Public discourse, on the forums and elsewhere

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Aaron's Rod
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Public discourse, on the forums and elsewhere

Post by Aaron's Rod »

I am really unhappy with how some people in the collegiate/open community act towards each other, especially on the forums and sometimes on the Discord. After several instances of privately getting people to modulate their public behavior-–sometimes successfully-–I’m finally pissed-off about it enough to make a post.

(This is not intended to represent any of the organizations that I do. Also, this only applies to maybe a dozen or two people, so if this makes no sense to you, hooray! Apologies for the blind items in here.)

It drives me absolutely insane when people feel the need to publicize their private dislike of people, either implicitly or explicitly. By implicitly, I mean being unnecessarily aggressive/acerbic online and throwing good faith totally out the window. By explicitly, I mean insulting other active players/community members, by name, usually completely unprovoked. Doing these things in public debases the entire community and sets a terrible example for others.

If you’re going to reply contentiously just because someone you didn’t like posted something, reconsider what that looks like to a third party. If you’re going to insinuate that people who got things by merit actually got them through other means, step away from the keyboard. If you can’t make your point without publicly posting screenshots from private conversations, you can’t make your point. If you can’t stop yourself from making negative personal comments about a player out loud during a final game, you need to reevaluate your life.

If you can't engage with someone respectfully online, you probably shouldn't be engaging at all.

I don’t care if you do these things in private, but when you do it on the forums, on the Discord, or elsewhere, you affect more than just the people you’re insulting (whether they read it or care or not). Younger players, high school and below, read what you say in public, often with little to no context about why people dislike each other. They take their cues from the players, writers, community members they look up to. Not only does it imply that acting like an asshole is okay, it drags the general tone of the discourse down.

Moreover, when you do this you embarrass yourselves. You don’t have to make nice (although I sincerely wish you would), but act like adults. Stop propagating your toxic BS to people who were getting by just fine without it. I am so sick of reading caustic posts/messages from twenty- or thirty-something dudes who have hated each other since the Cretaceous because their friends dated the same person or something equally trivial.

Matt Weiner is gone. Grow up.
Last edited by Aaron's Rod on Wed Apr 25, 2018 6:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Public discourse, on the forums and elsewhere

Post by Crazy Khan Tech »

This is a good post, and articulates very well a feeling I have long had about the quiz bowl community. No one cares about your personal vendettas, and in the grand scheme of things most quiz bowl arguments are not really big deals. Treating each other like crap makes quizbowl look bad and unwelcoming, and it is not hard to get the same point across in a polite way instead of sounding like a jackass.


Quizbowl is a competitive activity which can undoubtedly result in inflamed tempers from time to time, but in my opinion people should utilize public forums for discussing the fun activity they like to play rather than posting hostile screeds about other members of the community, which are unhelpful and add little to any meaningful discussion.
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Re: Public discourse, on the forums and elsewhere

Post by Susan »

COSIGN. To echo what Alex is saying here, if you think you're winning arguments by doing this, you're probably wrong.
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Re: Public discourse, on the forums and elsewhere

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Aaron's Rod wrote:I am really unhappy with how some people in the collegiate/open community act towards each other, especially on the forums and sometimes on the Discord. After several instances of privately getting people to modulate their public behavior-–sometimes successfully–I’m finally pissed--off about it enough to make a post.

(This is not intended to represent any of the organizations that I do. Also, this only applies to maybe a dozen or two people, so if this makes no sense to you, hooray! Apologies for the blind items in here.)

It drives me absolutely insane when people feel the need to publicize their private dislike of people, either implicitly or explicitly. By implicitly, I mean being unnecessarily aggressive/acerbic online and throwing good faith totally out the window. By explicitly, I mean insulting other active players/community members, by name, usually completely unprovoked. Doing these things in public debases the entire community and sets a terrible example for others.

If you’re going to reply contentiously just because someone you didn’t like posted something, reconsider what that looks like to a third party. If you’re going to insinuate that people who got things by merit actually got them through other means, step away from the keyboard. If you can’t make your point without publicly posting screenshots from private conversations, you can’t make your point. If you can’t stop yourself from making negative personal comments about a player out loud during a final game, you need to reevaluate your life.

If you can't engage with someone respectfully online, you probably shouldn't be engaging at all.

I don’t care if you do these things in private, but when you do it on the forums, on the Discord, or elsewhere, you affect more than just the people you’re insulting (whether they read it or care or not). Younger players, high school and below, read what you say in public, often with little to no context about why people dislike each other. They take their cues from the players, writers, community members they look up to. Not only does it imply that acting like an asshole is okay, it drags the general tone of the discourse down.

Moreover, when you do this you embarrass yourselves. You don’t have to make nice (although I sincerely wish you would), but act like adults. Stop propagating your toxic BS to people who were getting by just fine without it. I am so sick of reading caustic posts/messages from twenty- or thirty-something dudes who have hated each other since the Cretaceous because their friends dated the same person or something equally trivial.

Matt Weiner is gone. Grow up.
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Re: Public discourse, on the forums and elsewhere

Post by A Dim-Witted Saboteur »

Strong agree. I feel like this is more prevalent on the Discord than other platforms, but if anyone has similar problems with the way discourse happens on ILQBM, my inbox is open.
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Re: Public discourse, on the forums and elsewhere

Post by magin »

Auks Ran Ova wrote:
Aaron's Rod wrote:I am really unhappy with how some people in the collegiate/open community act towards each other, especially on the forums and sometimes on the Discord. After several instances of privately getting people to modulate their public behavior-–sometimes successfully–I’m finally pissed--off about it enough to make a post.

(This is not intended to represent any of the organizations that I do. Also, this only applies to maybe a dozen or two people, so if this makes no sense to you, hooray! Apologies for the blind items in here.)

It drives me absolutely insane when people feel the need to publicize their private dislike of people, either implicitly or explicitly. By implicitly, I mean being unnecessarily aggressive/acerbic online and throwing good faith totally out the window. By explicitly, I mean insulting other active players/community members, by name, usually completely unprovoked. Doing these things in public debases the entire community and sets a terrible example for others.

If you’re going to reply contentiously just because someone you didn’t like posted something, reconsider what that looks like to a third party. If you’re going to insinuate that people who got things by merit actually got them through other means, step away from the keyboard. If you can’t make your point without publicly posting screenshots from private conversations, you can’t make your point. If you can’t stop yourself from making negative personal comments about a player out loud during a final game, you need to reevaluate your life.

If you can't engage with someone respectfully online, you probably shouldn't be engaging at all.

I don’t care if you do these things in private, but when you do it on the forums, on the Discord, or elsewhere, you affect more than just the people you’re insulting (whether they read it or care or not). Younger players, high school and below, read what you say in public, often with little to no context about why people dislike each other. They take their cues from the players, writers, community members they look up to. Not only does it imply that acting like an asshole is okay, it drags the general tone of the discourse down.

Moreover, when you do this you embarrass yourselves. You don’t have to make nice (although I sincerely wish you would), but act like adults. Stop propagating your toxic BS to people who were getting by just fine without it. I am so sick of reading caustic posts/messages from twenty- or thirty-something dudes who have hated each other since the Cretaceous because their friends dated the same person or something equally trivial.

Matt Weiner is gone. Grow up.
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As do I. I hope that people read this and take it to heart.
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Re: Public discourse, on the forums and elsewhere

Post by wcheng »

I don’t care if you do these things in private, but when you do it on the forums, on the Discord, or elsewhere, you affect more than just the people you’re insulting (whether they read it or care or not). Younger players, high school and below, read what you say in public, often with little to no context about why people dislike each other. They take their cues from the players, writers, community members they look up to. Not only does it imply that acting like an asshole is okay, it drags the general tone of the discourse down.
Like the others who have posted above, I completely agree with this post, but I think that this particular point is worth emphasizing. Furthermore, I would like to add that toxic discourse doesn't just give younger members of the community dubious cues about how to act; it also scares away people who might be interested in getting (more) involved in quizbowl but recognize the toxicity.
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Re: Public discourse, on the forums and elsewhere

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

Despite clearly being one of the people called out, I support this post. If you actually have a problem with me, my posting style, or really anything else, you're welcome to message me in private instead of intentionally rankling me in discussion forums.
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Re: Public discourse, on the forums and elsewhere

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

I like the idea of prioritizing treating each other more respectfully, and I like the suggestions you make in this thread.
Aaron's Rod wrote: If you can’t make your point without publicly posting screenshots from private conversations, you can’t make your point.
This is kind of where I have misgivings. Harassing someone personally over a quizbowl debate should be unacceptable whether it's on the forums, or via PM, or out of the blue on Messenger. Since we agree that it hurts the community to act that way, what's the recourse here, especially if it's a repeated problem? Sweeping it under the rug or using whisper networks doesn't seem great either.
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Re: Public discourse, on the forums and elsewhere

Post by Cheynem »

As an occasional acerbic curmudgeon online, I think the admonishment that our words and acts have consequences, even in informal settings like Discord, is well taken.

While I in no way was around for some of the grandest and most virulent debates on these forums, I have been around long enough (about 10 years) to see an evolution in public discourse. In general, compared to when I first started, the overall discourse is improved (even improved from just a few years ago). There aren't rambling discussion threads in which throw out personal attacks--the odd Eric/Cody back and forth in the latest Nats thread stands out because it hasn't happened in a while, while it was pretty normal in a way in the past. Some of the discourse problems Alex mentions also stand out because in general, the discourse has changed (usually for the better).

That said, I think she is correct in that the discourse continues to have problems. I think I have two questions/thoughts:

1. We must separate the idea of the toxic arguments/discourse from healthy disagreement. There have been times in which I thought on Discord I was engaging in particularly civil disagreements and people seemed to get uncomfortable. Obviously I don't want to act like I was perfectly normal and they're weird, but we have to be able to both disagree in a respectful, civil manner, and also encourage such discussions when they do happen.

2. There is also the odd undertone of what I'll call personal/private feud dilemmas. I think we don't want people to hash out their toxic drama on the forums or in public settings, but sometimes I think having this turn into private DMs or whisperings also isn't good (and may in fact be worse in the long run). How can we try and ensure that we're not just sweeping hurt or angry feelings under the rug, so they explode? (Note, I'm not suggesting that we should always post whatever we have on our minds and get angry because that's mentally healthy, just that we all know people who never express their hurt feelings or angry emotions until they're a ball of rage, which is bad)
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Re: Public discourse, on the forums and elsewhere

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

I think the quizbowl community does a lot of weird things because it is the opposite of what quizbowl villains of yore did 10-15 years ago. So for example, when Matt Weiner criticized defenders of bad quizbowl over a decade ago and they could not refute him on the merits, they criticized his tone. This led to "tone policing" being declared bad because bad people were doing it. Well those people are all gone now and most current quizbowl participants don't remember this history.

I wonder to what extent quizbowl's lack of professionalism is a similar reaction to the evils of CBI.
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Re: Public discourse, on the forums and elsewhere

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

The King's Flight to the Scots wrote:This is kind of where I have misgivings. Harassing someone personally over a quizbowl debate should be unacceptable whether it's on the forums, or via PM, or out of the blue on Messenger. Since we agree that it hurts the community to act that way, what's the recourse here, especially if it's a repeated problem? Sweeping it under the rug or using whisper networks doesn't seem great either.
I want to agree with this, because its a genuine source of confusion/ambiguity with everyone I've talked to. What should the proper procedure be for calling out people for toxic behavior?
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Re: Public discourse, on the forums and elsewhere

Post by theMoMA »

The question I submit to people who are involved with the issue of bringing "toxic" private conversations to public light is: what do you want to happen?

If the private conversation occurred during the scope of a person's official duties as a representative of some organization or community effort, then it's pretty clear what you want to happen by bringing that conversation to light. You want the organization to be aware of the person's behavior so it can attempt to correct it or, if it's not correctable, to assess the person's ability to perform their duties in light of new information.

If the private conversation is purely interpersonal, or stems from some independent project, I don't really see the point in publicizing the screenshots or broadcasting the conversation blow by blow to the forums or some other public audience. In fact, I see no reason not to treat the unpleasant person as you would an unpleasant person in any other context. Just don't interact with that person anymore! And, if it's relevant, tell your friends about it privately so they know your opinion and can take it into consideration when deciding whether to interact or work with the unpleasant person.

The only exception to this that I can see is if the person has displayed such extremely offensive behavior or opinions that bringing their actions to light is in itself a community service. But to me, the level of offensiveness that would be required to broadcast something to the public goes beyond "a person was unpleasant to me," even if that unpleasantness was gratuitous. It goes back to the same idea of "what do you want to happen?" And if the answer to that question is "I want someone to stop being unpleasant to me," or the related answer of "I want someone to suffer negative social consequences for being unpleasant to me," then I don't think it really accomplishes anything other than your own selfish ends to take that feud public, rather than handling it as you would handle being treated poorly in any other context. Given that people seem to find the airing of these grievances extremely tiresome and annoying, it seems like something people should not be doing for any reason other than to alert an organization to the bad behavior of its representatives, or to bring to light some kind of flagrantly bad behavior or opinion.
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Re: Public discourse, on the forums and elsewhere

Post by MorganV »

Speaking as a former bright-eyed high school student from the Weinerian era, I had a quite negative impression of the community from some of the exchanges I saw on the forums, which contributed to my decision to step away from the game for my first couple years of college. While I think we've improved since those days, I 100% agree with Alex that it's important to present our best face to the parts of the community that aren't as familiar with the drama as we are. Quizbowl already has a high attrition rate between HS and College, and the fewer people we drive away for non-game-related reasons, the better.
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Re: Public discourse, on the forums and elsewhere

Post by Cheynem »

The challenge with quizbowl is that it can be pretty difficult to separate the two groups you've raised. Obviously if someone says something like "Speaking for ACF, I hope you drop dead," that's an example of the former. But in quizbowl, where we all wear so many different hats, it can be trickier to tell. If I have a very odious, toxic discussion with a person (and for purposes of argument, let's say I'm entirely in the right and that person is being toxic, like say, making unwanted racial or sexual comments), on the one hand, as Andrew says, I should ignore that person. But if that person is an ACF editor, a NAQT editor, a head of PACE (LET ME BE CLEAR THAT THIS IS HYPOTHETICAL AND I AM NOT THINKING OF ANYONE), then what--i.e., that person could be my "boss" if I work for those companies, or someone who has "power" over me if I'm playing their tournaments, even if their conversations occurred in Discord or on Facebook or completely outside of the professional setting.
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Re: Public discourse, on the forums and elsewhere

Post by Aaron's Rod »

People have brought up really good questions here, and I appreciate that people are willing to ask meaningful questions instead of blithely agreeing and not changing their behavior.

I specifically (perhaps glaringly) didn't touch on harassment or general vitriol in non-public media. This is of course a bad thing and a problem. I just didn't have a lot of ideas or authority on how to stop it.
theMoMA wrote:The question I submit to people who are involved with the issue of bringing "toxic" private conversations to public light is: what do you want to happen?

If the private conversation occurred during the scope of a person's official duties as a representative of some organization or community effort, then it's pretty clear what you want to happen by bringing that conversation to light. You want the organization to be aware of the person's behavior so it can attempt to correct it or, if it's not correctable, to assess the person's ability to perform their duties in light of new information.

If the private conversation is purely interpersonal, or stems from some independent project, I don't really see the point in publicizing the screenshots or broadcasting the conversation blow by blow to the forums or some other public audience. In fact, I see no reason not to treat the unpleasant person as you would an unpleasant person in any other context. Just don't interact with that person anymore! And, if it's relevant, tell your friends about it privately so they know your opinion and can take it into consideration when deciding whether to interact or work with the unpleasant person.

The only exception to this that I can see is if the person has displayed such extremely offensive behavior or opinions that bringing their actions to light is in itself a community service. But to me, the level of offensiveness that would be required to broadcast something to the public goes beyond "a person was unpleasant to me," even if that unpleasantness was gratuitous. It goes back to the same idea of "what do you want to happen?" And if the answer to that question is "I want someone to stop being unpleasant to me," or the related answer of "I want someone to suffer negative social consequences for being unpleasant to me," then I don't think it really accomplishes anything other than your own selfish ends to take that feud public, rather than handling it as you would handle being treated poorly in any other context. Given that people seem to find the airing of these grievances extremely tiresome and annoying, it seems like something people should not be doing for any reason other than to alert an organization to the bad behavior of its representatives, or to bring to light some kind of flagrantly bad behavior or opinion.
I can't endorse this enough.
Cheynem wrote:The challenge with quizbowl is that it can be pretty difficult to separate the two groups you've raised. Obviously if someone says something like "Speaking for ACF, I hope you drop dead," that's an example of the former. But in quizbowl, where we all wear so many different hats, it can be trickier to tell. If I have a very odious, toxic discussion with a person (and for purposes of argument, let's say I'm entirely in the right and that person is being toxic, like say, making unwanted racial or sexual comments), on the one hand, as Andrew says, I should ignore that person. But if that person is an ACF editor, a NAQT editor, a head of PACE (LET ME BE CLEAR THAT THIS IS HYPOTHETICAL AND I AM NOT THINKING OF ANYONE), then what--i.e., that person could be my "boss" if I work for those companies, or someone who has "power" over me if I'm playing their tournaments, even if their conversations occurred in Discord or on Facebook or completely outside of the professional setting.
You're right that it's tough to tell. I think if you're obviously right, and especially if the person is using hate speech against you, you should try to bring it to another authoritative person in the same organization. But there's so much petty crap that shouldn't ever see the light of day in public, but gets dragged up anyways.
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Re: Public discourse, on the forums and elsewhere

Post by naturalistic phallacy »

I whole-heartedly encourage everyone to embrace my (former) Minnesotans' advice in this thread. I don't post much anymore because of much of this (including to avoid the temptation to engage myself, as I have in the past), so I feel we should all really sit with this advice and think about how we can do better in the future.
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Re: Public discourse, on the forums and elsewhere

Post by Cheynem »

I'll say two more (personal) things on this.

Don't be afraid to let someone know that you're bothered (privately, of course, at first). There have been a few times in which I've had friends tell me that something I said or a joke I made bothered them. I appreciated that. Obviously this doesn't work if the beef or feud is super toxic, but sometimes I think many of us in quizbowl, especially me, don't know how certain words or jokes can come of at times. Honest discourse is better than slow burn feuds.

On a related note, also don't be afraid to tell people that you appreciate them! I had an eye-opening experience a few months ago when a friend of mine noted that I really seemed to dislike someone in quizbowl whom I consider a good friend. I then realized I probably spent too much time arguing with or joking about that person instead of treating him like a friend. Perhaps unintentionally, I was letting my discourse seem far more toxic than I wanted it to.
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