(Author's note: "HACW" stands for "Hello Again, Cruel World." I figured that if we didn't already have an acronym for attention whores like me who post GBCW/TTFN diaries and then try to sneak back as if nothing happened, we probably should.)
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A few weeks ago, I decided to take a break from the smorgasbord of fun that is Daily Kos, and posted a diary to the effect that I wouldn’t be back until I had “reached some sort of personal understanding about how I intend to participate in this community going forward,” and until I was “relatively certain that I'm here for the right reasons, and that my participation here won't be a complete waste of time.” In that vein, I’ve been giving some thought during my absence to laying some ground rules down for myself –- not to pull out and refer to every time I post something, or to beat myself over the head with every time I transgress, but to lay a foundation for making my participation here more productive and positive. This is what I've come up with:
Big Tex's Rules of Engagement
Rule #1: Self-Awareness
I will be mindful of my own shortcomings, and how I choose to interact (or not to interact) with others here will be tempered by my knowledge of those shortcomings and my desire to overcome them. My shortcomings, as relevant to my participation in this forum, are that I am an asshole and that I am fundamentally inclined towards self-indulgent and unproductive behavior.
Regarding the fact that I’m an asshole, a disclaimer: it isn’t entirely my fault. I know that sounds like a lame copout, and perhaps it is to a certain extent. But I have a genetic predisposition on both sides of my family towards assholery, I was raised by assholes, and I’ve been surrounded by them for pretty much my entire life. (I’ve lived in Texas my whole life. Go figure.) So you have to admit, it was perhaps inevitable that I would have grown up to become an asshole myself. That said, I’m more of an asshole than I used to be, and I attribute this to the fact that I have a great many personal problems that I have done a dismally poor job of addressing in any meaningful way. More on that when I’m in the mood to discuss it further; here it’s just a digression.
Regarding the fact that I’m inclined towards self-indulgent and unproductive behavior, well… okay, that’s pretty much entirely my fault. (blushes) Hey, I’m working on it, okay?
Rule #2: Avoiding Potholes
There are some people participating in this forum with whom it is just about impossible for me to have a civil and meaningful conversation. I will therefore avoid interacting with these people. Likewise, there will be some diaries and comments posted in this forum to which it is just about impossible for me to offer a civil and meaningful response. I will also avoid responding to these diaries and comments.
Some people may not be here to engage in a civil or meaningful dialogue, or at least not with people they disagree with. Others may be so divorced from my personal perspective and so stubbornly committed to their own (and I am likewise so stubbornly committed to mine) that the barriers to a civil and meaningful dialogue with them are pretty much insurmountable. Others still may be good-faith participants in the community, but for whatever reason (perhaps due to past arguments, or perhaps due to my own considerable shortcomings) I'm simply incapable of interacting with them in a manner conducive to meaningful dialogue. It’s a waste of my time to get bogged down in fruitless arguments with these individuals, it’s a distraction from meaningful dialogue that I might otherwise be able to engage in, and it’s rude to the people who aren’t participating.
Rule #3: The Troll Exception
Rule #2 can, at my discretion, be considered non-operative when it pertains to individuals who are engaging in obvious trollery. By "obvious," I mean obvious in a way that people on both sides of the great divide in this community, and those who have sensibly chosen to stay out of it, can agree on.
Fucking with and mocking trolls can be a productive use of my time to the extent that it contributes to my shared sense of community with the other people who regularly post here. And it can be loads of fun, too. However, I will be mindful of the potential hazards associated with being too casual in my application of this exception.
Rule #4: The Dickhead Exception
Rule #2 can, at my discretion, be considered non-operative when it pertains to individuals who are being abusive toward me or other posters.
Being more civil and more productive does not mean taping a “kick me” sign to my back, nor does it mean turning a blind eye to behavior that most reasonable people would agree is inappropriate regardless of its target. However, I will be mindful of the potential hazards associated with being too casual in my application of this exception.
Rule #5: Avoiding Meta
Diaries and comments that are devoted to meta or arguments about meta, regardless of whether they are posted by people I generally like and/or agree with or by people I generally dislike and/or disagree with, are almost always a complete waste of time, whether they are posted by me or other people. I will therefore avoid responding to these diaries and comments, as well as posting them.
Yes, [insert name here] is inconsistent in how they choose to upvote comments. Or in who they choose to HR. Or whatever. But so am I (more on that in rule #9). And so is pretty much everyone else here. Get over it, Tex. Move on.
Rule #6: The “Good” Meta Exception
Rule #5 can, at my discretion, be considered non-operative when it pertains to discussions about meta that contribute something positive to my participation within the web site or otherwise offer some benefit that makes my participation in such discussions worthwhile.
This diary, I’d like to think, is an example of “good” meta, because it’s oriented toward making me a more civil and productive participant in this forum. Not an example of a “good” meta diary: the invective-filled tirade that you’re thinking of posting about that guy who just called you a poutfielder for the San Diego Waaaaahdres… which he claims he just said because you referred to him as a pilonidal cyst on the butthole of blog-based political discourse five days ago… but really it’s because he’s still sore about the fact that you bitched him out three days prior to that for something that you can’t remember at the moment, but you definitely recall that it was really, REALLY out of line…which he said that he only did because… (and so on, and so forth, all the way back to about mid-2007 or so, when you finally get back to what really started the whole thing, which was that this guy posted a vapid but otherwise harmless diary about what a great Presidential candidate Mike Gravel is, and you responded by jumping the tip jar with a picture of animals fucking. Or something like that.)
Rule #7: Productive Participation
Before posting a diary or comment, I will ask myself whether what I’m posting contributes something that is at least potentially positive and/or valuable to the community, and (as applicable) the discussion in which I’m participating. If it doesn’t, I won’t waste my time or Kos’s bandwidth.
This doesn’t mean that I won’t be participating in, say, pootie/woozle diaries, or posting stuff that’s more amusing or entertaining than informative; there's nothing necessarily unproductive about diaries and comments that, while non-political, contribute to the development of community. It just means that I won’t be posting stuff that amounts to little more than self-indulgent wankery. (Well, besides this diary, anyway. And the occasional picture of animals fucking.)
Rule #8: Addressing the Message, Not the Messenger
When responding to a diary or comment, or some element thereof, I will do my best to separate the ideas and/or information that I’m responding to from my personal opinion of the person who posted it, or any groups with which they may be affiliated. I will reserve the right to make an exception to this rule when I believe that a person’s identity or affiliations taint the ideas and/or information that they are presenting in a way that is relevant to the discussion taking place. There’s nothing necessarily wrong, for example, with pointing out that the guy who posted a diary talking about how great it would be if we did more offshore drilling just happens to have mentioned in another thread that he’s a lobbyist for the oil industry. However, I will be mindful of the potential hazards associated with being too casual in applying this exception. Simply being a member of the "wrong" Kos clique does not invalidate a person's opinions, nor does it excuse couching my occasional agreement with such persons in a thick layer of disdain.
Rule #9: Rating Comments and Recommending Diaries
I will make an honest effort to be consistent and reasonable in what comments I choose to either tip or hide-rate, and in what diaries I choose to recommend or hide-rate tip jars for.
As a goal, I should recommend only diaries that contribute to the general dialogue, or to the development of community, in a positive way; and I should hide-rate tip-jars for only those diaries that detract from the general dialogue or the development of community. I should tip only those comments that contribute positively to the development of the dialogue sought by the author of the diary to which they are attached; I should avoid tipping comments that divert or degrade the dialogue; and I should hide-rate only those comments that are genuinely disruptive to the dialogue or otherwise abusive. I will avoid being a FAQ pharisee; by that, I mean that I will avoid being overly rigid, legalistic or heavy-handed in my application of the FAQ as it pertains to potentially hide-rating comments.
Rule #10: More Self-Awareness
I will fuck up; this is inevitable and unavoidable. (See rule #1.) However, I will always make an honest effort to avoid doing so, and when I do inevitably fuck up, I will neither discard my commitment to these rules in self-disgust nor amend them to give myself convenient loopholes to exploit.
I will amend these rules only when it has become obvious that they are either genuinely deficient or unnecessarily restrictive, and I will discard them only when I no longer need them in order to temper my assholery and general inclination towards unproductive self-indulgence.
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I probably won't be responding to most of the comments that get posted below. I'm mainly interested in listening to your feedback, and in any event I'd like to ease my way back into the fray over here so I might not be commenting all that much in general, at first anyway. Anyway, thanks in advance for whatever feedback you choose to offer, and a special thanks to those of you who had kind words for me in my last diary, since I didn't have a chance to thank you there.
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UPDATE: Well, so much for me not responding to comments. (^_^) Anyway, it's good to be back. Thanks for the welcome everyone...