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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Jul 20, 2007 - 11:48am PT
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OK.
I'm up and back at it.
Its hard work, but it beats work and somebody has to do it.
Where wuzz I...
So Oli,
In the end, this Forum has lots of maybe not so interesting stuff, dross, to wade through, whether it be thread content or the post topics overall. Yet, every time someone puts up a trip report (TR), or Oli, or Jello or anyone else with heart writes a passage, or someone new like Doug Robinson shows up, this place is renewed & elevated. Like salmon swimming upstream, the lily growing from murk, or the diver going for pearl, good things happen in fertile places and lots of decay and struggle is always evident, present, and somehow crucial to the whole living system. Vigilance is the call and it is rewarded.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Jul 20, 2007 - 12:03pm PT
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Aye!
We eat lightning & crap thunder.
Raise a sail now and set forth into the bracing winds:
Tho salt stings the cheeks and storm churns the bowels, the black firmament is struck with guiding lights.
Yeah, sometimes we must wait for fog to clear,
Or be damned and burn through the murk with the torch of our hearts, cut it with sharp and able bones...
yahahahaha!!!
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Melissa
Gym climber
berkeley, ca
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Jul 20, 2007 - 02:29pm PT
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"But a last question, Melissa, since when did anyone have to "determine" who the ants were, or what an ant is? Either it's an ant or it isn't. I think even an ant might know it's an ant."
The truth is, Oli, I don't know who you consider an ant or what you consider ant vomit.
Clearly you and I value and expect different things from our Supertopo interactions. That's why neither or us should get to decide who is worth reading and who is not.
"But I'll shut up, rather than look like a troll. Nice way of censoring me. Insult me right out of there."
Choosing to back off a topic b/c others have verbally disagreed w/ you or questioned your motives is not censorship. Choosing to delete someone else's posts who is otherwise trying to be 'heard' is censorship. Can you really not see the difference?
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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 20, 2007 - 03:07pm PT
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About as bad as bug juice all over the window are people who don't read or follow what you say and put words in your mouth or clearly reveal they aren't hearing a thing you say. I can't imagine why it's so difficult to understand my spirit of intent and how some should so absurdly misconstrue it. Apparently you haven't read above, where I have clearly said I have no interest in any kind of censorship. I've said it about fifty times. That means I have no desire to quiet or suppress or shut up anyone with whom I disagree or who disagrees with me. I am not that small. I am more than happy to engage in debate on most any reasonable subject, with almost any relatively rational person. But you keep saying I want to censor people, even though I keep saying that's not what I want to do. I don't mind at all if the forum "talks back." That's what it's supposed to do. Did you think I wanted only to speak by and to myself? But something has to meet even the most minimum requirement to be called "talk" or "discourse," and some things are nothing more than bug juice on the windshield. They get in the way, whether or not one has the ability to look past them. I was trying to hear what the options are for cleaning up the bug juice off the windshield. That's my metaphor for the green vomit or yellow innards that little vapid people spew apparently to get attention. So far, most of what I hear is simply that we should ignore the creeps. Or I get those who lash out at me for wanting to censor. I could care less if someone disagrees with me. If you haven't figured it out yet, about half the world of climbing disagrees with me or is irritated with something or other I say. I've learned to live with that just fine. But when the bug juice gets so heavy, it gets harder and harder to see through it and around it. Most people, I would think, would want to clean it off. Those most threatened by such a suggestion, appear to be strangely allied to the bugs or maybe are bugs themselves at heart. I've heard it said that whenever the devil is about to be cast out, he raises a big uproar. Don't know if that applies here, but there is a lot of noise over a simple inquiry about possibilities for cleaning off bug juice.
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Melissa
Gym climber
berkeley, ca
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Jul 20, 2007 - 03:17pm PT
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Oli...would you name names? I really don't see much of these pure-vomit posts of which you speak? The specific complaints about threads that I've seen have had nothing in them that I would think didn't deserve to be here. (karma thread, living history thread, use of profanity) If these aren't the sorts of things you had in mind, specifically, what and who is?
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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 20, 2007 - 04:52pm PT
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I guess I've gotten too tired of this subject to care anymore. I see the mentality of those who have been here much longer than I, and I really don't want to tread on their comfort zones. I just opened a discussion, and thought such things might be worth talking about. But I really have nothing more to contribute. It seems too much of a struggle even to communicate what I'm actually saying. I'm sure Werner will have a clever quip that would serve to end this thread.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Jul 20, 2007 - 08:06pm PT
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... a kid physically spewing on the table forces everyone there to actively participate in THAT event, whereas me "spewing" words here on this forum IN NO WAY forces you to read it ...
Just don't clip the vomit.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Jul 20, 2007 - 08:15pm PT
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Oli Wrote:
"I just opened a discussion, and thought such things might be worth talking about."
Things are worth talking about Oli.
This is just what it looks like.
We're a rough bunch.
Most of us understand your frustration; eventually there is nothing left to say about it.
You can always tell us a story.
-Or help get one told.
Maybe help us out on the Mark Powell Thread?
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Ouch!
climber
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Jul 20, 2007 - 08:20pm PT
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Wonder
climber
WA
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Jul 20, 2007 - 08:24pm PT
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"don't want to tread on their comfort zones. "
I do sometimes find comfort in anarchy.
L8, mon.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Jul 20, 2007 - 08:37pm PT
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Here it is Oli,
Maybe migrate to this thread for a bit:
"El Cap 50 years ago today"
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=418863&tn=0
We need help formulating some questions for Mark Powell in that thread.
As you have just given an interview to Climbing, perhaps your input would be fresh & instructive.
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jstan
climber
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Jul 20, 2007 - 08:53pm PT
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Pat:
I was just one of the many who entirely support where you are trying to get to. What is not so clear is how to get there. There are probably many lurkers out there for every poster, so we may be making much more progress than is apparent. People are thinking about the points you have raised. Ouch! is on it so success can't be far away.
It has always been that way hasn’t it? We figured it out before so, together, we can probably do it again.
Getting away for a bit in the 50 year thread is a first rate idea.
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Raydog
Trad climber
Boulder Colorado
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Jul 20, 2007 - 10:48pm PT
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RE:
"now I feel cheap, a little dirty even."
hmm, this thread has hope after all...
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John Moosie
climber
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Jul 21, 2007 - 12:57am PT
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The younger you are, the more spew you have been exposed to and the more inured you are to it. Is this a good thing? I am not certain it is a good thing because it becomes easier and easier to not feel anothers pain. Yet the reality is that cleaning up the mess is a form of censorship. One persons slime is another persons form of expression.
Personally, I would like to see us all clean up our efforts a bit. Do a form of self censorship. Some could learn to not be so superior, some could learn to not be so arrogant, some could learn to be less egotistical. We all could learn something.
Do I want squeeky clean? I don't know. I use to play rugby and football and I still like some of that down and dirty action. But when we played pickup games we banned the dirty players, because we didn't want to get hurt playing a game.
What I do know is the more you use things like swear words the less affective they become. I like my words to have meaning. I want my yes to be yes and my no to mean no. When I swear, I want it to have the right impact. I probably swear too much for that.
Think about the different generations. It wasn't that long ago when there were no swear words on TV. Movies barely had them. Even my generation didn't have it that much. Can you imagine Bonanza today. Hoss, you stupid effing brokeback gay pig. Or how about Maxwell Smart getting jiggy with agent 99. And today that would be shown to a third grader.
You think it is so easy to skip a post. I don't. I skim more, but I still see things and they still bother me.
Wes, do you notice that you sneer at people when you speak to them? Maybe you don't care, but I do. I care because I know that to get good stories to flow, those who have them need to feel welcome and appreciated. Or they just don't tell their stories.
Is that pandering? Maybe. So what. I don't see it as such, I see it as just trying to be friendly. But even if you do, why do you think it is such a big deal? Is it because you think you should be pandered to also? Or your friends should be? Or do you see it as some kind of weakness. Because what I see here is that lots of us just plain ol appreciate a good story, especially if it involves climbing, climbing history or the great outdoors. So we work to make the right atmosphere available to those who have the stories.
Whats wrong with that? And why wont you help? Do you really get so much pleasure from acting superior? Because eventually you will learn that thats a small mans game.
Oli, I hope that you stick around. I don't think anyone here really wants change. I think that you see that now. A few do, I do, but what I want to see change is that people learn to show a little more respect to each other.
Around a real campfire, the big dogs would probably throw someone who was messing with the good times into the river. Thats just not as possible on the internet.
Peace
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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 21, 2007 - 03:47am PT
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Thanks Moosie and John Stannard. Lots of good thought. I feel no more desire to go forward with any of my ideas or inquiries. Several people here actually continue, after everything I said, to say I want to censor. They can't follow what I'm saying at all, so I'm not going to force it on them. As in the movie, apparently we have a failure to communicate.
Let me end with a story, since I haven't told one in a while. How I feel right now might be a tiny bit like how Bridwell may have felt (at the end of the story):
Bridwell yelled at me in Camp 4 to get my gear and come with him, as someone had fallen on the Apron. We needed to go do a rescue. Several others, including Mike Covington, joined the run to the cars. When we got there, a leg was sticking out about 30 feet above the ground on a ledge. Another climber was standing on a ledge several hundred feet above. The route was Goodrich Pinnacle (left side). The climber, who owned the leg sticking out from the ledge, had been rappeling, and the anchor pulled. The fellow fell to his death. Not one of us wanted to go up that thirty feet to see the gore. Bridwell worked up the courage and did a lieback up a corner, arriving at the ledge. He stood on the end of the ledge, and turned around, facing outward, leaning with his backside against the main wall. It was clear his face had turned white. He stood there, simply gazing out away, toward the Royal Arches. He clearly was disturbed. The fellow's brain was about twenty feet from his skull, on the ledge. Anyway, Covington chose to second Bridwell and do the route up to the climber above, who had no rope now or way to get down. When they reached him, Jim started right away setting up a new anchor for a rappel (to get the guy down). As Jim was hammering in a piton, the fellow (having just seen his partner die), blurted, dead seriously, "You don't have to overdrive it."
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jul 21, 2007 - 09:46am PT
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Oli
I very much appreciate your contributions here and hope you bear with us and the process of making the most of this medium. It's important for all of us to raise questions with each others about what we're doing here to make it better.
You wrote
"Several people here actually continue, after everything I said, to say I want to censor. They can't follow what I'm saying at all, so I'm not going to force it on them."
With due respect Oli, I follow you just fine and I have to say that you are calling for what amounts to censorship.
It's an understandable call to clean up great threads from choss but none of us can figure out a way to do it that doesn't have unwanted side effects and go down very slippery slopes.
You did make a suggestion regarding a method and nearly everyone here considers it censorship. If you have a new suggestion for an actual method, I haven't seen it, but I'd love to hear it.
I'd like you to consider that, although you have a huge wealth of experiece as a climber, you are perhaps relatively new to this medium of internet forum communication. Like climbing ethics in a specific area or a local climbing community, this forum, and forums in general, have culture, ethics and nuances that, while always changing and developing, might not be immediately obvious to someone new in town.
A climber coming out of the gym might see the way outdoor climbing is handled and say "Why don't we fix this climb's holds with glue, or make this climb doable with some added holds?" While those might be reasonable suggestions for a specific climb, the larger community has seen the consequences that such actions would have as a whole and there are usually ethics against it. Deleting people's posts is much like that. It makes sense for specific posts but not as a rule. Moderated forums do that, but we aren't moderated and most like that.
Bear with us and things will make more sense as we move forward.
I would like you to consider one additional issue. If you'd read this thread from the beginning, you'll notice that you've talked repeatedly and at length about "Small Minds" and compared people and their contributions to very ugly things. On the other hand, you are relatively sensitive yourself to slights and minor insults that were directed at you. It's worth putting the shoe on the other foot and consider giving others more respect as human beings. Nobody is going to take being called a small mind whose contribution is bug juice without getting worse, not better.
When Melissa asked for specific names and examples of what needed to be removed, you balked and called the thread closed.(at least for yourself) That's perhaps understandable but if any actual system for removing posts was implemented, it would be naming names and making judgements.
That leads me to think that we still have a gap between the understandable desire to have great discourse and content here, and the difficulty in getting there without unwanted side effects.
With peace and respect.
Karl
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MikeL
climber
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Jul 21, 2007 - 10:24am PT
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Good thread, and worth the efforts.
Karl (and others above) think that things won't change much for all of your complaints and writing, Oli: you'll get used to how things are around here.
I'll dissent. Just like language, communities are organic bodies. Socially constructed, they change with interactions (albeit not very quickly).
It's not all been for nought, Oli. With this conversation, you've helped to make a difference, even if not a very great one from your point of view today. Everyone does every time they get involved. That's the good and the bad of it: the more that people are politely civilized, critically insightful, and sincere, the more that others will be, too--and of course, vice versa.
It's all good, really--especially the disagreements. How boring it would be here if all of us were simply preaching to the same choir.
"I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. 'I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things.'"
(Emma Goldman)
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jul 21, 2007 - 10:54am PT
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"Karl (and others above) think that things won't change much for all of your complaints and writing, Oli: you'll get used to how things are around here.
I'll dissent. Just like language, communities are organic bodies. Socially constructed, they change with interactions (albeit not very quickly). "
Not at all. I think the discussion and attention we pay to this will certainly help and direct us to better understanding and communication. I just don't think we can do it by increasing the ability to delete posts in the manner suggested.
I concur with Tarbaby's excellent post somewhere above. If we do it ourselves by community consensus and communication, it will be great. Let's make a win-win for as many as possible with minimum force
peace
Karl
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Jul 21, 2007 - 12:40pm PT
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Thanks Karl,
Lots of good perspectives here for sure.
Supertopo is a phenomenal asset for so many of us and it is continually what we make of it. I think we all agree the nature of the construct and the resultant dynamic is worth some thought. I see we are going to do ourselves and Chris Mac proud by endeavoring to make the best of it.
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MikeL
climber
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Jul 21, 2007 - 04:01pm PT
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I personally think you changed your mind from post to post, Karl, but no matter. I like where you ended up.
However, I need to add a couple thoughts. If you're expecting peer pressure and informal dialogues to change the community to a better set of standards and practices, then remember that those tactics take considerable time to create significant effects. Moreover, for that to work, the membership needs to be remain somewhat stable. My limited experience (3 years) here would suggest that active membership is fluid and that individual members have significant effects.
Second, my casual observations (and repeated threads on this very topic) would suggest that those kinds of informal tactics aren't working. ST is ST--whatever it is. It may simply be an anarchy of climbers without community standards, practices, and values (other than a regard for climbing). Expecting to shift or change the "non-community" to anything different might be a complete folly.
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