Goodbye - and my contact info

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And maybe people shouldn't be so sensitive?

OOM had a very notable contempt for anyone who displayed any sort of personal weakness she deemed "beneath her", and would bully people who displayed such "weakness". That's pretty inappropriate behaviour for a support website, and also the raison d'être of many bullies. It's gross and shouldn't be tolerated. Everyone experiences weakness at times and needs help, no one is perfectly strong and we should be able to come here when we're feeling weak and needing support without getting berated and brow-beaten by someone like OOM. I personally will not miss her brand of "tough love"/bullying.

No one is forcing you to read or respond to any posts.

I guess everyone has differing tolerance levels. I don't mind OOMs/prickly poster type posts, they often say things that others would not, which is sometimes needed here and there is sometimes a groundedness in their perspective, even though they might not be open to changing their POV.

I suppose for one reason or another they might be at the opposite end of the sensitive spectrum, there has got to be room for everyone, from the very sensitive to those who are numb to the world.
Is it just me that thinks it is just as wrong to tell those who are sensitive to toughen up, as it is to tell the opposite type to feel more?

I went away a bit after posting, went for a bike ride, and started to feel so sad about this whole thread. I hate it when I or anyone else accidentally hurts someone. I'm sure I do it a lot, which is why this whole thread is making me feel paranoid.

I'm sorry, Fnord, I didn't mean to single you out. I thought to send you a personal message, but I thought that if one offends someone publicly one should also apologize in public. The thing is, you remind me so much of one of my dearest friends, I feel like I've known you for a long time even though I haven't. I am perhaps overly familiar.

I struggle a lot with cultural differences. I live in a culture that is very conflict avoidant - very often, when someone has a problem with a particular person and a particular thing, what they do is send out a generalized email or suchlike describing the behavior very generally, and then everybody tries to guess who is the offending person. I think I tend to interpret vague criticism as the worst kind of passive aggressive behavior, which is one of the reasons I see it as a sign of respect when people are straight with me.

I am actually seldom offended by anything people say on this forum - I sort of get it that people aren't trying to be mean. There are some people who end up being really mean, but I think it often comes from immaturity and a lot of pain.

I don't mind whining. If you can't whine on a support forum, where can you whine?

It's a bit like punching someone in the face, and then telling them to quit crying.

That being said, I think those of us who are sensitive need to choose our battles wisely, and decide which offenses to we will refuse to tolerate, and which ones to let go of. Personally, the whole Halloween costume debate is on my list of 'battles not worth fighting over'. But that's just me, and others are equally free to decide that for themselves.

Man, now I feel kind of left out that I didn't get one of these warnings; I can be abrasive, I can be contentious, where's the recognition?

Actually, I don't think this is a bad idea, I've long struggled with what to do about a certain subset of members who may not break the rules per se, but make the forum a less pleasant place to be through constant negativity, repeated broad brush attacks on groups, obnoxious judgmental comments, etc, without trampling on anyone's ability to express their feelings or opinions. I don't even disagree that it's a relative handful of people who cause the majority of the problems, though I do think contacting them directly should probably have been proceeded by a handful of general announcements to the forum explaining that an attempt was being made to improve the quality of discussion on the board and what that was going to entail, so that it didn't seem to come out of nowhere.

There really should not be any initiatives behind the scenes, what purpose does that serve except from shielding it from criticism? An open line of communication is best, if there are problems with the community then perhaps it should be discussed with the community. I don't know the whole deal with OOM but I've read her posts for a long time and I think she's a good person, perhaps a bit intimidating if you don't know her but I think she added a lot to forum.

I think one of the problems is the rate of change and responding to issues at this site is probably slower than any actively managed site I've ever been on. Like forum software shouldn't be that complicated, I know vBulletin works perfectly and is very customizable. What is being used here? I don't understand the technical issues here, does Alex do it all himself? I think Alex probably should delegate more of the power over the forums to someone else if he can't manage it full time which is needed. I think the forums categories could probably be revamped and that might help some things.

You have made my day with that post, Dox
..

Now speaking generally, to this thread, as a member rather than as a moderator, to the question someone asked about what to avoid doing: one of the main things, I think, is to realise why there is a world of difference between disagreeing (with someone's viewpoint - ie "you like dogs best, I like cats best") and discrediting a person for holding a different viewpoint - "dog people are all sicko control freaks".

Also, posting from a foundation of "anyone who disagrees with my opinion must be a whiner/crybaby" (or the alternative formulation of "only a whiner would disagree with my opinion which is only common sense") is likely to exert a destructive and/or divisive influence here, because this is a form of slagging off anyone who might DARE to disagree, and encouraging the like-minded to do the same.

Those kinds of manipulative tactics are nearly always motivated by a wish to gain psychological dominance over others. There are other obnoxious tactics too - eg unrelenting questionning, or unrelenting disagreement, or ridicule laced with malice, sophistry which when carried to extremes, have been used to harass other members, or to disrupt a thread which the harasser doesn't like.

I have seen unchallenged, flagrant examples of all these on WP (as anyone has who has been here for a while), and they can be extremely destructive of the individual sense of safety that members need to have in order to fully participate without anxiety on WP. Personally, I see nothing Pollyanna-ish in wanting WP to be safe from those tactics and those tacticians. I would guess that there are other sites that specialise in that kind of destructive stuff, though should the broad membership be expected to tolerate it here? In my view, no.

Are you so certain of people's motivations? What I find so peculiar about the people who admitted to getting these messages on this thread is that those are people I really don't suspect of being manipulative, quite the opposite. I may of course be wrong, as a new member, but I'd say that manipulative people are generally a bit more subtle. That said, the rest of us don't know who else got these messages.

Can you explain a bit what you mean by unrelenting questioning? I sort of get the other examples, they all fall into the category of "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it.". However, I had a couple of experiences where I was asking an OP questions pertaining to their original post, and some other poster seemed to think I was being mean to the OP. I couldn't quite figure out why, so I assumed it was just an established member not making space for new people and using straw men.

I often ask questions of people; I assume that people get tired of me pontificating (that happened to me a lot, I am sure other members have similar experiences), so before posting, I often ask myself "Does the OP really want to just hear my opinion, or could I show interest in their problem and try to get the OP thinking creatively about it, as they are the expert on their own life?

My professional background is from a creative field; I think if I have any "superpower" at all it is the ability to ask key questions that help people see the bigger picture. What worries me is that after a few exchanges here on WP, it seems this tactic can really backfire when dealing with someone with PTSD. It seems that with some people , what I end up triggering is not creative problem solving but an emotional tailspin where the person relives all the crap they ever experienced.

The reason I am asking you this, B19, is that I value your opinion a lot, because you actually read up on research rather than just emoting. On the other hand, I often don't understand what you mean when you are being very general.

I was recently asked to ignore and tolerate offensive posts in the Women's Forum.

(Apologies if this is something I'm not supposed to say. I'm pretty confused about the rules right now.)

Underwater your posts always seem fine to me, no problem at all. I was careful to note that those were my own views, not the mod teams, and no-one was messaged along those lines at all. Yippy, you (and everyone else) can continue to report offensive posts which breach the rules, mods rely on those reports as monitoring all the posts on all the boards is simply impossible. I think you both offer important things here.

Seconding this. She's habitually rude and hostile, and every time someone tells her to dial it down a notch she calls them a "whiner" or "crybaby" in typical playground bully fashion. I'm sorry to see her go, but anyone who thinks she's a martyr here is just kidding themselves.

OOM if you're reading this thread, you can PM me if you want.

Odd ... she's never done that to me. She always impressed me as strong-willed, yet honest.

Because there's no need to dis anyone behind their backs, maybe this thread needs to be locked, as well.

I'm not talking behind anyone's back. I've been perfectly up front with her. She made this thread, and I'm gonna post in it, because I am one of those "PC whiners" she's complaining about. Like Hell I'm gonna let her have the last word.

As for locking the thread? I think we should honor OliveOilMom's commitment to free speech by keeping the thread open.