Ad hominem attacks

[Dicentra spectabilis]

I have mixed feelings about posting some of this information because I
don't want to reignite an old firestorm.  OTOH, I see a need for
clarification; there are enough veiled (and not-so-veiled) references
to the backstage conflicts that I fear that the A Little Knowledge Is
A Dangerous Thing principle will come into play and unfair assumptions
will be made.

I really hope that IF the past is to be rehashed here that it's done
in the spirit of analysis, not in the spirit of fighting the same
battles again and landing the same blows.

--- In HPFGU-Feedback at yahoogroups.com, "Tom Wall" <thomasmwall at y...>
wrote:

> I'm talking about the way decisions are occasionally made according 
> to the Admin team's *personal feelings.* 

Unless you're a skilled legilimens, I think it's best not to attribute
motives or intentions to other people.  Unless you are privy to the
thoughts of the admin team -- or at the very least to our
conversations during the decision-making process -- you should
probably give us the benefit of the doubt.  Or at least find out what
we say our intentions are before deciding what to believe.
 
> Or about the way that at least three elves have abruptly cut off 
> personal communication with me without any attempt at explanation. 
> One of these elves actually *invited* me to throw some vitriol her 
> way. I write back in good faith, and get stone-cold silence in 
> response. 

I'm one of those elves to whom you refer.  Indeed, I did tell you that
it was OK for you to rant.  I did that because I know that people who
feel frustrated and angry need to be heard.  I heard you.

I stopped corresponding with you for several reasons.  If you'll
recall, at the time during which we were corresponding I was visiting
my sister.  I spent *hours* pounding out those replies to you,
desperately trying to help you understand where I was coming from.
That was time I should have spent visiting my relatives, but I was so
upset about the crisis du jour that I had to take care of things
*right then*.  Eventually, I began experiencing some scary anxiety. 
When that happens, I have to back off or risk losing it entirely.

I've also been struggling with extreme fatigue for the past year; I
quit my job last June and am still not working because of it. 
Hypothyroidism, anemia, and apnea conspired to turn me into a
chronically sleep-deprived zombie.  I just plain haven't had the
energy to correspond with someone who was so obviously angry with me
-- or at least with the team I was on.

Leading to the third reason: I didn't feel that you were really
listening to me.  Maybe I was wrong, and maybe the feeling was mutual.
 I don't know.  I just couldn't handle it anymore, not even enough to
write to you to say why.  I apologize if my silence gave offense.

I'm feeling a little better lately, but not *that* much better, so I'm
afraid I can't continue our correspondence right now.  I'm answering
this publicly because the question was raised publicly.  (I didn't
know, though, that corresponding with me would mean that much to you.
::blushes madly::)

> Some people think that 
> criticisms of the Admin team ... are the same thing 
> as criticisms of *them.* It's happened before, and it's happening at 
> present. But you wouldn't necessarily see that, so I'll cut you some 
> slack on this count.

Tom, we get criticized every day.  We can take it, though.  We're
adults.  Sticks and stones and all that.  You seem to insinuate that
we banned Cindy because she was criticizing us on FAQ and OTC, but you
don't really know that for a fact.  You didn't see the discussions on
HPfGU-Mod that led to that decision.  You didn't see which issues were
considered or which factors went into the decision.  

The short answer to why we tend to quash criticism of the admins was
best expressed by Cindy herself, actually, on June 19th, in a message
both you and I received.  She said that a conversation with a "sane
member" of the admin team convinced her that the worst thing that
could happen would be that admin conflicts leak onto OTC, resulting in
a smackdown that could cause HPfGU to implode or split.§ 

The "sane member" that Cindy references is I, and I still maintain
that backstage conflicts *must* stay off the public lists (main, OTC,
Movie). It was to prevent excessive on-list conflict that topics such
as current politics, the Holocaust, and Richard Abanes's anti-Potter
book were banned for a time.  

It's also why we summarily banned Ken McCormick (an anti-Potterite) in
March 2002 without warning or explanation: Elkins told us that he had
destroyed another discussion list she'd been on with his divisive
rhetoric.  I suppose we could have attempted to persuade him that HP
isn't satanic, but after reading his online articles it became clear
that he was fairly set in his opinion.  

> Rest assured, history demonstrates that the members of the Admin 
> team don't behave the same way on the support lists as it tries to 
> on the public ones, for starters. You'd probably be surprised at 
> some of the bombs that get [lobbed] behind the scenes. Really 
> surprised.

I believe you're referencing the infamous FAQ ADMINs, which some have
compared to the two planes hitting the World Trade Center, right? 
Maybe the readers of Feedback *would* be surprised by those ADMINs;
maybe they wouldn't. They also might be surprised by many of the posts
that led up to those ADMINs, most of which were not written by members
of the admin team.

[For the curious, the first admin addressed the question raised on FAQ
about what exactly is the relationship between the FAQ list and the
admins.  The second informed the members of FAQ (most of whom had
moderator privileges) that the power to delete the list, change
others' mod powers, ban members, and other drastic powers had been
taken from all members (including me and other elves) and given to a
few people as a security measure.]

The climate of the FAQ list was highly charged at the time, so those
ADMINs were interpreted by some as acts of elf-on-non-elf hostility. 
Whether they actually were as horrific as the Sept. 11 attacks is a
matter of opinion.

> But that's not a total surprise. I could also cite 
> about ten cases off the top of my head in which the Admin team has 
> afforded leeway to their own members when the rules were violated. 

Are you also aware of the dozens of times we grant leeway to other
list members?  People whom we don't know from Adam?  Newbies and
oldbies and lurkers and regulars and irregulars?  If it were possible
to count the number of times that list rules are violated (and *lots*
of those are judgment calls that could go either way) and compare them
with the number of times we don't throw the book at the offenders,
you'd find that regular listies get off the hook all of the time.

Further, we don't inform the list of who has been sent a reminder or a
howler and who has not.  It's a little hard to infer bias when your
sample consists of a small percentage of total incidents.

Sometimes, Tom, it seems that you are holding us to a standard that
really doesn't exist and never did.  We're moderating an online
discussion group; the stakes in the Grand Scheme of Things are low. 
We want it to be fun and interesting for those people who find HP
fandom an entertaining *hobby*.  The rules in the HBF are there to
help people know what kind of posts belong on HPfGU.  It's not a penal
code.  

We do try to be consistent with how we enforce those rules, but
perfect compliance is not the Prime Directive.  It never was.  The
elves' purpose is *not* to make sure that everyone always colors
inside the lines; it's to keep the list going in a general direction.
 When a thread or a post or list member starts straying off into areas
where HPfGU doesn't go, our job is to *nudge* things back into line,
not to Correct With Extreme Prejudice.  

You can point to dozens of individual posts that violate the rules to
one degree or another, but the *general* direction of the main list
has remained fairly consistent.  The only way we could achieve perfect
compliance would be to put *everyone* back on moderated status and
either edit out all imperfections ourselves (tons of work for the
elves plus listie unhappiness at having their posts messed with) or
reject most of the posts (people either quit posting for fear of
breaking the rules or they quit the group because they can't stand
that degree of perfectionism).

What those who aren't on the admin team might not know is that for
every list member who gripes about non-compliant posts on the lists,
there's another who accuses us of being a bunch of anal-retentive
dictators. ("Moderator tart" and "mindless, thick-headed prat" are a
few of our favorite epithets.)  We go for the middle ground, which
means that things aren't going to be perfect.  They can't be.  There
are too many definitions of perfect floating around.  More than 11,300
of them, at last count.  

--Dicentra

§ Paraphrase is fair use of off-list communications.