I wish discussions were more open and less regulated.
I wrote a post once calling out Celtics fans who attacked Ryan Gomes for not being onboard with the tanking. It was intentionally incendiary because I wanted people to think hard about what right the Celtics brass has to fix games, and also about the lasting consequences of tanking.
No one was attacked individually, but I called the pro-tanking/Gomes attacking group cowardly and uncompetitive and tried to point out that Gomes was one of the few players (maybe the only one?) on our team to graduate college and seemed to actually understand that the odds of the lottory are against us getting a top two pick (which is a FACT that most people seem to breeze over). A moderator edited out my opening paragraph because it, "attacked a group of people."
I thought that this was a poor decision by the mod because it prevented these people from actually having to consider and defend their viewpoints from being A)Cowardly B) Non-Competive and C) Based on a poor grasp of mathematics and odds.
My point was that we talk about Celtics Pride all the time, but when I tried to start a fiery discussion about what that actually means it was snuffed out (in my opinion) because the ideas involved weren't concrete enough, but rather based in philosophy. Well how else can you have a conversation about an idea like "Pride" without challenging your opposition's sense of it?
In this case I thought the editing of my post prevented an important discussion from happening on this board in order to protect a majority of posters from having to defend their viewpoints on a philosophical level.
I understand what you are saying. The complications in communicating on CelticsBlog stems from the diversity and complexity of the constituency of this community. This place is not just intended to be somewhat family-friendly, but is also intended to be a safe haven along many lines that include gender, race, creed, culture, faith, socio-political and economic background and perspective as well as a multitude of other key components of the human fabric. It makes talking a little bit tricky sometimes.
Trust me on this one amigo, nobody around here is more familiar with this convoluted territory than me. I've figured out that depending upon what I say here, I can create shapes formed of human beings...circles, triangles, squares, rectangles, polygons and even extend them to third-dimensional axes. It is like something along the lines of those old choreographed swimming dance team numbers in movies from the 1940's except usually turns ugly.
On those occasions there is often little I can do to explain to folks that my intent was different from what was perceived. What such instances reveal to us is that it is important for us to communicate more effectively with one another. That begins with assertiveness. Assertiveness simply means not being overly aggressive or overly passive. It means finding a way to express oneself without alienating others but at the same time, not having to bottle up oneself either.
Learning how we may do this takes a bit of doing, but in a town this size built with the intent of providing a place where all lovers of the game of basketball can feel good about their residence and relations in this community, sensitive and effective communication is imperative. And like any physical "town", this one requires a basic form of government that is dedicated to serving the community's overall best interest.
Do we make the rules? Yes, but the rules are derived from what we know about "best-practice" government with regard to websites and what we see demonstrated daily as most healthy for this community at-large. So, that's sort of the layout of the landscape. I've worked in service as Webmaster and Host with websites that literally are the homes of communities over 100 times the size of CelticsBlog. They have far more depth of management and more strict regulation than this place. They have to have it.
What we have here is pretty close to what WE need right now. We are always looking at it. Sometimes we add new rules, practices, procedures policies and guidelines. Sometimes we remove or modify some of those we've implemented. These things have to be done. CelticsBlog is a living, organic entity and it is growing. We are just trying to nurture it in ways that represent the best interests of all here.