[Foundation-l] "Filtering" ourselves is pointless

[George Herbert]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 2:36 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10 May 2010 22:32, Mike Godwin <mnemonic at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 2:31 PM, David Levy <lifeisunfair at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> > Can you point me to major media entities that have accepted the notion
>>> that
>>> > "Fox News was correct"?
>
>>> I'm referring to the conclusion that one, in my assessment, would draw
>>> upon encountering Jimbo's remarks first-hand, with or without reading
>>> Fox's subsequent reports on the matter.
>
>> Did you draw that conclusion?
>
>
> Your equivocation on this point is wearisome. Jimbo's actions were
> ridiculously damaging for *no gain whatsoever*.

I saw this whole thing starting and took the weekend off to avoid stress.

That said, now that it's fairly unavoidable -

As far as I can tell, major mainstream media coverage of the original
Fox stories was minimal.

Followup in major mainstream media to Jimmy's actions has been limited
at best - The BBC has a decent story:

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10104946.stm

...And the aforementioned Vanity Fair blog, and something on
Huffington Post.  There seems to be a widespread disbelief in the
underlying child porn accusation, other than at Fox.

In retrospect, attempting to some degree to read Jimmy's mind as of
four days ago, I think we "jumped" to try and get ahead of negative
press that did not develop.  I think it was reasonably predictable
that it wouldn't develop, but I understand why the mistake was made
there.


In response to the wider use/abuse of power issues; I think it's wise
anytime a very bold action is taken, to consider beforehand whether
the underlying issue is "worth it" - worth, if everything goes
completely sideways in the ensuing event / discussion, the loss of the
power or authority that was invoked to try and take the bold action.

I can't help but think that this was a tremendously worthless
underlying issue to go and melt the Founder Bit over.  That bit has
been extremely useful at times, used more carefully.

It also has dragged down a number of people's perceptions (within the
community) of "the board" and several individual members, again
extremely useful things we had to work with and have now lost.


One of the most important features and functions of a wider community
input is to calibrate responses.  Even if you do not change your
underlying opinion on an issue, if others say consistently or loudly
"This isn't worth it", then perhaps it's not worth being bold about.

It's not a function of leadership to ignore such input; it's sometimes
a function of leadership to override such input.

I think a bunch of people forgot the difference between override and
ignore, in the leadup to the events of Friday/Saturday, and we're all
much poorer for it.

I would like to say thanks to those who maintained AGF and fought to
seek and engage on community input throughout this.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com