Why do we bash each other?

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This is so very true. Fortunately, these kind of remedies are reserved for only the most disgusting trolls.

Lest there be any misunderstanding: physical threats, real or implied result in immediate and permanent suspension of your user account. In that event we will use any and all means neccesary to keep you off of ScubaBoard, including legal avenues. If you feel you have been unjustly banned or singled out by a moderator, please contact abuse@ScubaBoard.com. No one gets these e-mails but me. Unfortunately, if you have a problem with me, there is no one higher. In any event, I am the ONLY one on ScubaBoard you are free to "bash". I refuse to take any punitive action and my staff has been explicitly instructed not to censor any post critical of me, nor are they to harass the poster. Of course, there are limits to this, but no one has exceeded them yet.

This abusive troll was on the Bicycling forums. So far, I haven't seen anyone here on Scubaboard that is even a fraction as problematic as he was. What absolutely boggled my mind was that, even when it was made clear to him he wasn't so anonymous or untouchable, he didn't mend his ways and actually got worse.

I think it helps that SB has a very active moderator/owner presence, so it's extremely unlikely anyone could ever get that nasty without some form of official intervention.
 
I personally think it's a good idea to remember that we never know when we might meet someone from a forum in real life.

Funny story. I was relaying a story on SB about a grumpy diver I ran into at Cocoview, and it turned out to be someone responding in that thread. :shocked2: Now that was embarrassing, but he acknowledged himself and didn't hold it against me. :wink:
 
Considering this has nothing to do with SCUBA, I applaud you all for capturing my attention for 9 pages so far.

I started coming to this board recently to expand my knowledge of SCUBA and was pleased to see how civil the discussions are. My hood is off to NetDoc and the moderators. In about the same time frame as Scubaboard three of the submarine bullitinboards on the net pulled the plug because the boards went out of control.

I spend most of my time reading partly because my typing skills are up there with the hundred monkeys in a room.....

Reading a lot of posts on a lot of topics gives me a feeling for a member and over time has changed my initial "this guy is a royal pain" to paying attention to his posts. I do believe that a lot of offence is taken because people can type faster than they read and process information. In addition, when someone is annoying I don't feel it is necessary to respond and waste my good day, there are other posts and threads to read. Should I care to respond I tend to reread the post(s) and make sure they wrote what I think they mean.

Part of being civil is to overlook annoying differences of opinion. You may be the only one annoyed and in reacting become the problem.

As for the Zero to Hero, I must go back and see if someone already covered my thought.

Bob
 
TheSmoothDome:
This thread started because of the way halemano perceived Walter's initial response to the Zero to Hero thread.

What makes you think that? Halemano did not start this thread. GeorgeC started this thread and I don't see a reference to either halemano nor me in his initial post.

TheSmoothDome:
First, it was stated as fact, not couched with I believe or I feel.

Neither were the two other posts prior to mine expressing opinions in the thread. The initial post was asking for opinions, isn't it obvious that any response to a request for opinions will be an opinion?

TheSmoothDome:
Second, without providing explanation as to why you believe it to be such, the statement becomes dismissive. You're basically telling the OP that their question isn't worthy of a well thought out response.

Point well taken. I'll keep that in mind in the future.

NetDoc:
My apologies, but you can start to see how YOUR attitudes often come across in just that bit of post. All I did was to change from being kindly honest to just honest, and now you feel bashed. I didn't even get to brutal and I didn't cross the ToS!

Pete, I'm sorry that I was clear. I thought when I said, "I'm sure you didn't intend to bash, but it does come across that way," I'd made it clear that I didn't really feel bashed, that I was merely pointing out that your post could be seen as bashing, even though it clearly wasn't. You weren't brutal at all and you didn't come close to violating TOS. You stated an opinion. You didn't have to say it was an opinion, it was obvious because of the context.

It has become clear to me that some people are not able to understand that statements of value are always opinions. I will try to remember this and to clearly state when I'm expressing opinions. I'm sure I will forget from time to time, but I will make an effort. It does seem to be a bit of a double standard, but I will try regardless.
 
I remember a post from someone that thought that in initially reading Walter's posts that they thought they were kinda abrasive, but has now learned to read them carefully because they contain much insight and knowledge (My words because I don't remember exactly)
I Hope that I have as well

personally .. I like it when someone explains their reasoning behind their opinion
... maybe cause I'm a bit dense? :wink:
 
What makes you think that? Halemano did not start this thread. GeorgeC started this thread and I don't see a reference to either halemano nor me in his initial post.

I stand corrected. My response was in reference to halemano's concerns and without double checking, I referred to him as the OP.

Neither were the two other posts prior to mine expressing opinions in the thread. The initial post was asking for opinions, isn't it obvious that any response to a request for opinions will be an opinion?

My comments were not meant to discuss the merits of other responses. I was simply pointing out the implied tone of your post. As for the poster asking for opinions, yes he was, but if my wife asks if a pair of pants makes her butt look big, I better not respond, "No, your butt makes your butt look big." :confused: Ok, that's extreme, but the point is that she wasn't looking for me to attack her or her pants. She wanted me to provide feedback in a constructive manner. A better example might be if she asks what I thought of a dinner she cooked. I could respond "It's terrible," and leave it at that or I could take the time to explain what I didn't like about it. One way has me sleeping on the couch and eating frozen dinners for a week and the other way provides constructive, honest feedback which help her make better decisions. For the record, I'm damn glad she's a great cook and her butt isn't too big.


It has become clear to me that some people are not able to understand that statements of value are always opinions. I will try to remember this and to clearly state when I'm expressing opinions. I'm sure I will forget from time to time, but I will make an effort. It does seem to be a bit of a double standard, but I will try regardless.

Sometimes it's not that "some people" don't understand, it's that we're set in the way we do things and tend to see things through the "limited perspective" NWGratefulDiver refererence earlier and fail to see what many people see.

I'm not sure what double standard you're referring to. From my perspective, this is a thread to discuss the way we communicate. I hope it's not construed as bashing you Walter. Salient points are best made through the use of examples and the way we improve any skill is by looking at specific examples.
 
TheSmoothDome:
My comments were not meant to discuss the merits of other responses. I was simply pointing out the implied tone of your post.

Yes, you were pointing out that my post was condecending and dismissive because it was stated as fact, not couched with I believe or I feel. If that made my post condecending and dismissive it also made the other posts condecending and dismissive.

TheSmoothDome:
As for the poster asking for opinions, yes he was

Then isn't it obvious that all responses are opinions?

TheSmoothDome:
if my wife asks if a pair of pants makes her butt look big, I better not respond, "No, your butt makes your butt look big."

I see. So it would be OK if you said, "I believe your butt makes your butt look big."

I believe you are focusing on a lack of me stating something is an opinion when that isn't what seems to bother you at all. I did not state my opinion as fact. You made an assumption.

TheSmoothDome:
Sometimes it's not that "some people" don't understand, it's that we're set in the way we do things and tend to see things through the "limited perspective" NWGratefulDiver refererence earlier and fail to see what many people see.

How does failing to see what many people see differ from not understanding? Does it really matter if some people don't understand that statements of value are always opinions because they tend to see things through a limited perspective or for some other reason? The point is they don't understand and I will try to comensate for what I had thought was obvious to everyone. I was wrong, it's not obvious to everyone.
 
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As for the poster asking for opinions, yes he was, but if my wife asks if a pair of pants makes her butt look big, I better not respond, "No, your butt makes your butt look big."

That's hilarious! (IMHO)
 
I wonder how many divers are afraid to post because of the fear of being bashed and just lurk. Too bad we don’t have a Un-Thank you rating to classify those posters who consistently are sarcastic so we would know what to expect just by looking at there profile.

I'm sorry I got to this party late. I was on self-imposed anger management break for a few weeks because of repeatedly having heated discussions with a couple of users who I knew I should have been ignoring but didn't.

Your post has a lot to do with that so I'll get to giving my opinion in a second. First of all, however, I thank you for getting this discussion going. Nobody likes flaming but the fact that definitions like the following are slowly getting included in dictionaries shows us that it's a problem across the internet. On some sites it's worse than others, which has a lot to do with the policy and policing of individual discussions.

Flame (v): Computer Slang. to send an angry, critical, or disparaging electronic message.

Why I think this happens has to do with a few things:

1) I think that people are psychologically accustomed to interacting with computers as inanimate objects. As a culture, we dehumanize groups of people we don't *personally* interact with. We dehumanize by race, creed, culture, religion, social-economic-class and so on. We dehumanize politicians (as they do us), the police, any enemy real or perceived, and we have a long LONG history of dehumanizing groups that disagree with *our* group, which translates precisely to how people interact online.... DIR/ANTI-DIR comes to mind. Everyone dehumanizing each other... In fact, the inventiveness we show in this darkest of human failings is, frankly, amazing.

IN other words, dehumanizing users on the other end of a computer screen is almost *bound* to happen because I think people simply don't well and truly see them as any different then figures in a computer game.

2) Written language is an exceedingly difficult medium with which to communicate clearly and unambiguously. I would say that the VAST majority of people simply don't have the writing skills to express themselves with much precision and it leads to as much misunderstanding as understanding. As much miscommunication as communication....

3) People on the whole are lousy listeners. We tend, on the whole, to do two things when listening. (a) we look for anything we don't agree with and (b) we wait for a break in the talking to jump in with our own opinion. In other words, we don't actually listen at all. We just wait to talk. Bring that to the internet and everyone is talking, nobody is listening and opinions get repeated again and again LOUDER AND LOUDER and with more and more pent up frustration because whatever you do or say isn't enough to actually get people to listen to you. For example, people who think PADI suck will never change their minds and neither with the ones who like them. The same opinions get recycled over and over and the same arguments get made with more and more volume until there is nothing really left of the discussion except the contempt from two groups of people who have learned to communicate this way.... I don't know if there are any solutions to this.

4) We, as a human race, with the possible exception of practicing Buddhists and a (very) few people with highly exceptional social skills, totally lack the ability to see something for it's true nature without judging it. Every time someone says something, you're weighing it in your mind, balancing the pro's and con's, deciding if you agree with it or not, thinking of your rebuttal.... This sort of ties my first and third points together. If we could develop the ability to read what someone says and instead of responding with more volume, to simply ask ourselves the question "WHY ARE THEY SAYING THIS" and to question that (or their assumptions) instead of railing against them like it's some kind of political debate that needs to be won or lost then a LOT more communication and a lot less screaming would happen. I'm sure the next response you see in this thread will confirm this point.

5) I think some people use this medium to "test" their own thinking. Like a debate. They put their opinion out there and then defend it to see if it stands up to scrutiny. In itself it's a wholly acceptable thing to do, but not always conducive to a relaxed conversational discourse, especially combined with a few of the factors I already mentioned.

6) Ego, narcissism, cynicism etc. but I think it makes up a small part of the whole.

I think I could go on and make a baker's-dozen from this (with a wink to JJ) but I hope just hitting the high points gives some food for thought.

Let my close by asking you, if you recognize yourself in anything I said to challenge yourself to make a change. Nobody likes "flaming" as we said, so if nobody likes it then we ALL have a personal responsibility to fight it. We should all start by picking up a mirror....

R..
 
We're not always as anonymous or untouchable on the internet as we'd like to think, and we really should behave accordingly.

Anyone remember the Golden Rule (or have they stopped teaching it?):
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Would certainly simplify things, IMHO.
 

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