'Group Dynamics'; a crock of shit? [was Sexual Violence]

LR, fair point. "Drivel" and "hijacked" were unconstructive, due to my own overheated typing fingers. I apologize. Here's the issue: this thread's topic is important. This thread has failed to address it, failed rather spectacularly. Given some of the conversational dynamics present or which developed, I think this thread won't be addressed productively by the current set of participants. To have a conversation constructively on this topic here will require chairing of some sort.

Except of course

Mujeres Libres felt they had to organise separately to be heard. Go figure.

from your favorite wee sniping lil' c*nt

Here's a suggestion Revol why don't we do a little experiment. You stop posting on the general boards where flaming isn't allowed for six months, and than we will do a poll to see if people think it's improved, stay pretty much the same or got worse without your presence. We could also do a poll on whether more women are posting.

Could you cope? Are you up for it?

What's the point of calling for you to be banned, we all know you never will be? Cut out the blustering victimhood, you like to dish it out but not take it.

And thats the thing. He refuses to accept his has a problem, he will never attempt to change. The line on LibCom is that you have to make allowances for Revols behaviour - all the rule changes on flaming, have all been aimed at accomodiating revol and he has never ever said he is willing to meet everyone else half way. In his posts on this thread, revol continues to make digs, sneer and mis-represent other peoples positions. That is not honest debate.

I guess its grand if you see libcom as a small clique of friends, who all know each others quirks. But if you want it to be something more, if you want to draw in people to anarchism, if you want to have a space where people can explore their own ideas, you can't have the sort of personalised abuse and misreprentation that revol constantly dishes out (Unless you pm all new lurkers with a 'welcome to libcom, ignore revol68, we all do').

I wouldn't encourage someone to join libcom with the way it is now - last week I told the RAG about the threads that were being discussed - and look what happened. Do you think they were a good advertisement for the board?

shit, that is really fucking embarrassing...

Why does it always descend into baiting and insults? If someone pisses you of ignore them or ask them not to. Although i'm not on here much this is the only forum i've been on (out of about 6) that has alot of its threads derailed then needs a huge effort to keep in better on track. When there is debate it is also one of the best forums I know, however the sheer childesness of alot of the posts put people of, and also the fact some people will not post questions/discussions due to the fact they think it a) wont even get of the ground in any viable way or b) it'll be called alot of .... (add any swear word in).

This is a fair point in some ways, but I honestly think that some of the people making it are personalising the issue too much. Revol's style can be inappropriate and unhelpful, but so too are many of the responses to his posts. If he posts something which makes a serious point in an even vaguely over the top way the immediate result is a whole series of attacks on his style. And let's be honest if that happens to most posters on any webboard they tend to respond with invective.

There is a broader issue here. Political webboards all tend to have a group of regular, long time posters who are comfortable there and who act as if they own the place. And when other people become regular posters they tend to be people who are comfortable with the already existing style of the place. Libcom suffers from that but not in a significantly worse way than most other boards. Look at MATB, somewhere I post more often then here and where posters who stray too far outside of the board orthodoxy get jumped on more aggressively than here.

Libcom isn't uniquely afflicted. The only difference is that these boards supposedly have a purpose which goes beyond comfy internet home for a bunch of mates.

Which brings me to Sovietpop's point about RAG. I was irritated by the way those threads went. But the fact is there was a thread on the subject and quite a lot of serious posting before they went completely off the rails. That's a strength of this place - I doubt if there are too many other boards where you would get reasonably serious discussion of an anarcha-feminist magazine at all.

The thing is though that boards like MATB are supposed to be places for a bunch of people who are comfortable with each other to post about politics. It doesn't have a broader agenda. If Libcom really wants its forum to have a useful role beyond that it does have to set itself different standards to those of most politics boards. And that means limiting the caustic nature of some of the posting but it also means taking a firmer line on jokey derails and the like.