Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - To the Folks Who Post that They Don't Post Here, Anymore.....

ubertuber · 03-13-2007, 10:19 AM

Pan:

You've definitely got my respect and admiration for having the heart to fight the good fight, however small and hard-fought the gains are.

While I don't disagree with the thrust of your feelings on negativity, I think there's also a trap in single-minded focus on "solutions". When I was still in school, this mindset was frequently employed by the administration as the ultimate criticism killer. Don't like the way housing is allocated? Come up with a better method. Don't think our vendor contracts are negotiated to students' advantage? Figure out a better system. Disagree with the way teacher evaluations are handled? YOU fix it. This was so effective at shutting down unwanted feedback because the people with the ground-level view were not the ones with the resources and knowledge, to say nothing of responsibility, to solve the problems. In my year working in that administration, I got a lot of attention for telling students to come to me with problems because it was my job to fix them.

I think a certain level of this translates to what goes on at tfp - and it's a question central to who we think we are and what our space will become. So far as I know, none of us are politicians. None of us have the whole picture, the knowledge, the resources, or the responsibility to fix these problems. To insist that every post or thread without a solution packaged is nothing more than negativity is to lock us into choosing between silence and pie-in-the-sky posts.

I'm perfectly happy to learn about and discuss problems here. I know that none of us is likely to come up with anything as grand as a solution. For me, the reward is in learning to use some insight that one of you posts and think about the world around me in a clearer fashion...

03-13-2007, 10:19 AM	#84 (permalink)
ubertuber spudly Location: Ellay	Pan: You've definitely got my respect and admiration for having the heart to fight the good fight, however small and hard-fought the gains are. While I don't disagree with the thrust of your feelings on negativity, I think there's also a trap in single-minded focus on "solutions". When I was still in school, this mindset was frequently employed by the administration as the ultimate criticism killer. Don't like the way housing is allocated? Come up with a better method. Don't think our vendor contracts are negotiated to students' advantage? Figure out a better system. Disagree with the way teacher evaluations are handled? YOU fix it. This was so effective at shutting down unwanted feedback because the people with the ground-level view were not the ones with the resources and knowledge, to say nothing of responsibility, to solve the problems. In my year working in that administration, I got a lot of attention for telling students to come to me with problems because it was my job to fix them. I think a certain level of this translates to what goes on at tfp - and it's a question central to who we think we are and what our space will become. So far as I know, none of us are politicians. None of us have the whole picture, the knowledge, the resources, or the responsibility to fix these problems. To insist that every post or thread without a solution packaged is nothing more than negativity is to lock us into choosing between silence and pie-in-the-sky posts. I'm perfectly happy to learn about and discuss problems here. I know that none of us is likely to come up with anything as grand as a solution. For me, the reward is in learning to use some insight that one of you posts and think about the world around me in a clearer fashion... __________________ Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam