Thoughts about Lasto from a longtime poster

[Primula Baggins]

I haven't posted here today. That's because I'm worried about this place—not as a moderator here, but as someone who loves (loves) to post here.

I'm not sure what to do. Look, I'm a liberal. I read sites like Daily Kos, Huffington Post, TPM, etc., that have definite liberal stances, and I enjoy reading them (while being quite conscious of their bias). But the quality of the discussion—the blog comments—at most of them is abysmal compared to what we all, together, have managed to publish in Lasto at its best.

Many of those sites are unmoderated and high-traffic, two huge strikes against quality control. But the third strike is that everyone agrees with each other.

What that does to the tone is hard to describe. It degrades the discussion. Everybody agrees with each other, thinks up new mockeries, laughs at them, talks about how great their candidate is, blasts the occasional troll from "the other side" into oblivion. They aren't discussing anything; they're indulging themselves. Sure, it's fun—if you agree. But it's not a conversation. And no one who disagrees is going to subject themselves to it.

That's why I don't want to see Lasto Beth Lammen turn into Daily Kos. At its best, Lasto is a forum where people write posts that would be featured blog entries on any other site; where exchanges are thoughtful and considerate; where people apologize to each other; where almost every post contains meaty ideas, and people can disagree without anger.

That is really, really rare. Incredibly rare, for political discussions. And I say this as someone who's been reading discussions on the Internet almost since before there was an Internet.

The fact that we can do that and have done that makes me want to reach higher than what we're achieving now. I don't want us to be Daily Kos any more than I want us to be Free Republic.

I work here. I want to help it happen. But I don't know how.

Maybe at this point in a contentious election cycle it would be impossible to achieve that ideal anywhere. But I don't want to lose that standard, and I don't want us all to get comfortable with less. I don't want us to come out of this election with our sights set permanently lower.

Just some thoughts, from Prim the person some of you have posted with since 2002—not Prim the administrator.

[Holbytla]

Speaking to the collective you...

When you are backing a candidate, and I mean really backing a candidate, it is difficult to be obective. Without a decent measure of objectivity everything is colored and everything can be spun to benefit a certain candidate. Every news story is either favorable or negligible.

When you have a forum which leans in a particular direction, there seems to be a tendency towards posting in a tone and posting cetain things, because you know your audience and know how it will be received.

When there is a small but vocal minority in such a forum, there seems to be a tendency to try and stem the overwhelming tide, and what you end up with is two biased groups making a lot of noise and discussing very little.

I think the original title of this thread was far more apt and probably should have been left as is. What may have benefitted this forum were additional threads. Another for the conservative group to rally around their candidate and if at all possible, a thread that was objective where bias was left out. Which is probably a difficult thing to many.

I suppose if you really tried and envisioned writing your posts as if you were talking directly to McCain or Obama as the case may be, or knowing you were in the headquarters of the opposite party, the posts may be more discussive and less supportive.

There is nothing wrong with a place that you can go and discuss daily topics iwth like minded people, but you aren't going to get productive and meaningful discourse there in some cases.

Speaking for myself, I am so disenfranchised with Washington politics that I find it hard not to see the baggage the pols carry and the disservice they do to us. Maybe that affords me a measure of cynical unbias if not objectivity. Maybe it just makes me dislike all of them. Dunno?

I know that we aren't what we could be.here and that the measured discourse we look for won't ever happen if we can't objectively look at things from both sides. Of course you can have an opinion, but that shouldn't ever close your mind.

It isn't very productive to say "Yesssir Obama really nailed McCain's butt on the economy last night", or anything with a degree of total bias. If you make an assertment in a direction, you need to say why. And if someone offers an opposing view, you need to listen to it and not just refute it out of hand.

Keep in mind I am not addressing this towards anyone on particular.
I am just adding my two cents to Primmeh's observations and adding some of my own.

[sauronsfinger]

In an election you are going to get split opinion from people with strong feelings. There is no realistic way to avoid that and still allow people to express their opinion openly. One cannot mandate an equal division of opinion when there is no such thing in reality. One cannot mandate reporting the news events of the campaign without expecting some opinion to flavor it. One cannot expect people to change their minds and jump over to the opinion of the other side simply because of a reasonably well crafted response. This is the real world and that is not the way things work.

I can not help but notice that some of our more conservative members have opted to simply not put forth their case anymore. Maybe they felt outnumbered - I do not know. There are other sites where the conservatives have hung in there and still give as good as they get. Maybe there is a difference in personalities and temperment which permits that from some people and not from others.

It is well and good that we have this forum here. I hope it continues for a long time.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Prim and Holby, thank you for sharing your thoughts. I am appreciate them greatly.

[Cerin]

Perhaps it would be helpful if you could identify how much of the problem you feel is due to tone, and how much to the overwhelming representation of one point of view. You can moderate the tone, but there's nothing you can do about the imbalance unless you want to institute some kind of rationing program.

[Primula Baggins]

That's exactly the conundrum. There is nothing to be done about the balance; people participate here or they don't, and the ratio is what it is. And when the tone is a general problem rather than specific to one post, it's not possible to moderate without changing the character of this place into something that wouldn't be welcoming to anyone. That's out.

I think it would be possible to have this kind of imbalance and provide a more welcoming forum for the minority, if the tone were different and if people gave thought before piling on.

I suggest anyone interested in this issue read Holby's post, especially, give it some thought, and post ideas here if you wish. What do you think the main problems are? What can posters do about them? What can or should moderators do?

I am not willing to just say there is no problem. There is.

[sauronsfinger]

I realize that my opinions are strong and I have crossed swords with many here. I think that the conservatives who seem to shy away from posting here must speak for themselves. But I would like to speak for myself on why I sometimes do not post.

Recently there was an ongoing discussion in the thread about gay marriage. It seemed that the only person voicing a contrary opinion was Cerin. And she did so holding her own against several other voices. There were several times that I started to write a post, stopped, then erased what I wrote. One of the posters took the position that opposition to the idea of gay marriage was being bigoted. Now once that territory has been staked out and that label applied, how can you make headway against it? I figured that it was useless since anything said would be construed as the work of a bigot.

That is why I did not post there.

[axordil]

For me, the long and the short of it is that I spend disposable time like I spend disposable income: on things I enjoy. Lasto hasn't been enjoyable for me for a while. I'm not sure I would expect it to be even if everyone here sang in four-part harmony. It's the end of a long and bitter election cycle and everyone is more disagreeable.

Honestly, I have better things to devote my creative energies and minutes towards than arguing with people on the internet. I'm revising a novel and trying to write a short-short a week between now and the end of the year...and there's this kid hanging out who keeps asking for attention. After the moot is done with, I may not be around at all for a bit.

It's nothing personal, Prim and V, it's a matter of the finite hours in the day and finite sparks in my brain, and perhaps the finite years in my life.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Speaking exclusively as a poster, not as an administrator (or owner) of the site), I am much more interested in hearing about what my fellow posters think about the issues than having them repeat partisan views expressed by partisan pundits at partisan sites. Even more than that, when the goal seems to be to demonize the other side, I think that shuts out the possibility of any kind of real measured discourse. And that gets exacerbated when there are bunch of people all supporting each other in the demonization process. I realize that to some extent that these views are contradictory, because what some posters think about the issues is that "the other side" really is evil (or at least so it appears from the way they post). In an ideal world (again, I'm talking as poster, not as the owner of the site making some kind of dictate to people), I would like to see people make more of an effort to see the grey areas, to understand that the side they support isn't all good, and the side they oppose isn't all bad.

[Cerin]

I am not willing to just say there is no problem. There is.

But what is the problem? Have you defined it in your mind? It seems to me the way you define it is really important. Some possibilities:

1. the forum is too one-sided to afford opportunity for the kind of discourse you would like to see, which requires diverse viewpoints


2. conservatives don't feel welcome here because the liberal viewpoint predominates


3. conservatives don't feel welcome here because the tone of posting by liberals is overly nasty


If #1, there's nothing to be done. You can either have a forum that falls short of your goals, or not have it at all.

If #2, not much to be done there, either, unless you're willing to institute some kind of proportion rule.

If #3, that you can address with aggressive moderating.

Going by your first post, I'd lean toward #1. And in that case, the problem should recede after the election. Right now we're all preoccupied with the contest itself. Afterwards we'll probably have more of an opportunity to talk about a variety of topics substantively again, and I should think it would be less polarizing when it isn't a question of one person winning and the other losing.


edit: cross-post with several

[Primula Baggins]

That's one reason that sweeping and loaded terms are not always useful in this kind of discussion, even if you're certain they're justified, and even if you're applying them to ideas rather than people. There's a tendency to stop listening once you've got someone safely labeled.

I had a fascinating conversation last night with my brother in New York. He's heading out today to spend a week or ten days on the Ohio–Kentucky border as an organizer for the Obama campaign, training volunteers. Part of his training in listening that startled him was when the woman he'll be working for, who's been there for over a year, told them all to get used to hearing the "n" word. Really used to it. They'll hear it all the time. New York liberals will have to learn to hear that word and not immediately shut out or write off the person who used it—because in that part of the country, it's entirely possible for the sentence in question to be, "And that's why I think I might vote for the n*****."

He was amazed at how much power the word had, all on its own, to make him judge people.

Powerful, sweeping labels such as "treason" and "bigotry" can have the same effect in a discussion, even though (unlike the "n" word) those words are not inherently offensive. People hear them and shut off thinking, or they hear them and get angry, or they hear them and leave.

Edit: Also cross-posted with several. Plus bonus typo!

[yovargas]

I got called out for that "bigot" business. I'm pretty sure we'd all agree that there are certain viewpoints we wouldn't want expressed on this board. That one happened to be one I don't much mind seeing kept out of here.

[sauronsfinger]

yovargas - I read your last post and I really do not know what that means.
Are you really saying that anyone who opposes your views on a certain subject is a bigot and that view should be kept out of here?

I would appreciate it if you would clarify this.

[yovargas]

I hate to make the comparison because it's so much more dangerous and extreme, but I'm pretty sure Holocaust deniers would not be allowed to express their views here. If my posts had the same effect on people wanting to deny gays marriage, I wouldn't be at all upset by that.

[Cerin]

In other words, you believe there is only one legitimate viewpoint on this subject (yours).

[sauronsfinger]

And that is the impression I get also Cerin. When you attach a label such as "bigot" to any other views - no matter how carefully consturcted or considered - that all by itself puts the Big Chill on any discussion.

[WampusCat]

Perhaps from the beginning of this election there should have been separate threads for (a) even-handed and even-tempered discussion of the issues and candidates, and (b) cheering for particular candidates. Sort of like the way TORC separated the swooning threads from Movies. (Not that Movies was either even-handed or even-tempered!)

Why separate them? Because to be honest, there are times when I simply want to say that I'm particularly proud of or excited by something my candidate said or did. And I feel that I can't do that in the current thread because it would be seen as creating a hostile environment for conservatives.

Part of being a community is finding the ways in which we agree. Finding like-minded people. It's a bit hard to enjoy being with like-minded people when you get the message that you can't publicly agree with what they say.

A wonderful part of this particular community, though, is getting to know intelligent, thoughtful people who disagree with you and who can open your world view to new perspectives. I value that and wish we had a broader, yet respectful, discussion. I'm not sure we can force that to happen, though, without killing the enjoyment of posting and the building of trust.

[yovargas]

In other words, you believe there is only one legitimate viewpoint on this subject (yours).

More or less. There are a lot of social issues where that is pretty much the case, whether it be sex, race, religion, ect. I happen to think this is another one. I don't expect a lot of people to agree with me now. I do expect a lot of people to agree with me in a couple generations. Same ol', same ol'.

[Primula Baggins]

Wampus, I think you may be on to something there.

[Griffon64]

"Strong opinions, lightly held."

To me, that is a cornerstone of productive, intellectually interesting conversation. Some topics lend themselves more easily to such an approach than others. Politics defined in terms of partisianship, faith ( and dogma ), and most topics surrounding child rearing, to name a few, probably do not. Some aspects of the economy, climate change, health care, etc, probably does.

I'm in a bit of a hurry here so I don't have the time to properly Google up all the stuff I want to refer to and construct a thorough post on this ( which has been brewing in my brain for a while ). Here's a quote on the concept of strong opinions, lightly ( or weakly ) held, that came from here: http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/ ... nions.html :

Bob explained that weak opinions are problematic because people aren’t inspired to develop the best arguments possible for them, or to put forth the energy required to test them. Bob explained that it was just as important, however, to not be too attached to what you believe because, otherwise, it undermines your ability to “see” and “hear” evidence that clashes with your opinions. This is what psychologists sometimes call the problem of “confirmation bias.”

So that's a nutshell of strong opinions, lightly held. One way of having a productive discussion between people is having people who are interested in an opinion, and will put it forth with conviction and supportive facts, while at the same time not being strongly attached to it and willing to retire it if a suitable counter-argument is presented. That's the way that I, personally, enjoy to discuss topics. I won't say it is the best way. It is obvious how it can get backs up, etc, but I like it.

Also, I'm with Ax. My time, I increasingly realize, is precious. I have no idea where 2008 went, for instance, except that I have almost nothing to show for it - no writing, very little painting ... nothing done. So, I simply do not want to spend time on butting heads with people locked into an ideology that they cannot see past right now. No matter which side they lean to. I guess I'm more of a centrist. That kind of thing wearies me, is not worth spending time on for me. In a time when it is becoming increasingly important to work together, people revel in driving in wedges and tearing rifts wider. To LOLCat for a moment: Do Not Want. The hypnotic drums of partisian validation and support in numbers are beating too strongly, and my interest lies in discussing merits of both candidates calmly and objectively - and since I don't lean too strongly in either direction, I can attempt to do that with a strong opinions, lightly held methodology. But it is impossible to do any of that between all the squawks, whether framed in some clever phrase or gentle barb or outrightly projected, of "Non-holders-of-my-opinion sux!!11" I believe that from the beginning, there should have been an Obama swooning thread, a McCain swooning thread, a "neutral" discussion thread, etc etc. You simply can't chuck everything together and expect it to work. Sometimes people want to roll around in all that partisian support like a cat enjoying a soft, warm blanket Different goals: some people want intellectually interesting discussion, some people want emotional support, bonding, validation, happy-happy family fuzzy-wuzzy agreement. Why we're trying to jam all of that into one thread, I wouldn't know. I'm on record somewhere asking for some sort of split to stimulate discussion, I think.

PS: I didn't read past Ax's post before writing this, because of time constraint, so keep in mind that I may be repeating things or whatnot here, and also that I'm not aiming anything at anybody specific in this thread - especially not if your post are after Ax's because I haven't seen it yet.