h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Do you remember a time when you were involved in a flaming incident, or were witness to one? If you can think of such a situation that would have benefited from an Arbiter's intervention, list it here. (The sooner we justify our existence, the sooner we go legit...) Thank you.

Is the idea to compile a list of situations where arbiters might have acted, had they been around? Should we... I mean... y'know... name names? That seems odd.

I've got three really good examples in mind, but I feel like I'm airing dirty laundry to bring them up. Once Lucinda, in his journal, contemplated putting together a "flame wars I have known" Entry. He was broadly discouraged by whoever was around. That's not one of the examples, that's just y'know, à propos of nothing in particular.

Maybe two really good examples.... nope, now it's three again.

I agree with Tony. I can see a discussion like this actually reigniting old flame wars, and I doubt we want to go there.

On the other hand, here might be a good place for me to bring up a thought I had the other night. There have been times on h2g2 where I have found something onsite seriously and personally offensive (i.e., attacks on my religious beliefs, extremely insensitive comments about abuse), but have backed out of the conversation because there was a high probability that any response I made would turn it into a full-fledged flame war (given who the users were making the original comments). However, I still felt angry and uncomfortable about the idea of letting someone say things like that without any rebuttal on my part.

Hence, I can see some situations in which I (or someone else) might ask for a arbiter's help in having a discussion while preventing a flame war -- i.e., rather than having a flame war to begin with, having a mediated discussion. The flames are averted, the I (or whoever) have a way of responding to something I found hurtful without encouraging things to degenerate.

Does this make any sense, or am I just babbling because it's too early in the morning and I haven't had my Diet Coke yet?


Mikey

Hmmm... I can see I didn't think through all the possibilities of posing this question. I hadn't really considered 'naming names', just the general thread(s) - the 'Intellegence' thread, the 'Creationism' thread, the one about the 'Dungeon' and minors on h2g2 - stuff like that.

Now that I see it in print, even these vague observations might be too much. I reckon if we - as a group - think that this is still valuable data to collect, we ought to keep it in the Yahoo group or some other offsite archive TBD.

I'll take out the link from the body of the entry, but I don't know that we can delete the thread itself.

Mikey, you always make perfect sense. There's no degree of 'flame' required before an Arbiter can be invited to join/guide a discussion. 'Potential' wars would, I think, be easier and quicker to put out prior to total conflagration. (Did I spell that right?)

A good point to make clear on our "Home Page." Thanks.

"Hence, I can see some situations in which I (or someone else) might ask for a arbiter's help in having a discussion while preventing a flame war -- i.e., rather than having a flame war to begin with, having a mediated discussion. The flames are averted, the I (or whoever) have a way of responding to something I found hurtful without encouraging things to degenerate."

Good one, Mikey. Right now the only options if you see something that offends you are to walk away and pretend it's not there, hit yikes, or try to engage the person about why you think they're f****d up. I think that having a non-italic third-party to help you engage the person would be good.

That *is* sort of what you were getting at, right Mikey?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/F52240?thread=167854&skip=0&show=20 :-(

F647?thread=167957&skip=0&show=20#p1762946