OK, last post for the night - I've been here way too much today! Voronwe, I might email you as well tomorrow if I have the chance. (ETA Jn, acknowledging your post, but I
have to get offline now and do work. Will respond later!)
First, briefly on benevolent dictators and messageboards - I think that "absolute power corrupts absolutely" is a lot less of a threat when we are not talking about much real power. Currently, I am only responsible for moderating one community of slightly more than 400 people. Because of the nature of the community (safe-space), it is HARD work. I am co-moderating only because the creator/moderator asked me, and I would as soon be a member with no "power". Various people have different definitions of what a "safe space" means, and we often get emails from people who feel that another member's post is violating the safe space for them. This requires an executive decision on which member is correct about the safe space that we are trying to create. There are other times when, because the other moderator is the one who established the rules for the community, I have to warn or ban members whom I actually agree with, because their actions are out of keeping with the spirit of the previously-established law. I feel kind of like a judge who has to sentence a defendant she sympathizes with.
And there are other times when I make rules that I think are in the best interest of the community, even though they diverge from my personal opinions. It's simply not fun. Honestly, a benevolent dictatorship is a lot easier/more fun when you're not the dictator. I don't enjoy it. I do it because I care about that community, and I want it to last.
I do sincerely believe, however, that when you have someone who genuinely seeks to act in the community's best interest, it is a viable and desirable model. The moderator(s) will always make decisions with which some will disagree - indeed, as I've said, as a layperson/member, I disagree with some of the actions I've recently taken as a moderator myself!
Still, it's the Internet, and we're big grown adults...or young adults masquerading as adults...or whatever. We can suck it up and deal when someone makes an administrative decision we don't like. And the fact that someone else is handling all the rule-making and administrative decisionmaking leaves the fortunate non-dictators the luxury of discussing what they are there to discuss at leisure.
(As you can tell, I'm just not a very good power-hungry dictator.
)
JS, I'm glad that you could relate to what I was saying - and I guess this would be a good time to apologize for jumping on you about the ToE threads, huh?
Actually, a day or so later when I withdrew from the ToE discussions for a time, it was largely for the same reasons that you stated.
Now, I want to address what Voronwe said in brief here.
Voronwe, first, you should see that I have no actual problem with disagreeing with you.
My post earlier tonight was my third in this thread alone disagreeing with you, and there have been many others. In fact, I have never
refrained from disagreeing with
anyone simply because it made me uncomfortable to do so, without more. I was just at the gym, and I gave it some thought during cardio. I came up with four reasons for why there might be hesitation on my part, here:
(1) I've met you in person. I'm not sure whether I'm alone in this, but when I meet someone who was previously just a screenname, my connection/relationship to them immediately changes in my mind. All of a sudden, they have become real to me in a way that they were not before. Part of what that entails is that when I have an online exchange with such a person, I envision us face-to-face having that conversation. Of course, it is less pleasant disagreeing face-to-face than disagreeing anonymously through a messageboard.
(2) This is especially true for people with whom I've had longer, more meaningful conversational exchanges. The following people leap immediately to mind (although there are certainly others): you, Frelga, Lidless, Estel, Ax, hal, Jn. Now, I don't refrain from disagreeing with any of these people, e.g. I've disagreed with Ax several times in different threads today alone, and hal and I are virtually guaranteed to disagree in the Symposium.
However, I even more strongly envision having the exchange face-to-face with this group of individuals, and it thus becomes slightly harder.
(3) I think that Eru is right. I might have a slight, mostly unconscious concern that my disagreement will affect you personally. I tend to assume that if someone is on an Internet messageboard, which in my experience is never a friendly venue (unless explicitly defined as safe space, and even then debatable), they should have a thick skin and be able to take strongly-expressed disagreement. So, I do not think this plays in too much for me, but it might have some effect.
(4) You are an experienced professional in the same line of work as I'm entering, and you are doing what I wish I had the guts to do, namely working in an area of that field in which you strongly believe. I don't want to go into detail about my own career choices here, but I have highly mixed feelings about what I'm choosing to do instead, as our last in-person conversation might have revealed. So, I think that in some sense, I look up to you for that. And that is probably another thing that plays into my hesitance to disagree with you.
So you see, most of these things are personal to me. They are not anything that
you are doing, except perhaps #3, and you will have to ask others for their opinions on that, because #1, 2, and 4 are more relevant to why I said what I did. I think that my reasons have very little to do with whatever Farawen's might have been, and I don't think you should feel that there is any sort of pattern, at least not because of me. I do not know who else has told this to you privately, or what the context was.
Also, as you see, I am more than willing to disagree with you despite my hesitance.
The same is true for any of the other people who I listed in #2, or for anyone else on this messageboard. It's just slightly more complicated for me now that I have met right under thirty of you.