I am a "founding father" as Joel has so politely referred to those
of us who were on the very first iteration of OBOL. The real founder
was Greg Gilson, but I was one of the guys (and it was mostly guys) that
was cc'd into the original list (without even being asked, if I recall
correctly). Mind you, this was all in the infancy of public email and
there was no "world wide web" to speak of and we got our weather
satellite photos via "usenet" with a 10 minute, dial-up download...
Over the 25 or so years that OBOL has been around I've seen all the
flame-wars, trolling, and hurt feelings/I'm leaving never to return
declarations. The cat threads, the hunter threads, the feed/don't feed
threads.
We make assumptions. Every other birder on the planet is just like
me and we only want to hear the stuff we're interested in.
The most recent "dust-up", like what almost all OBOL dust-ups,
was about assumptions. Members of the OBA board assumed that OBOL was
an appropriate place to post a very timely statement about abuse,
harassment and bullying, all very worthy things to be concerned about
and the OBA organization should have a clear policy. I read the policy
statement, I fully agree with the policy statement. The only thing that
bothered me about the statement was that we live in times when stating
something so obvious has become necessary. I kept that to myself and
moved on to the next message of interest to me.
But the underlying assumption that this was something everyone would
(should) agree with and that it would be uncontroversial
was... well, it's presumptuous. We avoid talking about cats and
politics on OBOL, because they invariably devolve into a loud
and unproductive insult fest, usually involving one or two individuals
who insist on having the last word IN ALL CAPS!!!
It has been demonstrated time and time again that we cannot have
certain conversations on OBOL exactly because we are not all alike
and some get quite aggressively mean about it when faced with the
prospect of being exposed to stuff they're not interested in, don't
want to hear or conflict with their world view and, yes, they can be
bullies about it, so a statement about bullying will bring out the
worst in them, and a subset of men of a certain age are especially
likely to be triggered by talk of bullying.
I am interested in policy statements by the board regarding inclusion.
I am not interested in the 270 angry responses, counter-responses,
rebuttals, claims about libel, arguments about the definition of libel
(vs slander), etc that a simple statement of board policy elicits. And
since we can't seem to have one without the other as has been
demonstrated time and again, we have, on OBOL, a policy statement about
these kinds of things.
We can remind folks about why God created the delete key 'til we're
blue in the face, but certain people won't change, don't want to
change, live in information bubbles that are threatened by even having
to scroll through the offensive subject headings. I, for one, would
prefer to have an OBOL where we can talk about Global Climate Change,
the negative environmental impacts of some birder practices or the
need to vote green, but I know that it will lead to a cacophony of
bitching from a particular group of narrowly focus folks. My topic
choices have collateral effects not just to the bubble boys, but to
all other OBOL users caught in the landslide.
There are a lot of other assumptions floating around in this community
like whether we all have smartphones for "whatsapp" or that no one has
has any ethical concerns about using Facebook or exposing their
"contacts" to intrusive Facebook market targeting (whatsapp is a
Facebook thing).
And most importantly, let's remember that many of our assumptions about
what is important and relevant and interesting and possible in birding
come from a position of socioeconomic privilege. The current birder
demographic is, to be polite, upscale.
--
Mike Patterson
Astoria, OR
I don't know...
http://www.surfbirds.com/community-blogs/northcoastdiaries/?p=3924
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