"Mutual Respect"

[Forkbender]

Because I as a moderator have a different idea about it than some other moderators. I thought about mysticwarriors suggestion of discussing it, irrelevant as to what member is saying what and with what intent and to whom, but just abstractly, so that maybe we can find common ground on the issue and come up with clear policy.

 

[restin]

CM, I don't know if this is your true you or not. I truly don't recognize what I imagined you to be.

Examples of better forum rules.

We don't need rules.

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

but just abstractly, so that maybe we can find common ground on the issue and come up with clear policy.

Yes, discussing this is good. I think it would be good to look at all the forum rules and see if they need to be improved, or clarified, and how they may be implemented.

Regarding that citation, guilty as charged. :lol:

But I really like those forum rules. They are very clear.

BASIC BOARD RULES

We have 5 positive,
and 5 negative
Primary Rules.

First,
the positives.

1. You must be an adult,
and act like one while here.

2. You must be polite
and treat people here with respect
and with tolerance for diversity.

3. You must come with good intent,
to share and learn and give and grow.

4. You must be of good character.

5. You must abide by all board policies.


Next,
the negatives.

1. You must not post obscene, pornographic, offensive nor gory materials.

2. You must not spam.

3. You must not deceive nor defraud your fellow members in trades, in the marketplace forum, etc.

4. You must not resort to insults and personal attacks upon people here
for any reason.

5. You must not post anything racist, violent, hateful, intolerant, untrue or illegal.

Violating these rules can result in your immediate and permanent banning from the site.

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

We don't need rules.

What do you mean by that?
Who are 'we'? The moderators? Everyone who joins the forum?

 

[ararat]

I think everyone who takes all this to heart spends too much time here.

+1000

exactly what I thought.

 

[restin]

the rules you post are OK. But I'd rather see them as guidelines of the "image" of the forum. I say "we" with meaning us folks, all of us. What do you want: people that follow rules or that are nice to each other? Am I nice because of the rules? And what do you want these rules for - to nail GOD? And last but not least - we can ban the word "fuck" but does that make everything nicer? You cannot make someone nicer by making rules, you can only create the right to ban him. And this surely doesn't add to democracy or any other means of justice.

 

[mysticwarrior]

Anarchy doesn't work if people lacking respect. So we clearly need rules, not to dictate, but to use as guidelines, just as we have right now. And if other threads get wasted, then we could just point out to those guideline and tell the person to stop with that what he is doing. That's not to difficult isn't it?

You cannot make someone nicer by making rules, you can only create the right to ban him.

It's not about making someone nicer, it's about not allowing members to flame/fight and being provocative in a negative way.

Banning is bullshit, since you can't really ban anyone. You just install some software for changing your ip, then register with a new name and you are back online.

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

You cannot make someone nicer by making rules, you can only create the right to ban him.

No, that's not the only thing moderators can do. If rules are broken you can edit or delete posts that break these rules. That's already happening now with some of the other rules. In the case of the mutual respect rule it will usually involve members who've been around for quite some time, who make valuable contributions to the forum and for whom banning is obviously not necessary or desirable.

But I'd rather see them as guidelines of the "image" of the forum.

I'm glad you brought this up, because I wanted to include that in my last post, but decided not to. What image do we want this forum to have? What is the purpose of Psychonaut.com? Who is welcome here, and who can expect to get "shit thrown in his face"? What type of threads can be expected to be closed by the moderators? Etcetera.

On the site I took those forum rules from, there is an elaborate "mission statement" as well. Do we want one? Do we need one?

Am I nice because of the rules?

What matters is whether the atmosphere is nice, not whether you or anyone else is nice.

And what do you want these rules for - to nail GOD?

This is not solely about GOD, but let me answer your question specifically about his situation. I do not want better rules to "nail" him, but to put limits to how far he can go with ridiculing others and name-calling (loony, rasist, nazi, terrorist, slimy, liar, stupid, mentally ill, vain etc.) or use of sexual or otherwise offensive metaphors and jokes.

If you think I'm too sensitive in this regard (possible), creating a mission statement would help clarify things for new users: "Psychonaut.com is a place where you can expect to get your shit thrown in your face, which we call mirroring and which is primarily done by our respected member GOD, whose posts are accepted by our moderators as representative of senior psychonauts. If you have problems with these rough exchanges, go elsewhere."

Obviously stricter forum rules would also put a limit to how far I myself can go. :wink:

 

[Forkbender]

What is 'offensive'?

And why is something that is offensive wrong?

I do not have problems with name-calling, really. I think anyone who considers himself a psychonaut should be able to take a few hits, because, frankly, I believe strongly that only the ego can be offended and consider every occasion I get offended to be a lesson: look, here you are taking yourself too seriously.

If someone goes too far in blatantly attacking someone, I prefer the victim to contact a moderator, like in the quote CM posted earlier. Most of the time, though, other people will protest just as much as the victim.

 

[restin]

I don't really want to revive this thread but I want to re-take the metaphor with the mirror and being forced to watch into the mirror.

As I already said, I am reading Erich Fromm now. And I realized that he is permanently smashing my face into this fucking mirror - with every word he describes how our today's society works and how the world and man of consumerism thinks and alienates - I very much recognize myself. It hurts. It does very much so. And the possibilities I have are to stop reading and ignore the facts or understand the pain, understand what he writes, watch into the mirror and watch myself - and change.

Just some words to think about.

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

As I already said, I am reading Erich Fromm now. And I realized that he is permanently smashing my face into this fucking mirror

He isn't. He's not verbally abusing you. He has written something for all to read. His words were not meant to personally humiliate you or make you feel bad about yourself, or to make himself appear superior to you.

And that's perhaps why his mirroring is genuine and therefore gives a very clear reflection, whereas the so-called mirroring that is being discussed in this thread doesn't present a clear reflection at all. It is however tolerated because of the assumption that the person doing this aggressive type of mirroring has achieved the status of being a clear mirrror by virtue of having experienced (and integrated?) ego-death.

It's not mirroring. It's being a nuisance to some, and a source of amusement to others. In both cases it feeds the ego of the person who thinks he's capable of accurate mirroring through the medium of an internet forum.

 

[BrainEater]

+1 to fork

i think too that mutual respect is what should be the basis for conversation, and that in a internet forum respect shows like disrespect doesn't show or the other way round. of course there's nuances etc etc, but what i want to 2nd is that either victims and others will protest if some argument, statement or whatever is too disrespectful or either that "harsher rules" are not necessarily beneficial to such an environment of "verbal battlefield" however metaphoric you wanna describe it, at least that's what i sometimes would call it, and i think that the ONLY RULE should be that if someones' behaviour is becoming a "nuisance" like CM says then gentleman manner verbal humiliation towards this person could be acceptable and by that i mean not calling names, projecting your own fantasies of self-or-other-hate on them and not randomly shift your position just because of the sake of not "representing" YOURSELF or whatever psychotic attitude, but "taking the mirror away" and so making it impossible to do mirroring like CM described or such shit to feed the ego and then the community "as a whole" if such a thing exists would grow stronger as people would defend themselves against trolls, spammers, mirrorers, etc but of course the moderators could serve a purpose too and try to take the pollen from flowers to other flowers etc etc to cultivate the garden of psychonauts they have under their "wings".

speaking metaphorically but i hope you get my point.

and CM one question: how can someone verbally abuse you??? LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

peace :weedman: :finga: