A conversation gone wrong, in a jif. or possibly a gif

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My bad, I’m at work so there’s no time to make decent screenshots of the whole exchange.

##Precisely.

It’s to the point that I relish every opportunity to call him out on his fucked up subconscious mentality, letting him know that his genius at coding does NOT mean that he’s “a genius” when it comes to dealing with other people, and especially not women.

I agree that the conceit of having created the very platform we’re using to communicate impedes his ability to see any flaws within himself, particularly when it comes to personal bias regarding gender and race.

Learned Coward really got in his ass, especially after it was pointed out that Jeff was basically ignoring everyone in that thread except LC, who presents as male.

Then Doop finished him off by pointing out how he does that shit regularly, indicating that Jeff seems far more interested in just hearing himself talk than he actually is teaching or (heaven forbid) learning anything.

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but like, that’s not accidental. “The Community” isn’t his construct. It’s ours. That’s most of what I am trying to say here.

It isn’t his community, it just grew on the hull of his boat.

I’m suddently thinking of ST:TNG and the new life form that started taking over the Enterprise, and how unlike JLP is JLW? is he even French?? :wink:

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No worries, just teasing a bit. I’m not that rigid about not going back, not when there are primary sources germane to the topic there (especially when it’s a nice, juicy, well-deserved dogpile on Jeff).

Dieses Buch habe ich von meinen Schülern gelernt. (I have learned this book from my students.)

Arnold Schoenberg. You may or may not like his music; he may have been an arrogant prick in many parts of his life, but he was by far and away the best teacher of composers in the last century, with more great composers, none of whose music sounded like his, as students than any other teacher, and it was because he did have this fundamental humility: he was willing to listen to and learn from his students.

“Why try to be a Superman? Why not instead a whole man?”

Schoenberg knew his flaws and wrestled with them his whole life. I think Jeff has convinced himself that he is Superman. He can’t listen as a result (since by definition, no one else has his level of insight), and, because he can’t listen, he can’t learn, and, because he can’t learn, he can’t teach. This is rather scary, because his magnum opus is a site where people go to get answers in their field - it’s nominally an educational site.

Teaching is about getting into the heads of your students to figure out what they want to do, and removing the impediments preventing them from doing it. You can’t impose your way of looking at matters, because they may well surpass you if they follow their unique insights, and you may surpass yourself by learning those insights. Instead, you provide them the tools to learn those insights. I can’t see Jeff ever doing this. “Knowing it all” is a form of arrested development.

[If I use Schoenberg as the linchpin of this discussion, it’s because I too am an autodidact, and, warts and all (both mine and his), I learned a lot from his example, both technically and. umm… attitudinally (and my music doesn’t sound the least like his either :wink:).]

Edit: The second quote should be “Why try to be a demigod? Why not instead a whole man?” I was working from memory, and unfortunately my memory is old. :confused:

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Yes and no. He does want a community of people that read BB religiously and occasionally buy stuff or follow affiliate links. What he doesn’t want is the body of thoughts that come with building such a community. He wants to be wildly popular and yet have no critics? And I guess he wants regular readers but wants them to not care about BB? Because a large part of caring about friends, family and communities is sounding the alarm when you see a problem. That he can’t see that is too bad.

It’s not that different from some bands, authors and directors (content creators in general) that build a large fan base and then at some point they and the fan base have a falling out.

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Bad analogy.

It’s not jason’s boat, technically speaking.

The boat was commissioned by Mark & co, designed/built by Jeff, and jason is just the captain that they all hired; probably not knowing that he was an ‘Ahab.’

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We’re mostly in agreement, though ‘the community’ is an outgrowth of the Discourse era, and that’s all Jeff has been around for (I mean, maybe he commented before, but I never heard of him before Discourse ). It really wasn’t coherent before Discourse arrived. I think the PTB preferred that, whomever they are.

At the end of the day, I like it here better. And beginning of the day too.

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Has jason always been the publisher, even back when BB was a 'zine?

If so, then he’s still just the dude they hired to guide the boat.

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Honestly not sure, but I think he came in around 10 years ago with Confederated Media, not sure what that even was but it floated around a while. Maybe BB was purchased?? The Wolf knows the timeline better than I, I’m an outsider such as yourself, I think oren had something to do with CM.

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If Oren is who I think he is (Ken), then he’s been with BB for a very, very long time. He’s a great sysadmin… unfortunately, some of those properties that make him a great sysadmin (namely a great, overarching desire to order things into neat little boxes) conspire to make him a terrible moderator.

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I refer to him by all his names interchangably, and yes. And yes I think that may be the case.

Not my circus. Not my monkeys, right?

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Sounds just like another Orange Menace.

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Kind of ironic given how deep the GOB club is in the Valley. Piss off the wrong people, burn the wrong bridges, have one unforgivable fuck up and you end up becoming an untouchable.

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Totally off topic, but I really do think it’s awesome how my personal colloquialism has crept into the Regulars’ vernacular.

#^_^

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RE: Free Ice Cream Stand

I’m tired of hearing this one because the reality is that no business is ever handing out free ice cream. There is always a transaction involved. Publishers like BoingBoing actively solicit your attention in order to profit by it, and in exchange they provide their users with an experience that they would reasonably regard as worthwhile. Over time that becomes an investment as the publisher deliberately cultivates an affinity toward its brand. This is especially true of communities like the BBS. Publishers set these up so that people will spend more time on their site, engage with their brand, and identify as part of a “tribe” centered around their private business interests. In exchange users are led to expect a platform where they can engage in open discussions, build and maintain friendships, and so on.

Then comes the day when one of your friends is banned forever and the site owners inform you, in no uncertain terms, that this is their house and they decide who is welcome and that if you don’t like it, you can simply say goodbye to the people you’ve met and forfeit all of the emotional investment that they have theretofore elicited from you. Having made a business decision to attract you to its site, the publisher then explains how hard it is to monetize you and what a burden is it on their time to have to answer complaints about what they’ve so freely offered. When they feel they’re not benefiting by the transaction, they’re a business with a bottom line, but when you feel that way, they’re a free ice cream stand and you’re an entitled little brat.

Screw that. When you actively seek people’s time, attention and especially the heavy emotional investment that comes from involvement in an online community, they have a right to expect you to deliver an experience which respects that. If you can’t make money and your users are unhappy, then that reflects upon you as a publisher. Your job is to find a way to make it work. You are a business that operates for profit and your users owe you nothing.

BB is the third time I’ve seen this play out and the crux of it is that it’s unwise to form a community around a business because their interests are different from yours, and their interests will always come first.

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That all sounds like really fair criticism.

I guess it was just the maybe 5th time I’d heard the warning over many many years. I did have to look away this time though. It really is a bad plan to invest in something you’re not a shareholder in. I totally agree with you there. I’m not invested there really. I could invest here, assuming we come up with a proper manifesto (have I mentioned manifestos are important and cool, as I see them).

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i agree with​ everything you said, was trying to find a way to say similar.

the one perspective i would add is that those at the other place believe the steps they have taken are steps towards making it work. for them at least.

and that’s where some of that hurt seems to come from. that there’s not a whole lot of recognition from their side that a community has grown up as they intended. and that summarily changing the rules without​ involving that community is an abrogation of their side of the deal.

it’s similar to when a company just ups and moves its​ factory. it’s legal, it may be financially wise, but it’s not exactly just.

[ edit: that analogy has its problems. ceos who put a brief uptick in share price above people’s lives are doing actual evil. its an entirely different kettle of fish. even if they are both technically kettles. ]

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Working in engineering, this is the fundamental issue that I run into ALL THE FUCKING TIME. So, I understand what is going on with Jeff, and while I absolutely, totally adore Discourse, the wall I hit with BoingBoing was that engineering/software dev mindset that all problems can be solved with tech.

They have some brilliant frickin’ tech, and there is a lot of heart there, but still there are issues that need solving by human beings. Hey, let’s have the mods do a little video to teach people the rules of the road here. Let’s have a big group webinar and make this more social. Let’s start up conversations about what we want the space to be like that don’t revolve around bells and whistle and reward systems but how do we create warmth and community.

What drove me bonkers was they had all these people out there traveling the country promoting their books and blogs and such and it would have been SO EASY to create community events around those things, and it would have helped them sell their stuff, too.

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Such a huge missed opportunity; imagine if the community actually went to events where Mark/Cory/jason are speaking because they like supporting BBS and feel that it supports them back.

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I couldn’t get why were supposed to by crap from Amazon and not their stuff to support them. And the stuff they promoted was total crap. It was not in line with their brand at all. The one thing that I felt they did that was in line with their brand was the Christmas wish list. I thought if they had promoted things like that more, it would have made more sense.

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The thing that strikes me is that Jeff seems to recognize this in other people, but not in himself.

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