Sigh

[alex_beecroft]

Am I going off the Age of Sail altogether?  Or is it just 'Secrets' which isn't very interesting?  I can't really tell.  Trying to write a big battle between a bomb ketch which has already used up all its bombs, and a xebec, while escalating some sexual tension between her Captain and Lieutenant shouldn't be this difficult, surely?  I just don't seem to have had any enthusiasm for it since I got back from the holidays, and I'm fully convinced that it shows in the writing.

Comments

[hms-dauntless.livejournal.com]

I'm glad and relieved to hear my meaning is clear. It's such an emotional, personal thing, that it's so difficult to explain how I feel about it without saying something that may inadvertently hurt or offend. ! :)

Yes, it was Molly's post. I'm very sorry she had her attention drawn to unpleasant comments about her work, tough I'm sure the people who did it, did it with the best intentions. But I'm also very sorry and upset for the precedent this creates: it brought me back bad memories of my personal fandom experiences with other people tracking my LJ comments.

Yes, veronica_rich's suggestions seems very wise and pragmatic and I will follow it. We cannot be liked by everyone, and not everything we do can always be approved of by those who like us. But this is not the end of the world. We can always do better next time. :)

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose I can agree that the people who did it might have had the best intentions, but I'm sure that I was always told that you ought not to spread nasty gossip. (In other words, if someone comes to you and says 'have you seen x's hair, isn't it *dreadful*!', you don't then immediately go to x and say 'y was telling me how dreadful she thought your hair was.') It only provokes ill will and makes people unhappy, as well as undermining confidentiality. I think that this is exactly the same thing - so I have less sympathy for them than you do!

I'm beginning to understand how gossip got the reputation that it did for being a very bad thing!

[hms-dauntless.livejournal.com]

Full agreement about that. Gossip never produces anyhing good. Whatever the level. Whatever the issue. I should have framed better my sentence and specified that good intentions do not absolve a person for doing a thing that has foreseeable unpleasant results (and no actual advantage).

Undermining confidentiality: that's it. Of course, when I post my opinion about something, I must take responsibility for it. But all things must be contestualized, or - especially in internet land - we can end fighting to death for a missing comma in a sentence.

I think I found the post in question and, all in all, it was an opinion someone with a specific fandom position was sharing with similar-minded persons in her/his LJ. It was clearly a distress-induced rant, and no names were specifically mentioned in the original post, so it was clearly intended for a specific group of people. Opinions are free, I suppose. As well as the right to share them with persons who agree with you. if they are not directly forced upon me, why should I care ?

I think all depends on how we intepret the use of LJ. If we think of it as a newspaper or any other mass media intended to reach great number of persons and to influence public opinion at large, then, of course, the type of opinions we post has a specific weight and every word we post must be carefully chosen. However, if we think of LJ - literally - as a personal journal we use to share our musings with persons having the same interests, then I suppose we should be entitled to a bit of looseness for our less popular, worse worded, written-on the-spurt-of distress opinions.
Personally, I believe that LJ would end being hell, and we all should make our LJ friends-only, if every time we express an opinion we are made a public target for all the internet surfers who disagree with us. :)

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

I'd quite like to read the post that started it all, if you could point me in that direction :) I promise not to comment or to otherwise get involved, it's just that my curiosity is aroused now!

But I agree that many of the problems of LJ come from the fact that you naturally think that you're speaking to your friends when you post something, and yet, unless you've friends locked the post, anyone can see it. You rely on your anonymity and the fact that there are hundreds of LJs out there, with no good reason for a stranger to come along and suddenly read yours - and you get to think that as a result it's a private sort of place. But it isn't.

If you wanted to be really careful, you could friends lock anything remotely controversial - but that would frustrate the other purpose of LJ, which is to meet like minded people. You're never going to make new friends if all your posts are friends locked.

So it does depend on the individual LJ user to ask themselves 'does this look like a public post, or does it look like a private rant?' and to behave appropriately. Which is easier said than done, of course! :)

On that level I suppose I can understand and sympathize with the people who thought the post was a public attack on Molly, and were giving her the opportunity to reply.

How complicated this socializing thing is! No wonder I'm an introvert :)