TAY Atmosphere

Posting on the internet requires a bit of a thick skin.  By posting, you're putting yourself out there for all to see.  This, at times, requires a little courage and the ability to not take yourself so seriously. 

By posting in public, you open yourself up to criticism from strangers.  That's just the way it is.  If you want TAY to be just for yourself and your friends, you could always start your own site I guess, or just share with your friends via email, text messages, or phone calls (this is what I suspect most people already do in terms of condition reports).

That being said, I like the TAY atmosphere.  It sometimes feels a little dominated by the conservative, PNW-club (mountaineers, WAC) vibe, but then again, so do the mountains around Seattle, so I suppose that's the way it should be.  I, personally, would prefer Trip Reports to be be actual trip reports with a little effort put into the writing and photos, not just tweets on conditions which I don't really find any value in, but that's just me.

I think that the light-handed moderation that Marcus has brought to the table is great.  Keep up the good work. 

It's also really easy to choose not to be a dick on the internet.

Just sayin'.

This is a perfect example of somebody (oftpiste) being personally attacked (even with bad language), passive aggressively, and it's OK since super yeti appears to be part of the "civil majority."

Unless it's reverse psychology to point out the hypocrisy of the "civil majority"!

It's also really easy to choose not to be a dick on the internet.

Just sayin'.

^^^^Stop calling me names. You're a bully. That's not civil. You should be banned for that. My feelings are deeply hurt and I'm not ever coming here again.

See? This is a good example of what I'm talking about. Did he call me a dick or not? I don't think he did, and I absolutely agree with his point and I haven't been a dick to anyone. There is a case to be made that he did if I wanted to read it that way and it would be my choice to read it that way, but would me doing so seem seriously reasonable to anyone? If he was indeed saying I was a dick, who's the real dick here since my discourse in this thread, though possibly unpopular, has not been anything less than civil and respectful?

OR....... I could CHOOSE to ignore being called a name (if it actually happened) and simply move on. Wouldn't that be the grown-up thing to do?

^^^^Stop calling me names. You're a bully. That's not civil. You should be banned for that.
My feelings are deeply hurt and I'm not ever coming here again.

See? This is a good example of what I'm talking about. Did he call me a dick or not? I don't think he did, and I absolutely agree with his point and I haven't been a dick to anyone. There is a case to be made that he did if I wanted to read it that way and it would be my choice to read it that way, but would me doing so seem seriously reasonable to anyone?  If he was indeed saying I was a dick, who's the real dick here since my discourse in this thread, though possibly unpopular, has not been anything less than civil and respectful?

OR....... I could CHOOSE to ignore being called a name (if it actually happened) and simply move on. Wouldn't that be the grown-up thing to do?

Good example IMO...
I actually know Super Yeti personally, have so for years.
If I called him out for his post, maybe said something like, "d00d you're dick for posting that", he would know that I'm just razzing him, however others might get bent out of shape because they don't understand the nature of the relationship.

Also, I think it's a stretch for anyone here to expect someone to change their personality to suit someones sensibilities.
Someone being direct can and will be seen as being a dick. This falls into the grey area of what I feel becomes intolerant judging of others based upon your own back ground and influences. In my experience, when people start judging others, they 1) set them selves up for disappointment 2) lower themselves in the process of giving into their own self righteous indignation.

My personal feeling is, write/type what you would want someone to write/type back to you.
Avoid making it personal (in the case of disagreement), count to 10, read it again, then press "post".

Bottom line, this is the internet, there is no safe harbor, if you don't deal with confrontation well, perhaps this isn't for you.

Somewhat related:
There's been a fair amount of disdain and judging here of TGR and those who post there.

Sure, there are some people that post there that are less than civil, who don't contribute anything of value, and can be outright abusive. What TGR has that this place doesn’t is an "ignore" feature. It works well, and while I haven't used it a lot, there are at least 5 posters who I block because I know that I wont be missing anything of value. Call it user moderation.

With that said, I have met and made many solid friendships as a result of my interactions over there over the years, many of who, also post here. These are people who's families I have gotten to know, who's cabins I have spent the evening, who's tails I have followed up skin tracks, or down through power stashes. These are people who I trust my life with, and who's backs I keep eyes on. So, perhaps before you find yourself judging an entire community, ask yourself what it is, you don't know and perhaps take a look in the mirror and ask yourself what they might say about you?

To Marcus, I say good job.
I think that in general your approach is working and that you are evolving with it on a daily basis.
Stay true to your own standards, I personally feel that it's heading in the right direction.

PS. What others have said about media

To be crystal clear, my only point about TGR is that just because the people there have thick enough skins to deal with what's often dished doesn't mean everyone can or will learn to do so. The people who can't or won't just don't play there. So let's make this really explicit. Are some of you suggesting that if some "harder play" in the form of name-calling, claims about the intelligence/competence/intentions of others, etc. leads to some long-time members of TAY to bail and prevents some lurkers from diving in, that this is just fine and should be considered "acceptable cost of business on the interwebs?" Is that really what I'm reading?

Oftpiste - thank you for providing a good example of stating your POV w/o needing to resort to making it personal. You raise the issue that it's a fuzzy line between what's personal and what's not. However, to claim that therefore one should entirely ignore the question of abusive posts and personal attacks here is to fall into the "continuum fallacy."

The continuum fallacy (also called the fallacy of the beard[1], line drawing fallacy, bald man fallacy, fallacy of the heap, and the sorites fallacy) is an informal logical fallacy closely related to the sorites paradox, or paradox of the heap. The fallacy causes one to erroneously reject a vague claim simply because it is not as precise as one would like it to be. Vagueness alone does not necessarily imply invalidity.

The fallacy appears to demonstrate that two states or conditions cannot be considered distinct (or do not exist at all) because between them there exists a continuum of states. According to the fallacy, differences in quality cannot result from differences in quantity.

There are clearly reasonable and clearly unreasonable cases in which objects either belong or do not belong to a particular group of objects based on their properties. We are able to take them case by case and designate them as such even in the case of properties which may be vaguely defined. The existence of hard or controversial cases does not preclude our ability to designate members of particular kinds of groups.

If it really needs to come to it, I'm sure we could easily dig up cases from the TAY archives from the past year of psts that are much more clearly lacking in basic civility than the example you chose to drill in on.

With that said, I have met and made many solid friendships as a result of my interactions over there over the years, many of who, also post here. These are people who's families I have gotten to know, who's cabins I have spent the evening, who's tails I have followed up skin tracks, or down through power stashes. These are people who I trust my life with, and who's backs I keep eyes on. So, perhaps before you find yourself judging an entire community, ask yourself what it is, you don't know and perhaps take a look in the mirror and ask yourself what they might say about you?

Hear hear. I can't even begin to count the good things I've experienced from TGR as well as here, more so actually from TGR as it's such a much larger and international outfit. Lots of great people, a few knuckleheads. Just like the real world! Don't let the knuckleheads get you down, because whether you like it or not there will always be a few wherever you go.