Board Thread:Policies/@comment-10473115-20170415164119/@comment-10473115-20170422203159

I just thought that the accusations against you are so serious that it would be quite understandable if you weren't willing to just walk off the situation. It's good that you are not so easy to upset I still don't think there's any ill will behind those accusations and are based on a misunderstanding.

Even if we are failing in an attempt to reach a consensus in every issue in this thread, I think that it's been very helpful. All who have posted here have sincerely tried to reach better understanding between us and I thank you for that.

Reading Annabell's two posts made me finally understand how deeply she (among others) feels about our dispute over comic appearances. I've failed too see that before. That in mind I noticed that I hadn't taken Shabook's feelings about personal attacks seriously enough because I've failed to understand how pejorative terms like "unilateral" or "personal preference" could be taken. Whatever kind of discussion we'll accept on our community is still an agreement but feelings are always true. In the light of this thread, I did't give enough attribution to Shabook and TMAO about their feelings. I apologize for my lack of consideration.

I want to explain, not as an excuse, but for everybody to understand the challenges of our discussion environment. We all come from different backgrounds and debating cultures. I'm not a lawyer but I've also gotten a thicker skin being involved in politics. There it's a norm that people can question your deepest beliefs without it's becoming a personal. Of course most of political debates are just a hot air and sometimes I see it too much here also. Many times I feel more frustration when seeing fallacies or people creating arguments on the fly just to bolster their own belief, than the people opposing my views screaming bloody murder.

Let's take an example. In hybrid appearances discussion, I answered to the comment: "It helps people who consider it useful, and doesn't hinder at all the ones who doesn't. with: "A reason not to categorize hybrid groups without an own page is to reduce category clutter." There's no answer to that until it gets quoted again but then: "Great, let's reduce category clutter starting with removing a regular moustache, no matter how "specific" we consider it. If not, next articles that are going to be created are Tony Stark's and Stephen Strange's "specific" goatees." without considering substance of my argument at all and then later: "So more advantages, and no actual harm done... " I think that no harm done is the essence of our dispute. Other party believes that when somebody opposes something when there's no harm done, it must be personal. And I haven't even answered it all the time because I don't see it as a valid argument. I see in my mind a list of arguments and other side is seeing ""let's get rid of something I don't like just because I don't like it""''. I think that both sides have valid arguments and failure to see it has lead the frustrations boil over. I will open a discussion thread considering this problem and I may even have a possibly solution to the problem.

Admins's job is to ensure that there's no disruptions in a way to our mutual goal, best wiki as possible. It's a task given to them by the community. For some reason, in our community, it's expected that admins also make rules and when something happens, like misunderstandings in a discussion, admins's should write a better policies. Well, we are just humans. We make mistakes and without community's input on how we should use our extra user rights and (possibly) respect, there's going to be "double standards" and different decisions, because the responsibility is left to an admin alone. I'm sure that every admin has done as good a job on that as possible but don't except too much from us. Of course, problems should be voiced out and dealt with. There is something wrong with our community when it feels difficult to tell one's opinion here. Is it a fear of ridiculing comments, fear of the admins, or what, I don't know but we should get rid of it. As long as I have admin rights, I promise to defend every user even against another admin and Annabell has proved to be capable of that also. So there shouldn't be any fear to oppose admins.

We would benefit having better guidelines for discussion and agreed upon processes for solving disputes but the only real solution is to have enough desire to understand also those with different opinions and a mutual respect. Tool for that is actively trying to assume good faith. After all, we should be able to discuss, decide, and solve our differencies without any policies or guides. Those are meant just to help and can't ensure good discussion environment, only participants can.