Proposal: For sensitive topics, if a thread is intended for a particular demographic, there needs another thread open for everyone to discuss without having to join the targeted thread
Sorry everyone for yet another post about the ~life.women post but the second thread about that same topic in ~life.men made me realize we could have used two separate threads from the start....
Sorry everyone for yet another post about the ~life.women post but the second thread about that same topic in ~life.men made me realize we could have used two separate threads from the start.
Instead of hoping that all the men instinctively knew to stay quiet and be dissappointed when some inevitably failed to notice, there'd be less friction if the people had two separate discussion spaces, one meant for women as the current default expectation (and be in ~life.women), and another (either in ~life.men or ~life) to provide an outlet for those who have things to say but nevertheless feel uneasy doing so in the same space.
There need not be any compulsory gatekeeping. The conversations in the two above 2 threads have me believe that if the option was available, and people were made aware, most would be considerate enough to know where to go and respect boundary.
Women who don't want to having to bother wading through seas of men's opinions regardless of how well-intentioned, could now conveniently hit 'Ignore' on the alternative thread once and be done with it. Or if that thread was in ~life.men and they have already unsubscribed, nothing to be done and the experience would be seamless.
Some potential concerns:
There could still be troublemakers (in either threads) who has to be reported.
Between the two scenarios though, those same few would cause trouble regardless. However with this arrangement, they could not hide behind the plausible deniability of not knowing whether the thread they're in is meant for them.
For the majority, having an alternative avenue to speak is an easier pill to swallow than not being able to speak at all.
Especially when a topic involves two groups, it's natural that people from both groups would have opinions.
It's an unfortunate situation that men outnumbers women, so their comments unavoidably were more numerous and more likely to gather votes, giving the impression of dogpiling. The flip side then men necessarily needs to exercise greater restraint (or be more constricted) even to maintain equal representation, the more imbalance the more that restraint is required, which understandably wasn't sustainable and eventually somebody slipped.
People can often be oblivious, but most are not malicious. Being caught in the middle of heated arguments can often bring out the worst in us. I believe many who participated in that thread did not set out with the intent to invalidate the others' viewpoints, and most wouldn't mind putting their thoughts in a different thread if there was an option. Maybe allowing for some distance would have been enough to reduce friction.
Shouldn't people just learn to recognize when a topic is not for them?
In general I agree, I think exercising self restraint is needed when having to navigate between personal expression and social harmony.
However, with certain hot-button issues like this, where such appeal has repeatedly failed to stick, perhaps it's time to consider a new approach if we want to move beyond the status quo.
Is it redundant to have two threads for the same topic?
Naturally that would be the case. The Tildes community for the most part operate as if a single group.
If a post is meant for people in a group to see and discuss, then it feels redundant for there to be another post in the same group, since we assume most among the community have already seen the other post.
On the other hand, if there are two or more separate groups, then it's also natural that a topic posted to one group could also be repeatedly posted in another group. It's reasonable to assume people in the 2nd group aren't aware of the post in the 1st group. From their perspective the 2nd post would be the first time they see it, and the only chance they get to participate in the topic. So it's both expected and justified.
However, our situation here is a bit special. The post was anticipated to be seen by two groups, yet also expected to be participated only by one of them. This mismatch while not the cause, still exasperated the conflict by muddling disagreement about the topic with that of expected user behavior.
In abstract, this ambiguity can be resolved in two ways. Either leaning into the one-group status and accept that every threads should be open to everyone, or lean into the two-group status and accept that sometimes the same topic can be duplicatedly posted, since each post are targeted at a different audience.
Think of this like a non-interference policy between countries. If it's reasonable for a post to cater to a particular subsection within the community, then it should also be reasonable to expect that people from outside that subsection could discuss about the same topic among themselves instead. Because the alternative is to demand that the 'outsider' needs to stay vigilant of the activity of 'insider', and yet they could only be allowed to watch, like some sort of mandatory stalking policy which is a weird situation to be in.
In practical terms allowing both sides to have their own separate discussions makes it easier for both to ignore what's going on in the other sides, so less chance for conflicts.
But don't we already have different groups?
This touches on something @updawg pointed out in the meta thread. Currently, everyone are automatically subscribed to all groups. While people are free to unsubscribe from any groups they're uninterested in, it's well known that users often stick to the default. Knowing that means most people would expect most others are also in every group, even when they themselves have done the curation personally.
In effect, everyone in the community still interact with each other as if there's only a single shared discussion space, even if it could have been the case that after all this time most people might have already self selected into their own favourite subgroups already, just because of the perception that everyone hasn't.
Part of the work is to change that perception. So efforts to change our collective behavior needs to be more structural and explicit.
You may also be worried that this idea could backfire by breeding worse resentment.
Either by making each group feeling unfairly discriminated, or if both groups ended up spending more energy being passive-agressive agaisnt each other. I had that fear as well, and that remains a real possibility.
However, I have faith that it has a good chance not turning out that way. The thread in ~life.men showed that people largely remained well-behaved (thank you @winther for taking the leap with that post). In a sense, this same concern could have applied to the existence of both ~life.men and ~life.women as well. Nether group has imploded yet and this is a smaller version of that arrangement.
This may sounds counterintuitive, but I think keeping participation be voluntary would help to reduce this kind of resentment. As it shows the resulting behavior is what the participants themselves want and not due to being forced by moderators, thus actually reflect the preference of the community as a whole.
In a more aggresive community this idea may not work but I think people here are conscientious enough that it's worth a try at least once. If arguments still break out like our current single-thread arrangement, then the admin can always still step in. At least it should be no worse than the current dynamic.
Ideally this setup needs to be done as early as possible from the moment the sensitive post goes public.
Maybe the poster themselves could create the two threads from the start.
A mock example:
TITLE:
[Women-only thread] Men in tech # YesAllMenBODY:
Link to the video: https//....This is a sensitive topic about men and women.
To avoid breakout of arguments, this thread is dedicated to giving women their own discussion space without having worry about being overwhelmed by men's opinions on the matter.
If you're outside the targeted demographic and would like to share your thoughts on the topic please do so in the open thread instead.
TITLE:
[Open thread] Men in tech # YesAllMenBODY:
Link to the video: https//....This is the open thread for all to discuss about the linked video.
Since the topic is sensitive, another thread dedicated for the vulnerable group in this topic has been created. If you're a women and want to avoid reading about men's opinions, you can hit 'Ignore' on this thread and discuss in the dedicated thread instead.
If you're outside the targeted demographic, please share your thoughts here and refrain from commenting in the other thread.
Small thing to note that links can be posted in the body section instead of the dedicated link section to avoid the disclaimer from breaking off into it's own comment, which easily get burried.
However, I imagine in practice this would not be most common scenarios. The average users are not tuned in to all the potential sources of drama and just post whatever they find interesting first, only realsing when there's blowback after the fact. So the cases when this approach may be needed would also more likely be reactive. (Maybe with a pinned comment, a title change and a 2nd post. Since we cannot do pinned comment, probably have to rely on boost voting to keep it on top).
The people who are in position to make the judgement of when to create this setup are veteran and highly trusted member of the community. Someone who has been around enough to be able to quickly recognize the common painpoints for the community, able to remain impartial without getting dragged into the conflicts themseves, and know when such intervention is warranted. They're users who people can trust that if they do so, it's not an attempt to control the narrative.
Normally if I come up with any random ideas, I'd prefer to test it out myself and see the results directly. However, this is the kind that requires buy-in from the whole community, as well as the right people to take the helm. Hence this post. The ultimate aim is maintaining harmony among the community. If you think it's worth a try, you may also choose to nominate who you think is trustworthy enough for this responsibility. Those who may want to step in could benefit from the confidence boost that others trust them.
This post is motivated by the recent event with the ~life.women post but I hope it's clear the proposal is aimed at being a more general approach to future conflicts of similar nature.