the same forum.

I know that this post marks me down as an 'anti', but please note that I have never posted on the safe space, because I'm perfectly cool with different spaces on the internet, some of which aren't interested in my opinions. That's totally fine, truly. I wouldn't post on the ptsd / abuse survivors site, Mumsnet, IChurch, Conservapedia and many others either. My observation though, is that the other sites in this list make it clear that I'm not in the demographic which the site is designed to serve. Usually I don't even have to read the blurb because it's in the site's name. In the case of Atheism+ this isn't so.

Reading Eowyn's post, it seems that what she would ideally like is a forum just like the survivor's ones which helped her so much, just without all the supernatural content. I can see the sense in this because there seems to be a level where support 'from a supernatural place' is incompatible with those whose support comes from understood sources only.

I can see that this is a good objective to have, and that such an internet space would be useful. I just don't see how that is compatible with the objectives that others have for A+, as evidenced by the second quote. I'm sure that the survivor's sites don't attract people by suggesting that they're a place where 'atheists' can 'just hang out' for example.

The question raised is then what direction is A+ going to move in ? As Eowyn indicates, if it is to truly compete with the survivors' sites it needs to be moderated more strictly to 2 orders of magnitude. Perhaps there are others who want it to move in the other direction - increasing the emphasis on 'discuss social justice issues' and 'just hang out' which would indicate a reduction in the level of moderation.

As to this question, I'm neutral. I've never posted there and I don't recommend they take the advice of someone who doesn't want to post there anyway, but I can't help but empathise with those who are getting caught up in the crossfire that this confusion has caused.

Srsly, where's the like button?

Eowyn wrote:Zampano, I am very sorry that you got a raw deal due to how difficult a task A+safe has undertaken. I hope that you will find places where you can share your pain, while communicating (mostly) in the way that you instinctively/naturally do.

As I pointed out at the time, if the kind of abuse applied to Cuduggan2k2 is endemic - and it is - then there will be vulnerable people who end up being subjected to such abuse. I wasn't the only person to say this - when it happened, several people said that the experience was unpleasant and disturbing. I cannot imagine that a vulnerable person, looking for support, would find the constant fear of saying the wrong thing and being publicly (and permanently) vilified in any way a positive experience. There was no acceptance that the problem wasn't just the failure to identify someone who'd suffered a particular trauma - it was the failure to realise that anyone posting on A+safe might be vulnerable and traumatised. Any such fears were and are dismissed as "tone trolling". Eventually, as in my case, referring to the problem will result in ejection from the forum.

piginthecity wrote:Here surely is the nub of it.

We have a description of A+ as below

Eowyn wrote:A+safe has a rather strict communication protocol, with pretty absolute "don't do that" rules and better-safe-than-sorry approach to implementing them..

...
As to this question, I'm neutral. I've never posted there and I don't recommend they take the advice of someone who doesn't want to post there anyway, but I can't help but empathise with those who are getting caught up in the crossfire that this confusion has caused.

Exactly right. I've read the "rules", particularly as they apply to the Information and Answers section. To put it bluntly, they are lies. I suggested that the rules could be amended to reflect the actual situation, or else they could be enforced. I was told, I think, that the problem was with me. People post in that forum not realising that far from personal abuse being forbidden, it's almost mandatory, and that questions are not welcomed if they carry the wrong kind of assumptions, or persist in asking for justification for points of view that are considered settled and finalised.

They could perfectly well post up front that if someone doesn't agree to certain feminist tenets then they will not be welcome on A+safe. For some reason, they are unwilling to explicitly say so.

rEvolutionist wrote:Well, I'd like to say how refreshing it is to see someone from the other site not blame their interlocutor (like is standard practice over there), and offer a reasonable explanation of what went wrong and an apology. Thank you Eowyn.

Ditto. Kudos the warrior princess of Rohan. I hope that criticism of A+safe can be to some extent constructive, though venting will no doubt continue to some extent.

Cuduggan2K2 wrote:

Pitchguest wrote: the inability to voice dissent. The inability to speak your mind. The moderators and the users that parrot them made sure of that.

You can voice dissent, just not in offensive terms. Here, no such non-offense is required.

Can't even do that. I got banned from the "other forum" for denouncing The Black Panthers and The Nation of Islam. Blacks are one of their fellow victim groups and they can't be criticised. They preach the gospel of victimization over there and they are intollerant of blasphemers.

AliRadicali wrote:
I find it mightily ironic that a guy essentially telling us to think with our hearts and listen to emotional appeals is giving lectures on critical thinking.

I'm sigging this.