Jesus Christ it is a struggle when people do not read
All I said is that it is better to have the conversation than just have an empty topic.
When did THAT come from, I do not know.
If you scroll waaaaaaay up in the topic you will find this:
Hello there.
You will also find other instances where I mention systemic issues, but who’s reading?
No, I did not say that. I said that it is better to face the problem than hide it.
You cannot get mugged and not eventually notice. This is a very bad example.
If you want better examples:
It is better for fraud to be exposed than being hidden. That way people might go to jail and the money might be recovered.
It is better for violence to be exposed than being hidden. That way people might get the help they need to get out of a violent environment.
It is better for poverty to be exposed than being hidden … let’s say by buying fighter jets and pretend that the country is doing great, like Greece does.
You still think that exposing and not hiding problems is “a ridiculous argument”?
I am fine with that
No, I am stating that I prefer people being toxic in my face, than behind my back.
If you think that these things stop just because they are unseen, then what else can I say?
And who said the opposite?
And we found how many of them in this topic?
Did we implement any of them now?
Are we going to do so in the future?
Or do we just go round and round in circles patting our backs or trying to label people, in a topic that asked for opinions and not labels?
You are in a topic that OPINIONS WERE ASKED:
and time and time again the view that “opinions should not be presented” is coming up. I find that odd.
I understand that the written language is very open to misunderstandings, but at least the original question was very clear.
I am not “excusing” anything.
I will write this for the final time - good God - and hopefully this time you will actually read it and say that my point is that if you want to solve a problem, then you have to understand it.
Hiding a problem does not solve it.
If you disagree with that, this is fine and I totally respect your opinion, but please stop putting things in other people’s mouths.
As I said, the writting word can be open to misunderstaings so, at least, please have the courtesy to ASK if what you understood is actually what they meant to say/write/express.
Thank you
And I am out.
If we are down to debating if a problem gets solved by hiding it, then that’s it, unless we want to talk about the nuances of Andrew Tannenbaum’s “Ostrich Algorithm” which is a quite bad solution for that problem (even though it seems to be what a lot of participants are keen on, but, again, this is fine)
On the next similar topics - because these will come up here and elsewere for many many years to come - you will notice that eventually, year in and year out, fewer and fewer people will participate.
You may not understand this now, but this is going to be another, different, problem.
All I did earlier was point it out to you before it happens.
Be prepared for it or not, that is your choice
As the wise quote says: “Kill the messenger? It doesn’t solve the problem. It just feels good.”
(The Paladins - The Double Diamond Triangle Saga , No 2)
This is maybe the most important quote in this topic.
Being able to mute other players is not “hiding the problem”, it is an important self defense mechanism. The fact that people can also misbehave in other ways is irrelevant.
I would generally advise against responding to toxic people online.
If we are talking for ONE person, then yes.
If we are talking for a COMPANY/SOCIETY trying to solve a GENERAL problem, then no.
(see the end)
Tell that to the thousands of people that subsequently got trolled and flooded the LoL forum saying “I’d rather get flammed than have trolls”.
You remind me of the old funny slogan: “Keep your back yard clean, throw all your garbage at your neighbour’s lawn”
Incidentally the company “solved” that problem by deleting their own official forum.
According to Riot Games, if there is no way to complain, then there are no complaints, huzzaaah for happy customers!
Anyway, ignoring the repercussions of a proposed solution is just not a good practice.
This is very good personal advice.
It does not, however, solve the problem of “toxic people online”. They will still be there.
Can we differentiate on what we would do to have peace and quiet personally and what generates an environment of peace and quiet for everyone?
In terms of Go (in which we are interested), the equivalent would be like saying that “just mute the players and problem solved” is an acceptable solution, instead of striving to create a non-sexist environment.
Consequently, if we add a rule that declared that players cannot talk during live tournaments, Go clubs should be like libraries and noone is allow to speak and OGS takes the opponent player chat away like League of Legends did, that hides the problem. The sexism will still be there.
Everyone is obviously entitled to have their own opinion/solution/proposal, so if that is the course of action that you find reasonable for a general problem, then that is fine.
Just let us please not pretend that this actually solves the problem. Hiding a problem does not solve it.
That’s all I am saying on this issue.
Yes, the best is to change people’s mind and create an ideal environment, but that goal is hard to achieve. Until you can find a way, at least try to ban harmful people or at least prevent them from harming other people.
Like if you can’t eliminate thieves from your society, at least put better locks on your door.
Thanks for pointing out the obvious. I don’t appreciate that you are downtalking many concepts with the counterargument “does not solve the whole problem”. Coming up with the “all-healing-magic” will be nigh impossible, so lets appreciate the little steps too.
You seem to have a misguided idea that these are separate, when really they are intertwined. A good environment gives individuals options to deal with toxicity / sexism.
Well, I am honestly sorry that I had to do that, but this is where we were at.
I agree with that, totally. Even if it was not part of my job, it is one of the things that, as you said, are (or should be) obvious. Again, something very simple, taking a step in hiding the problem, is not a step towards solving it.
jlt is presenting a very good point:
Or, let’s say, putting thieves and swindlers and murderers behind bars. A sub-optimal step, but a step non-the-less that contributes to the creation of a better environment that might later generate a more wide solution. I am obviously ok with that and jlt is obviously correct.
Muting however is not like that.
Muting is the equivalent of letting the swindlers stay out of the jail, but they just go and swindle “someone else”.
Muting is the equivalent of letting the thieves stay out of the jail, but they just go and rob “someone else”.
Muting is the equivalent of letting the murderers stay out of the jail, but they just go and kill “someone else”.
Muting is not creating a “better” condition. It is, at best, just pushing the problem under the rug and, at worst, shoving the problem to “someone else” and that is not a “little step” towards anything good long-term.
This should have been simple and obvious as well.
There is a reason why “muting” is in no legal textbook or law anywhere.
People said that they muted this thread. Did they solve anything with that?
Nope.
It is the Ostrich’s Algorithm I mentioned earlier.
It has its uses, but on very few specific problems.
Yes. That is, actually, my point.
Wearing noise-cancellation headphones amidst the sinking Titanic however is not a “good environment” you’ll still sink. You are just not going to notice it. It is as simple and “obvious” as that.
I think you’re stating the absolute obvious here, and it’s different from what you started with.
The context in which you originally brought up that it’s better to expose than to hide, was in reply to tonybe’s message. You called it useful that people come into this forum and state sexist stereotypes, and literally said it’s better than the alternative of noone showing up. In context of martin’s video, you doubled down on this, saying that it’s better that these people spread their sexist insults, than that they would be muted and troll in different ways.
It continues a habit you have shown several times in this discussion where you (1) take sexism and find an analogy of something you’re familiar with (2) solve the problem that you’re familiar with by suggesting it’s not that big of a problem, (3) in this way indirectly excuse or downplay the problem.
Let me pull up the examples
Here you imply that the problem isn’t that women get harassed for being nerdy, but that all people get harassed for being nerdy.
You started talking about your own basketball experience:
Your solution is to “shrug it off”. In fact, you start playing the victim role after it gets pointed out to you:
You keep shifting the problem of sexism to a different problem of there not being Greek go players (Guess what is entirely irrelevant to this topic?):
It’s part of “this problem of sexism doesn’t exist in my experience, here’s a different problem that needs to be solved”
Once again, you take a problem, turn it into your experience and propose your solution to it. In this case that solution is to hide your identity. Can you understand that this puts the blame of sexism on women who openly state they are women online? It’s basically “but she asked for it” in a different jacket.
Your main issue.
One more example of “let’s replace this problem with one of my personal experiences”
We are not talking about men here.
You spin the topic around and make it about yourself.
Changed the topic at hand into your personal experience, and showed how it was not a problem for you.
In reply to martin’s video showing an example of sexism, you replied with:
Which moves away from sexism and tries to file it under “trolls” in general.
Takes the existing problem of sexism, and makes it broadly about trolls in general.
To reply to this:
The way I see it, either you continuously struggle expressing your thoughts correctly, or your there is something objectionable about your thoughts. Seeing that it keeps happening in this topic, I find it increasingly obvious that the latter reason is more likely than the former.
Try to look at it from the other way. Maybe, if people keep falling over your words again and again, there is something wrong with your words instead of with the interpretation that other people make of it?
Let’s start with this, since we are in the, sadly predictable, “quibbling phase”.
Nah, usually people grab from a couple of words, extrapolate what they think and then project their thoughts on what was actually said, usually skipping a lot of what was written once they got their “precious” in hand.
It is pretty typical in forum discussions and it is not at all an issue that just happens with my texts specifically, thank you very much.
Let’s quibble then since that is what you like. Remember, that I was very specific in my last post to clear any misunderstandings, but you chose to ignore that and go and dig to perpetrate your misunderstanding.
Also, you could have done this totally counter-productive thing via PM, but you want to get into meta-threading.
As you wish:
I think you’re stating the absolute obvious here, and it’s different from what you started with.
A point that I have re-iterated three+ more times since and you still warp to no end.
So, yes, “exposing and not hiding problems” was my point. You just didn’t read it. What part of “The problem is still there, just temporarily unseen” did you miss?
No, I did not say that “it’s better”. Here is what I said:
a) Nowhere do I say that “it’s better that these people spread their sexist insults”
b) I specifically call that behaviour “idiotic”
c) I re-iterate again - and again - my point which you ignore again - and again - that sending those people “somewhere else” or in a private server only hides the problem and not solves it.
d) I am responsible for what ACTUALLY I write, not what you THINK I write. I believe that I very respectufully asked you to " please stop putting things in other people’s mouths" but that is a quote that you seem to have missed In this case you adding that fraudulent “it’s better” is flying over the “misunderstanding” and landing both feet into “outright slander”
It is called empathy. I solve a lot of problems that way.
You take something someone else is experiencing, you make an analogy with something you understand, then you empathise with it.
God knows why you think that’s a bad idea, but hey.
No, the next step is “solve the problem that you are familiar with and then EXTRAPOLATE if a SIMILAR solution could be applied to the OTHER problem.”
That “suggesting it’s not that big of a problem” seems to be, again, in your imagination like that “it’s better” earlier, so there is no “downplay”, sorry. Let’s see your examples and we’ll figure that out:
Yes, your point being? Just because ALL nerds have the same problem, how is the “downplaying the problem”? If anything it enlarges the scope of the issue since it includes more people and showcases the deep social stigma that nerdiness has.
If you think that’s “downplaying”, suit yourself.
If you quote only what is suitable for your quibbling, maybe. You missed this point:
Guess what issue was talked to death 200 posts before. This one.
I am obviously not going to quote so many posts, but we got to the bottom of this with the people we were talking about it. Apparently you want to dig deeper. In which case:
Sexism is an issue in Greece and a big one at that, however if you want to argue that sexism is the primary issue in Go in Greece specificaly, where there are no clubs, no association and no live games going on, please sent me a PM with your argument. I’ll be looking forward to that
Again, it is called empathy.
Here we go again, with another topic which we went to the bottom of.
What did I say?
“Noone had ever even seen my face, my name or my gender. Why? because those elements were not needed to enjoy the game”
Did I say that I was hiding? No, I did not. Fancy that
Hiding is the ACTIVE choice of not disclosing or obfuscating information. Not disclosing irrelevant information is NOT hiding.
I am not “hiding” my gender, my height, my nationality or my preferences from you. They just do not matter in the context of enjoying Go and participating in this forum.
I did not say that anyone has to hide anything and it surprising that I actually explain that very same thing on the post you quoted, but you only presented “what was suitable”. Nice
Can you understand that I didn’t say that?
My original point, which you missed, was that UNLIKE REAL LIFE GO where you have to physically appear in a club or tournament, the ONLINE part of Go is EASIER TO BE INCLUSIVE and have environments that are NOT TOXIC because NOONE ASKS THOSE QUESTIONS.
Therefore a good idea to reduce sexism in Go and increase “women in Go” (which is the topic) is to first try it ONLINE.
Another VERY OBVIOUS point, gone over your head.
Do we have to explain EVERYTHING to excrusiating detail?
Good God.
Yeah, I know, but, as stated earlier you do not seem to like the “personalised approach”, you do not like “empathy” and at the end you agree here to the “you do not know anything, you are a man” kind of reply.
This leaves what kind of feedback open for reception?
Hmmm … none?
Maybe now you get my point when I said that some feedback is useful and that eventually those topics will not have people participating? Because you do not seem to like any feedback. Personal, empathy or otherwise.
Oh wow … you say that when in the same quote you used I specifically explain what the PROBLEM is
" it did nothing on making anyone else less toxic, because the people that participated where already of the same opinion and noone else hopped in"
THIS was the problem. How did you read this and conclude that I said “it was not a problem” is beyond me
Yeah, because we had talked about that earlier. Maybe you missed that too when we were talking about LoL and stuff and we didn’t want to touch those games with a ten foot pole.
What I usually get - and you yourself just used earlier - is that “personalised examples and anecdotal evidence are not really valid” kind of thing and can be dismissed, but we have to take one video of some morons in Valorant of all places that is a known troll-fest as indicative?
We solved the problems in Go and now we are moving to some online games that are known troll-fests and somehow I am derailing? Nice
Yeah, sorry I am not interested in Valorant and its “community”. I plead guilty on that
P.S.
I want to apologise to @_Sofiam for this post. I am an ardent believer that such scuffles should be done via PMs, but if an accusation is public, the reply should be public as well. I wouldn’t mind if both posts got deleted.
I hope that @Vsotvep will send anything else he has an issue with my replies via PM and spare both of us the “derailing timeout ban” that we have incoming if he keeps this up.
This topic has derailed too much, but I’ll just say one thing. You don’t have the same definition of empathy as other people.
For you, empathizing with someone means making analogy with a situation you are familiar with in your life.
For other people, empathizing with someone means trying to imagine what life would be if you were that person. Imagine yourself inside the other person.
You are again trying to “win the argument”. Let’s say that a person A suffers, then A doesn’t want you to say “you know, I also suffer because I’ve encountered similar situations”. The person A wants you to say “I understand your suffering, it would be hard if I had to live the same situation, we have to find ways to remedy that”.
No no no, please, I am very clear.
For example, I empathise with @tonybe 's daughter who he mentioned that some bad people tell her that “Oh, you’ll never be a dancer with YOUR body type.” with people telling me that that age "Oh, you’ll never be a goalkeeper with YOUR body type.”
Sorry, I cannot dance, so that EXACT same thing never happened to me, but something VERY SIMILAR with a different profession/hobby did.
So, I do not need the “if” … I understand because I “had to live the same situation”. Just not with dancing, but football. Heck, usually I even go and say how I did “remedy that”
When I do that in real life people feel comforted.
Here, somehow, that is perceived as “degrading” their struggle/problem.
People even join groups like “alcoholics/addicts anonymous” to find others with the same or similar problems yet here this is, “not ok”.
I find this odd.
Well, I was trying to explain way people react strongly to your posts. If you want to ignore the explanation, fine but the same pattern will reproduce again in the future.
I finally got around to finishing the article written by a woman chess player that @jlt shared much earlier in this thread. Here it is again:
Here are a few highlights, my bolds:
It seems obvious to me that in a deeply male-dominated environment, women and girls will be at a disadvantage in terms of personal safety. However, there also seems to be a blind spot, here, for a lot of otherwise good, kind men, in that they seem to think that experiencing sexism is unusual. This is not true. Chess culture is steeped in it. Every single woman I spoke to had stories to tell me about being discounted, about being stalked, about being consistently and unremittingly considered less worthy than their male counterparts. This is the norm, and to pretend otherwise compounds the problem.
(I don’t think we should assume that the go community at large is any better than the chess community described there. If your impulse is to argue that, then you may have the blind spot exactly described above and should read that paragraph again.)
I do want to speak directly to the women reading this. I know that a lot of you will have been hiding behind gender-neutral usernames. I know that a lot of you will be reluctant to engage with the wider chess community. I know these things, because I have many friends who have told me this, and I have been there myself. And in response, I ask myself the question: if I am not open about being a woman, who does that serve? I suppose I wouldn’t receive so many phone numbers, so in that way, it does serve me.
But I think, in reality, it mostly serves the people who don’t believe that women can play chess. Who think that chess is still, at its core, something for men. I think there’s value in being very visibly female. If nothing else, I think it makes female newcomers feel less alone, and less daunted by the wall of maleness in front of them.
Of course it’s complicated, though, evidenced by the fact I’m writing this anonymously. I would quite genuinely fear for my safety if I wrote this under my username. That, in itself, is indicative of a huge problem …
To the men reading, I would urge you to consider whether your own actions make the community a better or a worse place for women. I would ask you whether you, genuinely, despite what you’d say publicly, do think that women are inherently incapable, and then I would ask you to reflect honestly on your answer. Treat any women you encounter as fully-fledged human beings, because we are. We just want to play chess, same as you.
Perhaps the difference is that in ‘real life’ you are interacting one-to-one, and the way you share your experience comes across as empathising with them (assuming you are reading their signals right). Here it is many-to-many, people have varying expectations of what this discussion can achieve and to several of them your experience seems to sidetrack the discussion instead of moving it on to improve their situation.
Perhaps you would get a more positive reaction here if you were to shift your emphasis to how your experience could help women who feel unwelcome in Go: what does it suggest to you that they or we men (I am one) could to avoid or remedy that? And shifting the emphasis also means going light on the details of your experience, and not repeating them unnecessarily.
I think this article could also be a good read. It’s not exactly the situation of this discussion, but points 2 and 3 basically explain to why it’s not the right response to compare the situation to one of your own experiences.
(I think suggestions of what women should do different to deal with sexism won’t be very fruitful either, by the way. It’s an indirect form of blaming the victim)
Jlt’s point was that we should not rush to attack andersonie, as they may well not have meant what was assumed. I think that is a fair warning, and it is fair to support it by suggesting what they might have meant, for want of a reaction from them.
Blaming women for sexism against them is obviously wrong and it is men’s responsibility to improve their behaviour. However, suggesting something women could do (e.g. a coping strategy) is not blaming them for not doing it: it could offer a way to go on doing what they want (play Go) in spite of sexism, while hoping the root cause will be tackled, yet not having to wait for that. (I wondered if Jeth O could do that.) Chances are that most helpful suggestions will come from women — but not necessarily all.
Moreover, perhaps the problem in some places is not only sexism but also an atmosphere that is uncongenial to women for other reasons. In this case it is even more reasonable to suggest ways women can help one another.
In this case you adding that fraudulent “it’s better” is flying over the “misunderstanding” and landing both feet into “outright slander”
