Writer Cat Fight

I have found that my reading of the board has improved greatly through use of The Button.

Not every slight merits response. At least, not angry response that plays into the hands of those who seek only to provoke.

 

Why is anonymity perfectly fine when it offers praise and worship, but evil and horrific when it deliver criticism?

With the exception of Jones hisself, almost everyone on this thread is anonymous. So what? Half the people, maybe more, could post under their real names and you still wouldn't know them. Does it really matter?

Personally, I have no beef with Jones or his blog or what he wrote; it's his blog, his personal space to write whatever he wants. I just wish he could say 'hey, sorry you disagree' and go back to what he was doing.

 

Agreed on both points. But again, that's not really his style, and I have a hard time faulting him for defending himself.

 

I just don't think anything good can come of it. Anonymous a-hole lobs grenades? Wading into that doesn't seem like it has any rewards.

 

People aren't faulting him for defending himself. They're taking issue with the tone of his defenses in relation to the idea that the board sucks now because the discourse has devolved so much. I don't care one way or the other — I just like to be entertained on threads like this and occasionally offer up something that might be taken seriously and might be helpful — but you can't have it both ways. You can't long for the good old days of passionate, true discourse and then fire off personal attacks and/or angry snark every time you feel slighted. Someone is going to pick up on what they perceive to be hypocrisy if you do.

 

Yeah, no argument here.

Although I suspect Jones' final post was pretty damn cathartic.

 

Good points, 21 and ygster

 

That's a point you've made and Piotr has made. I think you both have a solid point that I agree with, at least partially.

But for the most part, I don't think the vitriol aimed at Jones in this thread has jack shit to do with perceived hypocrisy.

 

You're probably right, but it's that perception — arguably based in reality — that provides the opening for anyone who wants to take it.

 

Again, let's bury the tired discussion of the board's good old days, and the never-ending search to point out hypocrisy. Whether or not that era did or didn't exist, it's gone. So to say Jones or I aren't living up to our own loft statements about what this place should or shouldn't be is pointless. I say this respectfully. I obviously think there was real value in some of the craft discussions that used to occur here, the writing tips people used to offer, and there are obviously people who thought that was some haughty bullshit, and tried to muck up those discussions and make jokes about shotglass' daughter when shit didn't go their way. The former lost and the latter won. Such is life on the internet.

21, it seems silly to have to debate the difference between effusive anonymous praise and vicious criticism. I've been guilty of some anonymous criticism in the past, and some of it probably crossed some kind of imaginary line, I regret pretty much all of it. What we do -- and by we I mean anyone who writes or edits for a living, no matter what level of success or status they've achieved -- is simply too draining and too miserable at times to suffer those kind of attacks from our own. You may believe otherwise, but I don't. Not anymore.

 

Anonymity changes the cost of "signaling", which should impact how a reader weighs the comment. If you're criticizing someone anonymously, it's most likely less "costly" to you, because you're not risking your own reputation by putting your name behind the comment. Doesn't mean your comment doesn't have merit, but as readers, we should be somewhat more skeptical about the weight we give it. On the other hand, anonymous praise isn't really any less costly than non-anonymous praise unless you're supporting something controversial. If anything, one might argue anonymous praise should be given more weight because the person commenting doesn't really benefit at all from the comment (whereas the might simply be currying favor with the person they were supporting if they had made the comment publicly).

Not necessarily saying anonymity is a net good or bad. Many other factors are at play. But I think there is a clear difference between those two situations.

 

Read pages 1 and 10. Might read the rest later.

In sum, this reminds me of what Rip Engle said to me after I scored my first touchdown for Penn State and did the Billy Johnson white-shoes dance 30 years before Billy Johnson (yeah, that's the ticket) ...

"Act like you've been there before."