01-19-2022, 08:47 AM
Not to keep this unpleasant matter alive, but one thing keeps bothering me.
Thinking about sad miscommunications in this case, reading the conversations between the mods (including Kamm) and the other posters on this matter has been like watching ships passing in the night. Everybody has been talking past each other. I offer a reflection on what seems to be happening and maybe a simple way to connect better in this case or the future. Not as a criticism of anyone, but as an observation that is meant in a positive way.
TL;DR: The mods have devoted a lot of time and effort to addressing this matter. Good for them. In retrospect, the effort might have been better received if it had been directed a little more toward listening, and a little less toward trying to defend the indefensible.
The long version:
Regardless of whatever else went on, Kamm’s abusive language was clearly way out of bounds. By using the words he did, he put himself in the wrong, no matter what. The through-line of the regular posters has been that they don’t feel comfortable with a mod being allowed to talk to posters like that. They’re way more worried about what Kamm said than what I or anyone else said, because he is an authority figure, and they see themselves as subject to being treated the same way.
The more Kamm insisted he was right, and the more the mods defended him or brushed the matter off, the more and more the message appeared to be that the “authorities” were endorsing his behavior. This brought on more and more posts condemning that standard, possibly causing Kamm to feel piled on.
The mods’ defense that they told both posters to GTFO with their nonsense didn’t address the concern. An analogy from the world of crime would be like if A kills his neighbor B’s dog, the cops brush off B’s complaint, and when the other neighbors want to know what’s up, the cops say, “Look, we told A and B to stop bothering everybody about this, and go work it out between themselves. What else were we supposed to do?” The neighbors want to know that A can’t keep killing people’s dogs, not that A and B have been advised not to publicly complain about each other.
The more the mods dug in on treating this conflict as a “spat” between two posters, rather than as a case of abuse of a poster by a mod, the more they appeared committed to allowing Kamm to treat people like this, and to be sending a message that regular posters could like it or lump it, which left many people shaken and unsatisfied. I don’t know that that was really what they really intended, but it’s the message that came across.
I think a more productive way to handle it might have been to just acknowledge early on that Kamm let his temper get the better of him on this occasion, and that his outburst didn’t reflect the board standards as to how anyone (including mods) should treat other people here. (They could have added whatever shots they wanted to at me or anyone else; the important thing is to have let the “common people” know that they did not court board-sanctioned abuse by coming here.) I realize hindsight is 20-20, and that everyone might do things differently looking back on it. It just seemed to me that this one important connection had still not been made.
Thinking about sad miscommunications in this case, reading the conversations between the mods (including Kamm) and the other posters on this matter has been like watching ships passing in the night. Everybody has been talking past each other. I offer a reflection on what seems to be happening and maybe a simple way to connect better in this case or the future. Not as a criticism of anyone, but as an observation that is meant in a positive way.
TL;DR: The mods have devoted a lot of time and effort to addressing this matter. Good for them. In retrospect, the effort might have been better received if it had been directed a little more toward listening, and a little less toward trying to defend the indefensible.
The long version:
Regardless of whatever else went on, Kamm’s abusive language was clearly way out of bounds. By using the words he did, he put himself in the wrong, no matter what. The through-line of the regular posters has been that they don’t feel comfortable with a mod being allowed to talk to posters like that. They’re way more worried about what Kamm said than what I or anyone else said, because he is an authority figure, and they see themselves as subject to being treated the same way.
The more Kamm insisted he was right, and the more the mods defended him or brushed the matter off, the more and more the message appeared to be that the “authorities” were endorsing his behavior. This brought on more and more posts condemning that standard, possibly causing Kamm to feel piled on.
The mods’ defense that they told both posters to GTFO with their nonsense didn’t address the concern. An analogy from the world of crime would be like if A kills his neighbor B’s dog, the cops brush off B’s complaint, and when the other neighbors want to know what’s up, the cops say, “Look, we told A and B to stop bothering everybody about this, and go work it out between themselves. What else were we supposed to do?” The neighbors want to know that A can’t keep killing people’s dogs, not that A and B have been advised not to publicly complain about each other.
The more the mods dug in on treating this conflict as a “spat” between two posters, rather than as a case of abuse of a poster by a mod, the more they appeared committed to allowing Kamm to treat people like this, and to be sending a message that regular posters could like it or lump it, which left many people shaken and unsatisfied. I don’t know that that was really what they really intended, but it’s the message that came across.
I think a more productive way to handle it might have been to just acknowledge early on that Kamm let his temper get the better of him on this occasion, and that his outburst didn’t reflect the board standards as to how anyone (including mods) should treat other people here. (They could have added whatever shots they wanted to at me or anyone else; the important thing is to have let the “common people” know that they did not court board-sanctioned abuse by coming here.) I realize hindsight is 20-20, and that everyone might do things differently looking back on it. It just seemed to me that this one important connection had still not been made.