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A Caring and Compassionate Website
Posted January 15th, 2012 by Stanley in Community Safety
In Reference to:
Synchronicity: A Post-Metaphysical InterpretationSome people might have noticed that this author has been very critical at what he has seen as an uncaring and uncompassionate website because terrible abuse has been allowed to fester here for way too long. When Corey finally checked in he responded to me as follows;
“I would ask for you to submit this to memberservices@integrallife.com, carefully detailing your complaint, and specifically referencing posts that are in violation of our ToS. Unfortunately I do not have the time to read through all the posts myself, so if you could be as clear and succinct in your email as possible, I will ask Brett (our member services guy) to take a closer look.”
http://integrallife.com/member/corey-devos/blog/simply-love?show=all
I can testify that at this point we can take these people at their word. Thank you Brett and Corey.
Hopefully all of the fine and decent members that have been driven from our homeland by horrible personal abuse will hear that this has finally become a safe place to risk growing into what might become the world’s first decent integral community and return.
I would advise everyone who feels that they are being repeatedly abused in an unwelcome fashion from this point forward, despite your repeated demands for this to cease, to stand up for your civil rights to the boundaries around your dignity and self respect and follow the same procedure.
Once again thank you Corey & Brett.
I guess it is still necessary to close by saying; No Cyber-Stalking please. This author is curious how many time this will need to be reposted for this simple message to begin to sink in.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sixsteps/2695066602/sizes/o/in/photostream/
Courage & Compassion
Our Shameful Past
deja view
Posted January 11th, 2012 by Layman Pascal in
-->
Why is it important for this post to keep dumping its comments and rising to the top of the charts?
Thanks, I've been...
Layman Pascal
in
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The theme of this post is care and compassion which Integrallife is beginning to support. This post, like many other posts here, has been marred with continued abuse and trolling. I think that until we learn to treat each other with basic human decency (which is related to following our own community guidelines and world criminal laws) we will not be able to achieve one good thing out in the world. Unfortunately there are a few people here who will just not be able to get this. But they are very few. I have been clearing this post of their trolling and abuse.
Another more meaningful question might be; why do a few people think they have the right to continued trolling and abuse in our community? Another one might be; why are so many people too afraid and/or uncaring to speak up against this kind of thing?
P.S. Layman, I was not referring to your face in the post above.
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No cyber-stalking please. http://integrallife.com/member/stanley/blog/cyber-stalking
- My face thanks you...
Posted January 12th, 2012 by Layman Pascal in response to Important
in
-->These are interesting and important themes. I wonder about how best to address them. There is a slight but ironic similarity between your re-postings & trolling. Obviously I'm trying to keep as broad and nuanced a sense of this as possible. "Care and compassion in an online community" strikes me as a key component of a general issue about qualitative evaluation. The little "was this useful" button is a tiny start in this direction. We need better ways to collectively evaluate each other.
I think you're quite right to connect this with broader emerging community standards. As a society how do we, for instance, minimize online bullying among children without teaching them that it's okay to simply believe in and react to things that appear through the digital haze of screens. This is a very interesting balancing act in multiple dimensions and it needs more of our energy and attention.
>Why do a few people think they have the right to continue trolling and abuse in our community? Another one might be; why are so many people too afraid and/or uncaring to speak up against this kind of thing?
I've heard you ask this question before and there's something in its phrasing that puts me off a little. It seems to imply too much -- but perhaps this is a fair pressure pushing against lethargy and blockage. I think a lot people might reserve the right to engage in different styles -- trying out their own personal strategies of communication -- without imagining that they are either fearful or uncaring.
As for actual trollers -- people either engaging their "red meme self" or else motivated by emotional imbalances, shadow elements, etc. Do they actually think they have a right? Or are they acting against the principle of rights? And where does "anarchic red meme" fit in a functional "second tier" communication-community? Perhaps there is a place where people ought to be allowed such expressions and another place where they are not...
Obviously the internet in general must be expected -- as a generic human expression realm -- to include much that is pointless, over-aggressive, overwhelming, interfering, etc. But how can we work with that. One idea is a tiered community conversation. And not just economically tiered into premium & regular... but where there are more central rings of discussion which are open to people who have been fairly assessed and evaluated by the community.
Thanks, I've been...
Layman Pascal
(Integral Sub-groups
Posted January 12th, 2012 by Stanley in response to My face thanks you...
in
-->I suggested integral sub-groups in a previous post. I think there is much merit in this. There is also merit to having one diverse group. The problem we have had here is that a few mean spirited people tend to run off hundreds of decent people and then there is little diversity left.
That is why I believe that it is important that we maintain a certain minimal standard of ethics so people are free from being horribly and personally abused. If you read Integrallife’s community guidelines you will see that this is clearly our intent. It just has not always been our realization and a very few abusers have taken advantage of this.
Layman, I don’t see you as an abuser and look forward to any suggestions you might have on how we could establish and maintain a safe and caring community where we can help each other grow and serve.
empowering community ethics
Posted January 13th, 2012 by Layman Pascal in response to Integral Sub-groups in
-->
It's a question of method either way -- either the method of inner circles or the method of maintaining a certain minimal standard of ethics in a more universal forum. The latter is trickier. A set of decent rules is good but doesn't become an actual mechanism. People like me never read internet guidelines or agreements anyway. So it is a question of creating an ethos where people viscerally understand a shared standard and have an implied agreement, and well understood approach, to confront problems.
Obviously this echoes the global situations. As we move toward planetary civilization we necessarily suffer a great deal of liquidation in local cultural fields. This means that everyone becomes used to the erosion of locally understood standards -- since we encounter all kinds of standards. And the social message in legalistic countries is basically... don't intervene. If you see trouble... call a professional. Anticipate that the appropriate authorities will do something. You might even get sued later if you try to morally assert yourself in a real situation. So we have developed an ethically "hands off" culture. Online we naturally extend this to assume that "somebody else who knows better" will address it. Most of us didn't build and don't maintain this site... so how can we possibly feel that we have a real hand in structuring it benevolently. Someone else "owns it" and "controls it".
We don't have a practice of ethical self-policing. Police, for example, get hundreds of hours of training in preparation for engaging strangers in an attempt to establish safe, respectable social order. This leads to a strange question: what kind of practice engagements are possible in a local cyberspace community?
Essentially the appropriate protocol for determining trouble and addressing it has to be collectively established and disseminated. There should be a more prominent inquiry (and not just in the banal "inquiries" section) for us to determine appropriate minimal standards and appropriate response. And on the basis of that we can inform each other about the proper protocol for engaging trouble personally.
Thanks, I've been...
Layman Pascal
Good Idea
Posted January 13th, 2012 by Stanley in response to empowering community ethics in
-->"..us to determine appropriate minimal standards and appropriate response." I would like to see this happen. A very few people here will try to fight it tooth and claw but that should not keep us from moving forward. I invite you to move this ball forward Layman.
Gratitude, Apology, Suggestion
Posted January 14th, 2012 by Stanley
in
-->I will be grateful when this post will finally be able to gracefully descend off the front page. I apologize that two ugly old trolls thought they had the right to mar it and caused it to be reposted. I hope this does not happen again. You can call me old school and I think that two are exactly two too many.
Until we get more benevolent moderation here I would suggest to all people of good will that if your posts are marred by trolling, cyber-stalking, and unwelcome personal advice that you save the evidence and wipe your post clean of these by reposting. If the problem is bad and/or reoccurring you can turn the perpetrators over to the authorities of this site as outlined above. Only as an extreme last resort would I suggest you turn the perpetrators over for civil and criminal prosecution. If you are not clear what sinks to the level of cyber-stalking you can read a short summary on the link below.
No more cyber-stalking please
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2 out of 2 members found this useful.
Not injured, bored
Posted January 15th, 2012 by Tara AdersI wanted to speak about my experience, which is that I have not personally been attacked, at least not in a way I couldn't defend or tolerate. But I have gotten really bored with how quickly these discussions devolve into troll-like acting out. So I only check the forum occasionally now and don't interact much.
Unfortunately, our shameful past, our old culture and paradigm was often one of terroristic abuse towards others. This was firmly entrenched prior to when I first moved into our village many years ago. I have often been broken hearted as I have seen most of our good and beautiful former citizens forced out from our community at the hands of these terrorists until mostly all that remained was the dregs. I say let these long time intruders stand up and show their numbers with their no votes as a last hurrah to the old ways!
I predict a new day dawning in a bright new year. I predict that many of the bitter, pathological, burnt, crusty old intruders who have been lurking among us for so long will be moving on of their own accord, without having to be formally banned. We have even had a few of them show their ugly faces on earlier versions of this post. Many of our good and beautiful former citizens will be moving back in. And many new bright faced angels will be arriving to explore what it means to live a life together safely dedicated to the ever new and fresh pursuit of the good and beautiful, day by day, month by month, year by year, and decade by decade.
May this be so.
Amen.