Reasons for hall monitoring

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 3:01 PM, Rudolf Kastl <che666 at gmail.com> wrote:
> one of the questions raised in the meeting posted by mcepl was... "why
> dont those people leave if they are unhappy". simple... they put alot
> sweat blood and tears into a project, and they have friends... with
> the development crowd and with the community in general. they are
> obviously feeling as a part of it with just a different pov and an own
> opinion. that isnt bad at all ... but healthy... "diversity is
> healthy" to a project.


Constructive... additive ...diversity in opinion is healthy.  But
there is a line at which debate can turn unhealthy and destructive...
when repetitive discussion becomes shrill in its desire to be
informative...becomes over reaching in its need to be persuasive.
Unfortunately what we have seen lately is a somewhat self propogating
cycle that we repeat when issues are multi-faceted.

People who have taken their shot at making a persuasive argument to
change the minds of a particular audience can feel like they are being
ignored when their arguments end up not being persuasive. Ratcheting
up the heat( and number of capitalized words) in the next opportunity
to restate their arguments brings more attention from others who have
not noticed previous rounds in the discussion but in fact make the
original audience more likely to tune out what is being said. And the
cycle repeats spiralling downward towards a CapsLock doomsday as the
participants become more entrenched in their points of view and less
forgiving of other people's. Personal foibles and slights both real
and imagined pile up into a palatable physiological barrier and people
just end up talking at each other.

For the sake of everyone's sanity we have to find a way out of this
cycle.  Letting these sorts of fires burn out on their own doesn't
seem like the best way to manage our communication commons.  And yes
I'm throwing stones while standing in my own glass house, I can be
sucked into bad behavior as easily as anyone else and being told I'm
beating a dead horse is the appropriate thing to do.


-jef"It's seldom going to end well when one of the most active
participants in any thread proclaims at the start that they are burned
out on the issues. It's difficult to see how one can simultaneously be
burned-out as well as a constructive voice on the issues. Passion can
fight against effectiveness"spaleta