Are you Accountable?

[Guest]

 

[impressive]

In answer to the side question, I tend to think that folks with PCs/voting turned off have been burned, and are just barely managing to keep posting to Lit. Heaven knows we've all been trolled, and sometimes people want to share their stuff without screaming everytime they open the "view submissions" page.

When I first starting posting to Lit (about a year before I ventured into the AH), I only allowed e-mail feedback. I received a LOT more constructive feedback that way. However, the public stroking is too alluring to bypass -- so the private has fallen away.

*sigh*

 

[Guest]

I find it interesting that some folks seem to face a "comment/don't comment" dilemma as much as a "what do I say in a comment" one. It isn't an issue of whether one votes a 1 or a 5, or leaves praise or censure, as much as whether one voices any opinion at all.

Of course, the persons to whom this poll is really directed are not the ones likely to see it and respond. There are many people who read and comment who do not think with any depth or length of time about what they say. They make their comments on the spur of the moment and based on whether their immediate expectations were met or not.

 

[cantdog]

Denizens of the blogosphere are accustomed to "comment" fields. In a blog, discussion proceeds in "comments." Blog readers are likely to ring in with most any old thing, without regard to any standard beyond their usual netiquette, if any. The default on Lit is an anonymous comment; the default on a blog is a tagged one, much like a thread post to a forum like this one.

Consequently, some of the anonymous comments may be inadvertently so.

In an ordinary way, the myriad temptations of anonymity lead people to abuse. Impunity is very bad for people, in any context. Rich kids, people with too much power, torturers-- those are some examples. Impunity makes beasts of people.

[long-winded story]
I had a supervisor once who elicited anonymous complaints.

In one way, this was good, since he was a vindictive little climber, an ass-sucking company man (ASCM). If you went to him in person with a comment and you were criticizing some protegé of his, he would make you pay for besmirching his golden boy. In that way, anonymity was good; at least you got to speak your piece without arousing your supervisor's vengeance.

There are a lot of ASCMs, and they would never know what was going on if they didn't have anonymous complaints enabled.

But the net effect was negative. Firstly, he was such a poison-ass motherfucker (PAMFASCM) that a comment he didn't like made him fish around to try to discover who the author had been, so he could have some revenge, or at least apply some intimidation. Secondly, he would docket the complaints in the personnel file of the complainee. When the person complained of went up for the six-months evaluations, her file would have all these anonymous bitches in it.

"I have some reports that you were rude," he would say.
Who was that? I'll speak with them, so we can iron this out.
"I don't know who it was; it was anonymous."
Well, then, I guess no-one can fix it. Rude in what way?
"Just rude. They don't really specify."
Rude to the customers? Rude to them?
"You have to just be very careful not to be rude, that's all. Another complaint is that you ignored a co-worker. This was in March."
Well, why on earth didn't they come to me about this?

And so on. All such complaints are completely unanswerable without specifics, of course. She spent her entire eval interview fielding these shitball complaints. The fact is that anonymous complaints don't have to be factual. They don't require any courage to make; on the contrary! But the PAMFASCMs of the world give them weight they don't deserve, at least when it suits their purposes to do so. They are, as a rough analogy, ammunition for PAMFs.

Whereas no comment to which the person doesn't sign her name should be given any weight at all.
[/long-winded story]