Oh, I didn’t think that. At all.

I like the fact that our discussions generally involve intelligent contributions around the issues and not the mind-numbing procedural tit-for-tats that pass for debate on a lot of other sites.

Merc: I didn’t call Sara hysterical. I did say the claim she had made (escalating a rumoured “intimate search” to a “cavity search” of a teenage girl) was hysterical. I was shocked by it, to be honest. I had to go back and search for the other thing you referred to but I think it’s where I said you were alluding to a conspiracy theory (that the government had scripted the terror raids: “why did the police commissioner have to clear the Warrants with Helen first?”). That was my opinion, and I listed four answers to your question that I felt made more sense than the theory you had put forward. I can’t apologise for that.

As for you being called a conspiracist, I can’t actually recall the details, but it’s an open forum, and if someone sees fit to call you on your argument, that’s how it works.

Worik: Honestly, I think the way that people with very sharply differing views on the whole terror-raids issue managed to get through tens of thousands of words of debate without falling into personal abuse was something of a triumph. The fact that someone disagrees with you doesn’t mean they’re “naïve”, it means they disagree with you.

Deborah: Tze Ming’s eventual discomfort with open discussion forums under her posts was a complex thing, and something she predicted would be the case even before System started up. I didn’t escape me that a good many of the people who paid tribute after her final post were former lurkers — I thought it was quite touching that people took the trouble to register just to thank her. But I don’t think she actually got that many hostile comments anyway: more the reverse, particularly during the Asian Angst saga.

I’ve been debating in online forums for about 14 years, and most places have been a hell of a lot more torrid than PAS ever gets. It’s a format I’m comfortable and confident with, and I do try and manage it (and myself) as best I can. I’m strongly aware of not wanting PA to be a bunch of middle-aged white males, and you’ll hopefully soon be seeing some posts from a new entrant who is not white, male or middle-aged — but who will hopefully bear out my record as a good judge of talent.

The most difficult thing to deal with as a moderator is the taking of offence, because it’s so subjective (the so-called Yellow Peril “thread that wouldn’t die” was characterised by the taking of offence from all sides, usually where offence was not actually intended). In a discussion it’s best to pause both before giving and taking offence. I always find it useful to bear the following in mind: it’s just a discussion thread. There’ll be another one tomorrow.

Cheers,
RB

I never linked to Span enough. She’d post interesting, worthwhile stuff, which would take an hour to formulate a proper response to. So it would get stuck in the “I’ll post about this sometime” queue, and then fall off the bottom.

Unfortunately, I seem to have the same problem here as well…

Glad to see that people are talking about it.

i agree with a lot of what you are saying and will miss Tze Ming and am missing Span!

i have reccently written a post on the treatment of women in politics if you are interested in checking it out

http://thesproutandthebean.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/i%e2%80%99m-not-sexist-some-of-my-girlfriends-are-women/

we do need to get more women writing and of various perspectives and backgrounds.

great to find your blog!

hello, i don’t like fighting, it’s not fun and it’s not pleasant. and I’m not prepared to fight. When Tze Ming posted about bulling in cyberspace, she got it right, and guess what that thread tuned into.

it’s not beating up on PA, it’s saying OMG PA is an extremely active vibrant community that has the potential to be more. I’d consider it’s NZ’s premium place for political discussion.

It’s just that sometimes, people are not about conversing, they prefer to argue