[Mick]

If Yvonne or anyone else wanted my advice, here it is:

I'm a political scientist and I lead my students (of very different ideologies) through discussion of political controversies on almost a daily basis.  I would never want to attempt to do that online, in an electronic format.  Body language, facial expressions, and eye contact are critical parts of communication when it comes to showing empathy and judging sincerity.  With  that missing, motives can easily be misinterpreted, distorted, and exaggerated and the ability to listen with sympathy to someone who holds views that you find disagreeable is greatly diminished.

Despite that, this board did remarkably well on a couple of hot-button political threads that would have blown up much more rapidly in a different venue.  But we danced with fire too many times and people began to step over the boundaries for civil behavior.  The gradual increase in the number and intensity of these political threads gradually desensitized us to civil boundaries appropriate for a sports board.

That is why I voted to ban political threads.  I can save my political talk for face-to-face if that helps to preserve the sports community here.  I'm not at all surprised that Yvonne and Garvin have reportedly been face-to-face friends in the past, and that this sad rift occurred through electronic media.  That is worth thinking about.

So I think some strict new rules about political posts, a re commitment of us all to press the reset button to make this more strictly a sports board, and amnesty for all past transgressors would be my preferred remedy.  Hurt feelings, anger, apologies, and concerns about offensive statements between individuals should be sorted through offline--preferably face to face or at least by voice.

+1 to all of the above.

And slightly off-topic, but I think at least half of a conversation is the ability to read facial information, body language, involuntary mannerisms ,etc.  I have a friend who lives in a different world, he sells all over the country, so much of what he does is by the phone.  He attempts to understand a listener's personality in the moment, so he has to concentrate very, very hard to glean information from very few clues.  It leaves him oversensitive, and (literally) at the end of the day, his work day, he will have to come down from being oversensitive because he finds he overreacts to most normal conversation.

[Mick]

If Yvonne or anyone else wanted my advice, here it is:

I'm a political scientist and I lead my students (of very different ideologies) through discussion of political controversies on almost a daily basis.  I would never want to attempt to do that online, in an electronic format.  Body language, facial expressions, and eye contact are critical parts of communication when it comes to showing empathy and judging sincerity.  With  that missing, motives can easily be misinterpreted, distorted, and exaggerated and the ability to listen with sympathy to someone who holds views that you find disagreeable is greatly diminished.

Despite that, this board did remarkably well on a couple of hot-button political threads that would have blown up much more rapidly in a different venue.  But we danced with fire too many times and people began to step over the boundaries for civil behavior.  The gradual increase in the number and intensity of these political threads gradually desensitized us to civil boundaries appropriate for a sports board.

That is why I voted to ban political threads.  I can save my political talk for face-to-face if that helps to preserve the sports community here.  I'm not at all surprised that Yvonne and Garvin have reportedly been face-to-face friends in the past, and that this sad rift occurred through electronic media.  That is worth thinking about.

So I think some strict new rules about political posts, a re commitment of us all to press the reset button to make this more strictly a sports board, and amnesty for all past transgressors would be my preferred remedy.  Hurt feelings, anger, apologies, and concerns about offensive statements between individuals should be sorted through offline--preferably face to face or at least by voice.

+1 to all of the above.

And slightly off-topic, but I think at least half of a conversation is the ability to read facial information, body language, involuntary mannerisms ,etc.  I have a friend who lives in a different world, he sells all over the country, so much of what he does is by the phone.  He attempts to understand a listener's personality in the moment, so he has to concentrate very, very hard to glean information from very few clues.  It leaves him oversensitive, and (literally) at the end of the day, his work day, he will have to come down from being oversensitive because he finds he overreacts to most normal conversation.