Averting the Flame Wars

New here? Not sure where to start? Try these posts: - Turning Verbal Traps into Honest Questions - The Evil Twin Rule - In Every Respect Or check out our Index of Posts About this blog: Come here to read silly, illustrated posts about how to communicate clearly, disagree respectfully, and understand where other people are coming from on the internet. We think constructive discourse is a skill you can study, not something everyone can do just by trying hard. We’re here to teach you what we know about that skill. Our advice doesn’t apply to every situation, but we hope it comes in handy. This blog is primarily written by Melanie Odhner and co-written and illustrated by Sylvia Odhner (we are sisters). We both equally own and stand behind everything on the blog. Tags: #full posts #responses #illustrations #excerpts

[avertingtheflamewars]

Farewell

Hi everyone!

Now that our latest series is finished, we've decided to bring ATFW to a close. We had a lot of fun making it, but we're ready to shift our focus to other projects.

The blog will stay up of course, and you can keep following it for news about other stuff we make.

Thank you all so much for reading, sharing, and commenting. And thanks especially to those of you who supported us on PayPal & Patreon. Y'all are terrific.

Love, Melanie & Sylvia

[avertingtheflamewars]

Online Spaces, Part 6: Making Spaces Work Your Way

It’s all very well to respect other people's spaces. But how do you make sure there are spaces where you feel at home?

A space might claim to cater to you, but that doesn’t mean you’ll feel comfortable with the social norms there.

First, the hardest thing:

When someone treats you badly in a space that is partly yours, ask them to treat you better.

Just because your needs are obvious to you doesn’t mean that other people understand or remember them.

This is... very optional, because it's often hard and not always safe.

It’s scary to explain how you want to be treated, and scarier to phrase it as a request. There’s emotional risk involved, and no guarantee it will end well. Just lashing out at people can be easier, and can feel a lot more fair.

The question is: what outcome do you want? Asking for kindness has downsides, but it gives you a better chance of getting kindness. Explaining your needs works really well to get people to care about them. When you point out to people that they can choose whether or not to offer you respect and compassion, they usually want to be a person who makes the kinder choice.

Ignore, avoid, block or report those who won’t respect your space when asked.

This can feel super unsatisfying. "Just ignore bullying," is cliché, condescending advice that rarely works. But it's cliché because, occasionally, it works really well! And it works more often online than it does on the schoolyard. Curating who you hear from online can wildly alter your experience of reality.

Okay, but what if your problem with a space is more of a... general vibe?

You can’t address that without pinning down the problem.

What kind of interaction do you want to be able to have in this space?

What tends to go wrong when you see someone try to have that interaction?

Maybe a certain type of comment is too taboo, or not taboo enough. It can also be about structure and intention: Who’s an authority in a space, and what do they seem to want for it?

Sometimes it helps to directly question a social rule, hoping that other people in the space dislike that rule as much as you do.

This goes over best if you start by acknowledging the purpose of the rule you’re challenging, and affirming the value of that purpose.

If none of these strategies work, it’s probably time to retreat from the space, or do whatever you judge will work best to protect your own well-being.

You might find that the only way to find your space is to make a new one.

You can start a social media account that only interacts with people who are behaving according to certain rules. Or a blog or forum where you delete any comments that don’t meet with your stated guidelines.

We’d love to see more online spaces with meaningful, explicitly stated social rules. If you create a space that suits your own needs, you might find that others have been longing for the same kind of space as you, without even knowing it.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

[avertingtheflamewars]

Online Spaces, Part 5: No Space Is Safe For Everyone

The term “safe space” has often meant places that are safe for people in the LGBT+ community. The world and the internet have expanded on the idea, and different web communities have their own notions of what it means to be in a safe space. The phrase still has a strong connotation of protecting a marginalized group, and we’re not sure how universal or exclusive that connotation is.

You can make a space to protect people from a particular kind of bigotry. Or from a kind of hostility or bullying. Or from being caught off-guard by content that can harm them. We like that people have been figuring out ways to protect each other online.

But different types of safety can contradict.

Say you have a safe space for people who need their triggers correctly labelled. That same space can be unsafe for people with disabilities or life situations that make trigger warnings tricky to create. People can have attention issues, or difficulty understanding a warning system, or difficulty making their body or the software do what they want. They may not be fully fluent with the language of a space, or even just the dialect.

Being bad at following a space’s rules is a little unsafe if you have to be on high alert in order to avoid making constant mistakes.

And it can be very unsafe if people respond to mistakes with insults, cruel assumptions, or suggestions of self-harm.

Now, say you have a place that’s safe for people who are processing trauma and anger. It might be unsafe for people who share traits in common with those who inflicted the trauma.

Or it could be unsafe for people who are processing the same trauma in a different way.

The nature of a space depends on who it’s safe for, and what it’s safe from. It's only safe if the occupants mostly agree on those two points.

Otherwise, you end up working at cross-purposes.

There’s tension when you try to expand your own type of safe space to encompass a larger community. Suddenly, a lot more people have to mostly agree about who’s supposed to be safe from what.

Sometimes you’ll find that your type of safety is too specific to work in a big space. It’s hard to predict all the needs of a varied community.

Now, some types of safety do a lot more good than harm even on a large scale. Making a big space safer can be a tense but needed transition.

We here at Averting The Flame Wars want everyone on the internet to be safe from things like public doxing and death threats. But not everyone would agree with that. And even we don’t know exactly how to enforce it.

It’s hard to build a consensus with a large group of people about which rules are worth the trade-offs involved. It’s a struggle between two things:

Freedoms: The safety of being able to talk and act thoughtlessly, to relax and be open about your passions, uncertainties, and experiences.

&

Restrictions: Rules and norms that give people some power over if and how they’re exposed an idea or situation.

These are both types of safety. In general, humans need some of both.

Keeping a space safe means hashing out how you’re going to balance these two needs in lots of different ways.

And it means deciding how you can enforce the restrictions you have. If one person breaks the rules, do others get to try to make them feel bad? If so, what methods are they allowed to use?

If you’re going to honor the needs of different humans, you need to change where the boundaries are from one space to another.

It helps a lot if you state the restrictions and freedoms of your spaces as clearly as possible, so the people who need to avoid it can do so. Some Facebook groups have guidelines for their members, and some blogs have guidelines for commenters.

In a more amorphously owned space like a tag, it’s going to be a lot more subjective. Still, if you feel like you know a safe space well, it can help to articulate what you think the rules are.

Likewise, if you sense that a space isn’t intended for you or has unwritten rules you don’t understand, one option is to ask. Ask the people you encounter about who they want the space to cater to.

If they seem receptive, ask if they’d be willing to explain what kind of behavior they expect from you. (Keep in mind that this can be a lot to ask. Most people don’t know how to articulate exactly what they expect from you. And some have bad experiences with being asked the question.)

You can’t preempt every harmful misunderstanding this way. Our ideas can minimize hurt, not prevent it completely.

Safe online spaces are important. And they can be pretty unsafe.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

[avertingtheflamewars]

Hi everyone! It’s been a while, I know. We’re still planning to get more posts out at some point. 

Meanwhile, a message from our artist, Sylvia: I started a new webcomic in August called Don’t Get Any Ideas.

What is it about? Ecology, social issues, mental health, religion… a lot of stuff. I started it because I wanted to express commentary from different perspectives through the characters’ conversations, while the characters aim to imagine the world and each other complexly.

A warning, some of the ideas are divisive or taboo, and it’s not always politically correct. If you’re okay with that, please take a look! Click here to see the first page. The story and ideas have not developed much yet, so if you’re not sure about it, you may want to check back in a few months.

You can also follow the Tumblr, @dgaicomic.

Thanks!

[avertingtheflamewars]

Where to Find Us

Hello! Since Tumblr is in a transitional phase, we want to let you know what other places you can find us to get news about the future of Averting the Flame Wars and other projects we’re working on. We have some exciting plans for the future and we don’t want you to miss out on them! 

Melanie’s Twitter: melaniewode

Sylvia’s Twitter: sylviaodhner

Sylvia’s art & comics newsletter - get updates by email about Sylvia’s projects, any news about Averting the Flame Wars, and another thing Melanie is working on. 

[avertingtheflamewars]

Hello Again

You may have noticed we haven’t updated our blog in a while. We just want to reassure you that we will be posting the rest of the Online Spaces series at some point. Thanks for your patience! 

[avertingtheflamewars]

Online Spaces, Part 4: When A Group Owns A Space

When it comes to things like tags and forums, there’s often a group of people who see themselves as “owning” the space. They might have particular standards that they expect people to meet in order to “own” the space along with them. Things like:

- belonging to a certain demographic

- sharing a specific difficulty

- having certain political beliefs

- liking the thing that the space is dedicated to celebrating

- knowing social skills that may be specific to the space. Like knowing how to use trigger warnings in a particular way, or interacting comfortably with a certain type of humor

This is tricky. It’s rare that everyone who “owns” a space agrees about exactly who owns it or what the etiquette is.

If one person seems to speak for all the inhabitants of a space, it’s hard to know who they really speak for, and who they don’t speak for. It’s extra hard when you really dislike what they’re saying.

Not knowing who speaks for whom can make hurtful actions feel like they come from a whole group instead of one, or two, or twenty people.

Just because one person is acting badly, it doesn’t mean the whole group would act the same way. It’s possible that the people you encounter are acting extra mean, or aren’t informing you correctly about what the space is for.

Here’s where it gets a little harder: It’s possible that someone you encounter is acting extra mean, and that they’re still correct about what the space is for. They may be trying to protect something everyone values about the space, but be protecting it in an overly aggressive way.

In that situation, you could lash out at one person, only to find that others get caught in the crossfire.

What feels like an equal and opposite reaction doesn’t have an equal impact when an individual and a group argue. Words get separated from their context. People lose track of distinctions quickly as they unconsciously alternate between thinking about what the group believes and thinking about what one group member believes.

And in the middle of all that, online groups tend to have a trickle of new visitors coming in, trying to figure out what’s expected of them.

This is messy and hard. Prepare for people to act poorly from a place of hurt and confusion sometimes. Try not to take it out on innocent bystanders when you’re hurt and confused.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

[avertingtheflamewars]

Online Spaces Part 3: Going Out In Public

When someone posts on their blog or social media, they sometimes see themselves as being in a public space. So, they expect people to voice disagreement, ask them to quiet down under certain circumstances, or tell them when they’re being very rude.

Some people see their posts as a private space. If you join that conversation, you’re opening the door and letting yourself in, and anything you say upon entering will be viewed in that context.

If you’re not sure if you’re welcome in a space, you can always ask permission before joining or starting a conversation. Often, you’ll be treated more warmly because you treated the space as personal to someone else.

Now, people tend to see a space as more public if more people spend time there. This can be disorienting for users whose web pages become popular on the internet, and they find that what used to be a place to tell their friends and family about their thoughts is suddenly… a little less intimate.

When you’re on the internet, there’s no solid way to measure the privacy of a space you are in. So you can’t be totally sure how anything you say will be received. Be careful when you can.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

[avertingtheflamewars]

Online Spaces, Part 2: Territorial Disputes

We talked in Part One about how people tend to expect certain things when they’re on their own online territory. But the online community is still figuring out the etiquette around who “owns” which online spaces.

Different types of space overlap. It makes it tough to agree with other people about where your space ends and theirs begins.

People don’t always agree on who is the rightful occupant of a space and who is the guest. Or burglar. And it’s easy to judge someone’s online behavior through that lens - the belief that they are an intruder.

(Of course territorial disputes like this happen in physical spaces. A lot. The internet just adds some extra types of confusion to fight over.)

It can help to explain clearly where you perceive the boundaries of your own space. “I consider this blog to be my own personal space, so I consider it invasive when you comment on it in a certain way,” is much more informative than, “How dare you come here uninvited and act like a total jerk?”

Try to be clear about where you see the lines, and listen for other people’s boundaries. This stuff isn’t nearly as obvious as it sometimes feels.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

[avertingtheflamewars]

Online Spaces, Part 1: What It Even Is

The internet comes with its own concept of “space.” It’s a newer invention than physical space, and a little trickier to keep track of.

When people talk about a “space” online, they can mean...

a forum or forum discussion.

the comment section on a blog, video, or anything else that comes with a comment section.

a comment chain.

a website.

a social media account. This space can “contain” anything that appears on the page, or any messages people send to the account.

a community of social media accounts.

a fandom or part of a fandom.

a hashtag or tag page.

a listing of retweets, reblogs, or shares on a post. This space can “contain” the comments people have made on the post along its journey.

That’s probably not a complete listing of types of online spaces, but you get the gist.

When someone is in their own “space,” they expect a certain amount of control over what other people say and do there.

...And, when someone is in their own space, they expect a certain amount of leeway to do and say what they like without being interrogated or told off by uninvited guests.

The concept of online space is central to how a lot of web users experience the internet and the people in it, and there's a lot of disagreement about how it works.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

[avertingtheflamewars]

We Have a Patreon!

Hello, friends! We’ve just launched our Patreon! Patreon allows readers to voluntarily make a recurring donation to our blog whenever we publish a post. If we get a significant amount of people doing this, it will help us find the time to prioritize making content for this blog. We have plenty of ideas that we’re working on, so our limiting factors are time and money. Basically, the more money we get, the more content we can put out. 

We really appreciate anyone who can contribute! Even $1 per post is significant. And if you can’t afford to or it’s not worth it for you, don’t worry, you can still read our blog and we appreciate your readership! Especially if you help share our content! 

Click here to become a patron. 

[avertingtheflamewars]

Strong Statements Aren’t Strong At All

(…but they make good click bait.)

Hi! We’d like to talk to you about “strong statements” – statements that can be shocking, debatable, or oversimplified.

And also about “strong arguments” – which tend to be logical and convincing.

People sometimes use strong statements as if they are strong arguments. But those are different things.

The title of this post is a strong statement. But it would be hard to make a strong argument that the title of this post is true.

“Strong” statements are strong in some ways. They can convey a forceful mood, or catch people’s attention. They can prompt people to be more certain and militant about opinions they already have. They can make people feel obligated to take a side. They can be a shortcut to expressing yourself when you don’t have the time, skill, or energy to use gentle and precise words.

In reality, we just think “strong” statements are less convincing than most people seem to think they are.

Sometimes it seems like because what you have to say is important, you should say it in the strongest terms possible. It can even feel like a moral obligation to speak up for your side forcefully.

Really, it depends on what you want to accomplish. When people hear something that disagrees with their beliefs too much, they tend to dismiss it out of hand.

A persuasive statement might be one that is harder for people to dismiss out of hand. Or a statement that the other person technically agrees with, but that has difficult implications for their argument.

Sometimes it’s the most understated or “weak” statements that end up being the most convincing.

If an idea is true and very important, then getting people to agree with it or think carefully about it is a good thing.

When your main goal is to be convincing, it’s useful to sometimes explain your deeply held beliefs in mild terms. It can make your argument stronger and more difficult to dismiss.

Even when it feels like it’s the other way around.

[feotakahari]

This can easily turn into blaming prejudice on the victims of prejudice. No matter how many victims of prejudice argue in mild terms, if a single one speaks about the harsh facts of prejudice, the people who’re engaging in prejudice can point to that person in order to dismiss all prejudice victims as “shrill” or “strident.” And concern trolls who frame themselves as allied to victims of prejudice will push indefinitely for strong arguments not to be made, always saying that the arguments should be made at some later date because making them now would just alienate people. It’s a cycle where speaking out against prejudice is not part of the Overton Window, so people don’t speak out or are marginalized for speaking out, so speaking out can’t become normalized and fall within the Overton Window.

I recommend Letter from a Birmingham Jail for a fuller exploration of some of the issues involved in calling for mild arguments over strong ones. I quote it a lot, but that’s because a): it’s relevant a lot, and b): a lot of people with a vested interest in maintaining bigotry falsely remember its author as a person who favored mild arguments and was against strong ones.

[avertingtheflamewars]

We agree that the Letter From a Birmingham Jail is good reading on this issue.

We think there's a big difference between the idea that strong statements are often not the most persuasive, and the ideas that strong statements are a valid excuse to dismiss arguments related to them or that it is somehow wrong to make strong statements.

It's good to be reminded that people may fall into the trap of using the former idea to justify the latter ideas. We do not want to endorse doing that.

[avertingtheflamewars]

Strong Statements Aren’t Strong At All

(...but they make good click bait.)

Hi! We’d like to talk to you about “strong statements” -- statements that can be shocking, debatable, or oversimplified.

And also about “strong arguments” -- which tend to be logical and convincing.

People sometimes use strong statements as if they are strong arguments. But those are different things.

The title of this post is a strong statement. But it would be hard to make a strong argument that the title of this post is true.

"Strong” statements are strong in some ways. They can convey a forceful mood, or catch people’s attention. They can prompt people to be more certain and militant about opinions they already have. They can make people feel obligated to take a side. They can be a shortcut to expressing yourself when you don’t have the time, skill, or energy to use gentle and precise words.

In reality, we just think “strong” statements are less convincing than most people seem to think they are.

Sometimes it seems like because what you have to say is important, you should say it in the strongest terms possible. It can even feel like a moral obligation to speak up for your side forcefully.

Really, it depends on what you want to accomplish. When people hear something that disagrees with their beliefs too much, they tend to dismiss it out of hand.

A persuasive statement might be one that is harder for people to dismiss out of hand. Or a statement that the other person technically agrees with, but that has difficult implications for their argument.

Sometimes it’s the most understated or “weak” statements that end up being the most convincing.

If an idea is true and very important, then getting people to agree with it or think carefully about it is a good thing.

When your main goal is to be convincing, it’s useful to sometimes explain your deeply held beliefs in mild terms. It can make your argument stronger and more difficult to dismiss.

Even when it feels like it’s the other way around.

[avertingtheflamewars]

Even when you know that you’re talking to someone who uses different word definitions, it’s easy to fall into an unspoken power struggle over which definition you’re both really using.

Excerpt from our series, Differing Definitions

[avertingtheflamewars]

Voicing Points of Agreement to Avoid Misunderstandings

If you’re arguing with someone, tell them when they say something you agree with.

When you don’t, things get… confusing.

If you don’t know where you agree with someone, then you don’t really know where you disagree either. Let’s see what happens when you do stop to agree with people:

That went well. (At least until they were both struck down by The Brown Stone Spire for their shared unbelief.)

This also helps people understand why you disagree with them. We all have chains of reasoning in our minds. When two people disagree, it’s usually at least partly because the chain of reasoning in one person’s head parts ways with the chain of reasoning in the other person’s head.

If you don’t tell people which parts of their argument you agree with, it’s hard to pinpoint that spot where your opinions diverge. You leave them to guess.

People will rarely ask if they are correct about their guesses. It’s a deceptively automatic process for people to assume they already know why you disagree with them.

If you acknowledge exactly where someone’s reasoning overlaps with yours, it’s harder for them to fall into that assumption.

[feotakahari]

My problem: what do you do when it’s turtles all the way down? I’m not quite arrogant enough to call someone fractally wrong, but at the very least, I’ve encountered many whose beliefs are fractally unexpected, with each belief I didn’t see coming supported by an underlying belief I also didn’t see coming. For that matter, my own commonly expressed values are based on ideas that are based on ideas that are based on more ideas! By the time I make it far down enough to actually have a point in common, the other person is bored of the conversation!

[avertingtheflamewars]

Good point. Sometimes it's turtles all the way down. If this happens to you often, you might know more about how to deal with it than we do. But a couple suggestions:

1) As soon as you notice that there are a lot of turtles, change your goal from convincing the other person to just understanding their perspective. This can sometimes make the conversation less boring for the other person, because you're coming at it from a place of, "I don't understand how you see this issue. Help me understand." It makes the other person an expert in the topic at hand, and it's fun to be the expert.

(That's also a good time to ask yourself whether or not the conversation is worthwhile to you, since your goal in having the conversation has changed.)

2) Cut to the chase. Certain turtles tend to be on the bottom, and you can skip straight down to them. Things like,

"How do you decide whether you think something is true? I often look to groups of scientific studies. But I know some people prefer to reason deductively from bible verses or a certain belief set. Some people rely more on their own experiences or feelings. Some people reason inductively from the words of various people whose opinions they trust. Some people start with common errors of thought, and avoid beliefs that look similar to those errors. Can you describe how you tend to arrive at your conclusions?”

or,

“What do you want the world to look like? I have goals that involve all humans being safe, and happy, and free to do pretty much anything except hurt people or destroy good things. A lot of my opinions are based on those goals. Do you share my underlying goals? What qualities make up your idea of a functional community?”

Basically, find as many turtles as possible that are near the bottom of how you think, and throw them at people until something interesting happens.

That's all the advice we've got for now. Thank you for commenting! ^_^

[avertingtheflamewars]

From our blog post, Walking Away From a Conversation, Part 3: Expressing Your Wishes

[avertingtheflamewars]

In Every Respect

In online disagreements, it’s easy to feel like you’re the only one making an effort to be nice. Like you’re working hard to talk respectfully, but everyone else keeps sabotaging you.

All people have to do is be a tiny bit civil. That shouldn’t be complicated, right?

The thing is, it’s pretty complicated.

Here are a few examples of how you might try to convey respect in choosing your words:

empathizing with other people’s thoughts and feelings

not making assumptions about people’s thoughts and feelings

avoiding swearing & overly casual language

avoiding pompous, academically elite language

being straightforward & honest

refraining from saying negative things

carefully avoiding statements with any kind of subtle bigotry

not walking on eggshells with someone just because you have privileges they don’t

refraining from logical fallacies and generalizations

refraining from nitpicking and hair-splitting

See how this can get a little... contradictory? Differences in how you prioritize these things can alienate people who grew up in the same household.

Now imagine folks from radically different social circles, religious backgrounds, and countries, all trying to correctly guess what everyone else will read as respectful. That’s the internet on a good day. We can all work hard to treat each other right, and it can still blow up in our faces.

People on both sides can take measures to de-escalate a conflict, and it can escalate anyway because they perceive the conflict differently.

This can leave you feeling frustrated, self-righteous, and put-upon. All dry kindling in the world of flame wars.

It helps to figure out what exactly makes you feel respected. Then you can ask people to treat you the way you want, in a specific and constructive way.

And when you can articulate how you want to be treated, it’s easier to remember that others might want to be treated differently.