SMOFail

[kevin_standlee]

I stopped reading The List That Shall Not Be Named last Thursday when I headed to SMOFCon. Today I woke up sick and ended up not going to the office, but after sleeping about 13 hours I staggered to my desk in the hotel room and have worked a full day anyway. In the meantime, as of the time I compose this post, The List has accumulated a staggering 1249 messages. I'm scared to look. I'm on the point of declaring List Bankruptcy on it and deleting the lot. OTOH, when there are that many messages in that short a period of time, it seems like it must be something worth knowing what it was about.

Comments

[rono-60103.livejournal.com]

No there isn't anything on the list worth knowing about. The current SNR is running somewhere around -∞ dBpost.

A couple of threads have exploded to the point where they are just short of flame wars, and those are the ones that I've poked in at over the last week or so. I don't think I've seen the list this bad.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

That's what I feared. I've heard through quiet channels some suggestions that the List is now being deliberately trolled.

The SMOFS list was really originally set up to be a forum for discussing WSFS Business Meeting proposals somewhere other than on the floor of the Business Meeting. (Remember, twenty years ago, you found out what was up for proposals by showing up at the Preliminary Meeting, and the entire debate happened there and only there.) Over time, the list gradually shifted focus to cover other conrunning-related topics. Ironically, it's gotten to the point where people complain about discussions of WSFS business, the list's original focus!

This makes me think that we need to find a different place where people can debate WSFS business in public, without any of the (unjustified IMO) cries of "secret backroom dealing" that I've heard. But if we do that, it's going to have to be a forum where anonymous or unidentifiably pseudonymous posts aren't allowed. I don't mean "legal names" (oy, what a rabbit hole that is), but "names by which you are commonly known to others and to which you will answer." I do not want anonymous cowards trolling us! And it's just possible that if the entire discussions are in public, it will be easier to point at them and say variations of, "Yes, there were individuals who made idiotic comments, but that doesn't meant that every conrunner in the world is like that -- and if you can't be bothered to look at the context, then it's your fault." As it stands now, pulling individual out-of-context comments and ignoring when people who make mistakes apologize for them just makes it look like every convention organizer is a racist-sexist-homophobic-whatever-you-want-to-call-them-ist. The long-term future for volunteer conrunners in such a situation is dire, and the long-term direction for SF/F genre conventions in such a scenario is that they're all going to become Popular Culture Entertainment Events, where you buy a ticket to queue up for your measured dose of entertainment provided by the hired help.

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

The vocal "trolls" are using their common names unfortunately.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Well, for the most part JOF seems to be successful in using a Facebook group, and a strong moderating hand, to avoid becoming SMOFS.

[crookedfeet.livejournal.com]

You might want to scan it, but there's a fair amount of ugliness. I don't recommend reading it all the way through. unless you want a bad case of indigestion.

[dave-gallaher.livejournal.com]

I think that over half of the 1249 messages are from four or five individuals. If you could easily delete or mark as read the posts from those folks, it might be worth reading.

Then again, probably not.

Dave

[petrea-mitchell.livejournal.com]

The current hot topic is, ironically, how to reduce the number of messages. You might want to check on that one at least.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

SMOFS is dead as a forum for real discussion, IMHO. I am only on the list for the purposes of checking for comments/complaints/questions about <ahref="http://www.nippon2017.org">Nippon in 2017. There are a small number of people who will not let go and who jump in to argue with each other and anyone else in the way on any emotive issue. They are constantly assuming malice and ill-will on the other side. It's just ugly. I'm also unhappy with the make-up of the list these days. There are too many people from too diverse a group of conventions with different approaches, nomenclatures and practices and too many of them react with horror not interest when it emerges that others do something differently. There also seem to be a few non-conrunners on there, for what possible purpose I could not fathom, but they don't really add to the conversation, particularly.
I finally gve up trying to even skim it and just search for nippon/japan/2017 now.

[lindadee.livejournal.com]

The last week has been just awful. I've been working 16 hour days and barely scanning SMOFs. My delete key is going to have quite a workout tonight.

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking of getting a Google address just for the SMOFs list, so it will get off of one of my other e-mail address, so I can use that one as designed again.