atw: Re: ASTC AGM - post mortem - TOO LONG FOR THE FAINT HEARTED
- From: jjw@xxxxxxxxx
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2016 14:14:15 +1300
Quoting Christine Kent <cmkentau@xxxxxxxxx>:
To see what mean about the behaviour of technical writers, take a
look at this blog post by Swapnil,
https://icreatedocs.wordpress.com/2016/07/13/the-astc-is-failing-us/
. A communicative article. But then look at the comment. “Maybe we
should just all get together and argue about 9/11 and climate change
– works for some tech writing communities :b”. The technical writer
personality in a nutshell. Bitchy. Point scoring. Spiteful.
The comment you object to is mine.
To provide context, I joined this list some years ago. Sometime last
year (?) there was a long discussion of climate change. A number of
people questioned whether it was an appropriate topic for the group,
and considered unsubscribing. I did unsubscribe.
To be clear, I don’t object to off-topic threads in general, but
partisan political discussions can quickly become rancorous and I
don’t feel that they help to create a welcoming, collaborative
atmosphere. It is certainly legitimate to raise contentious on-topic
issues here (as Ana has done recently), but there are many, many other
venues for off-topic political discussions, so suggesting that those
be taken to a different list is not unreasonable in my opinion.
Perhaps a useful guideline might be to restrict discussion to topics
that you would be comfortable raising in your workplace.
Recently I re-subscribed, and soon the topic of the truth (or
otherwise) of 9/11 was raised. This seemed to me to be another very
political topic that would generate hostility (and it did), so to
forestall this I – pleasantly I think – suggested that the
conversation could be taken to another list. Some people publicly
agreed with me, including Swapnil.
Your response to my suggestion was this patronising (and blatantly
passive-aggressive) put-down:
"Your response is petulant. As Petra has responded, take
responsibility yourself, and block her if you find her contributions
unwelcome. Block me while you are at it, and Peter Martin, and anyone
else who dares to treat this list as a friendship as well as a
professional group."
For this reason, feeling a little exasperated, I posted this joking
comment at the end of my (longer) post on Swapnil’s blog. It was
intended to be a wry acknowledgement of our mutual opinion that the
topics of conversation on this list are not always appropriately
targeted, but that it is clearly not acceptable to say so.
You can call my closing comment "Bitchy. Point scoring. Spiteful" if
you choose. I don’t think it was, but to tar the “technical writer
personality” in general with the same brush is silly. I’m sorry that
you have encountered people who you found unpleasant, but that can
hardly be construed as a reflection on technical writers in general. I
find the technical writing community to be amazingly diverse, but in
twenty years I have never worked with a technical writer who I would
describe as "bitchy" or "spiteful". I would certainly think twice
before applying that description to someone I have never met and know
nothing about.
You say that we need to attract “naturally, instinctively,
collaborative people”. I suggest that insulting "the technical writer
personality" on a technical writing mailing list might not be the way
to do this.
J
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