What's mostly at stake here, I think, is the moderation of the blog, specifically the comments. I'd like to start this note by sharing with you some texts in particular that have guided me:
- No matter what you choose to do, resist the temptation to overreact. Much of what's caused a fuss takes care of itself over time. But, bad behavior that gets responded to with more bad behavior wears on everyone who reads the page.
- There is a difference between a reasonable or amusing difference of opinion, and deliberately, indiscriminately, and consistently giving offense.
- Imagine you're the landlord of an apartment building. Most of us could care less what's going in the other apartments, and will ignore it when it doesn't involve us, but when a tenant begins pissing in the hallway or setting fire to the couch in the lobby, then we care, and we'll expect you to deal with it.
- This is, [contrary to what] someone pointed out, NOT the NFL. This is academe. There is a difference between free expression of opinion about our work, and abusive assaults on other posters. This is not the forum I was enjoying being part of, only a few days ago; because now there are people on it saying that I don't belong here, because I'm a stupid female humanist, and I should suck it up and accept being bullied because this is the Internet, no pussies allowed. We have the opportunity to make it damn clear that this sort of comment is not acceptable here.
- I remember learning about acting in good faith and acting in bad faith. It's clear to me that some of the actions on the page in the past couple of days were clearly in bad faith. I'm not interested in that, and I don't know many academics who are.
- Whatever you do, give a tiny bit of thought to the fact that many of us came here from RYS, that sacred AND profane academic water cooler. If we don't at least aspire to be that "lively," then the mission - and the plot - will have been lost.
- I think of this place as a playground, not a battleground.
The page will continue. I will sit in the big chair, just like Bill Shatner at the helm of the Enterprise. (And with about as much understanding as Shatner had of how the thing actually works!)
There are some modest "rules" posted in the sidebar that I'll ask all CM community members to abide by. Should folks abuse this site or other community members, I'll take their posts and/or comments down. No past material will be deleted, nor am I going to address any past behavior on the site.
I hope that CM is a place you'll enjoy visiting. I hope we can have a blast here, kicking the shit out of the miserable things that make our awesome jobs such a chore sometimes.
My best,
Fab Sun!
Fab Sun!