Dominating conversations should cost some money.

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Comments

  • George Thomas
    George Thomas Posts: 645
    edited June 2021
    John Savard said:
    I hope that women in type design will find out there a safe space to discuss type design, ...
    They do have one: alphabettes.org
  • notdef
    notdef Posts: 168
    edited June 2021
    > Must we resort to this? 

    If we want this to be a safe space for everyone, it is clear that we need to moderate bad behaviour. Some of the behaviour that to me is merely a nuisance, keeps many valuable voices away from these forums altogether.

    Edit: What makes you write such an idiotic thing, @George Thomas?
  • George Thomas
    George Thomas Posts: 645
    @Frode Helland Write what? I only mentioned Alphabettes; was that wrong?
  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,126
    George Thomas said:
    John Savard said:
    I hope that women in type design will find out there a safe space to discuss type design, ...
    They do have one: alphabettes.org

    I visited that site. It has some interesting articles on it. It does not appear to have a forum, but perhaps I didn't look in the right place.
  • notdef
    notdef Posts: 168
    Maybe I’m reading more into it, but I understood your comment to mean “women already have a safe space, so we don’t need to change a thing about this one”.
  • George Thomas
    George Thomas Posts: 645
    edited June 2021
    @Frode Helland -- Not at all. I was merely pointing to their organization web site as an example that they do have a place to talk and write about things pertaining to type design. Other than that I don't know anything about the group, and as @John Savard pointed out, I couldn't find a forum either, but that might be that it just doesn't have a forum that is public-facing except to members of Alphabettes.
    A couple of their members still participate here and certainly are welcome in my view. I know nothing about any allegations that they were treated poorly here but I could have missed it.
  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,126
    Frode Helland said:
    Maybe I’m reading more into it, but I understood your comment to mean “women already have a safe space, so we don’t need to change a thing about this one”.

    While I can't really see how George Thomas' coment could be interpreted that way, the comment of mine to which he replied could perhaps be taken that way.
    So I'll try to clarify what I meant.

    On the one hand, I was trying to acknowledge that women have agency. There are women out there who can set up a site to discuss type-related issues.
    On the other, obviously women are better able to define what they need and want than men trying to do it for them.

    This doesn't mean that I'm against fixing this forum if it is toxic. What I would question is trying to fix things in a vacuum, but this may be an imaginary worry on my part, because I personally haven't noticed much toxicity - although I have noticed some instances just recently of those who want a more civil forum finally losing patience with other posters. Just because I haven't noticed what the other posters have been doing wrong doesn't mean, necessarily, that they haven't, somewhere where I haven't seen it.

    So even though I haven't seen much in the way of inappropriate posting here, I guess I will have to admit that I have witnessed one of the symptoms of toxicity; the site is starting to divide into two warring camps. I just don't know why.
  • George Thomas
    George Thomas Posts: 645
    edited June 2021
    John Savard said:
    So even though I haven't seen much in the way of inappropriate posting here, I guess I will have to admit that I have witnessed one of the symptoms of toxicity; the site is starting to divide into two warring camps. I just don't know why.
    If you are referring to the recent event, that was just him being him. It was uncalled for and he recognized that he was wrong to do it. I'm good with that; people have bad days.
    As for other toxicity, I must have missed that too or else I'm just more lenient toward others when they step outside the bounds of civility, so I don't pay much attention to it unless it is extremely bad.
    If the two warring camps are those who want to change the site and those who don't -- it really isn't that broken so why mess with it? It works pretty well now.

  • Drawcard
    Drawcard Posts: 56
    John Savard said:

    We did have an incident where a user was banned - and all past posts by that user were removed, which damaged an existing discussion including many legitimate and serious posts. But that is a single incident.

    Luckily a lot of that can be viewed again via the Wayback Machine. Not as easy to access but at least it's preserved.
  • Eris Alar
    Eris Alar Posts: 454
    @"George Thomas" said:

    If the two warring camps are those who want to change the site and those who don't -- it really isn't that broken so why mess with it? It works pretty well now.
    My understanding is, and I agree with it, that toxicity is one thing, but the lack of diverse voices is the larger one (and obviously relates to levels of toxicity). If the admins just want a boys club with people discussing latin scripts often in a European and USA context, then sure, this current situation is great. If not, then work needs to be done. 

    I don't have any brilliant insights in how to fix things, but firm moderation, willingness to mute/block persistent bad actors, and listening to the people who don't join or stay are baby steps. 

  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,126
    Eris Alar said:
    If the admins just want a boys club with people discussing latin scripts often in a European and USA context, then sure, this current situation is great. If not, then work needs to be done.

    This raises a new issue.
    Reducing the level of toxicity so that women won't be put off participating here is simple enough. It might not bear fruit immediately, now that the women who've heard of the site have left, but it's clearly the relevant action.
    Having more discussion of non-Latin scripts is a different matter. Of course, some non-Latin scripts only differ trivially from the Latin script - Armenian, Cyrillic, Greek, and Georgian and even Hebrew aren't fundamentally different from the Latin script in mechanics.
    I would suspect that people whose chief concern is getting Arabic fonts or Devanagari fonts or Japanese fonts to work are participating in forums with that as the chief concern, and which are conducted in their own languages. We have had occasional posts here about non-Latin scripts, and as far as I can remember, they have had a positive reception, but I'm not sure what can be done in terms of practical steps to increase diversity in that area.
  • Eris Alar
    Eris Alar Posts: 454
    John Savard said:
    We have had occasional posts here about non-Latin scripts, and as far as I can remember, they have had a positive reception, but I'm not sure what can be done in terms of practical steps to increase diversity in that area.
    Off the top of my head, allow non-english threads (so places where posts can be in a different language), and/or provide links to forums in those native languages if they exist. Once this is done, maybe invite people who work in those scripts to kick things off with an AMA or something?
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,883
    I think I would want to see more details on the posting length limit before I decided whether I was in favor of it.

    But I suspect I will likely be opposed. I am usually brief, but occasionally a really long post is something I find helpful, and I do one. And I will second the idea that there are some folks such as John Hudson whose longest posts are among the highlights of TypeDrawers. I would hate to see those go away.

    There exists at least one invite-only forum for typography/type-design discussions. The one I am thinking of has at times been more lively than TypeDrawers, and certainly not so acrimonious, but it does not seem to meet all the same needs, either.
  • Johannes Neumeier
    Johannes Neumeier Posts: 377
    Maybe there should be a chat (here or elsewhere), for those that want speedy debate. Rather than enforcing limits.
  • Stephen Coles
    Stephen Coles Posts: 1,007
    edited June 2021
    Twitter is pretty good for that. If you want a closed or defined community, Slack or Discord work well.
  • Cristóbal Alarcón
    Cristóbal Alarcón Posts: 78
    edited June 2021
    Well, maybe if diversity in voices is the problem then promoting TD would be the solution? However with a bigger users influx more moderators would be needed.
    Oliver Weiss (Walden Font Co.) said:
    Wow, I don't think I've been this out of the loop since my parents announced their divorce 😂
    OMG same hahah
  • Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian
    Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian Posts: 2,044
    If the admins just want a boys club with people discussing latin scripts often in a European and USA context, then sure, this current situation is great.
    Although to me young women persistently discussing the Latin script in a Western context is only minimally less bad.
    some non-Latin scripts only differ trivially from the Latin script - Armenian, Cyrillic, Greek, and Georgian and even Hebrew aren't fundamentally different from the Latin script in mechanics.
    "Mechanics", maybe, but they are fundamentally different in crucial ways, with quality and progress depending heavily on discourse.
    Maybe there should be a chat (here or elsewhere), for those that want speedy debate. Rather than enforcing limits.
    I remember Typophile tried that at one point. I don't remember why it didn't work out.
  • Justin Penner
    Justin Penner Posts: 65
    An upvote/downvote system that buries (hides via collapsing) unhelpful comments would be fantastic, I think. I use Reddit a lot, and it works very well in "serious" subreddits that have a good moderation team.

    I would support Eris' suggestion of allowing/encouraging discourse in other languages. Instant translations are only a couple of clicks away in any modern browser.

    The lack of women here is pretty shocking, actually. I think men don't always recognise toxicity and we need to learn to do that better.
  • Eris Alar
    Eris Alar Posts: 454
    Justin Penner said:
    I would support Eris' suggestion of allowing/encouraging discourse in other languages. Instant translations are only a couple of clicks away in any modern browser.
    I was thinking about this after I posted it, and I feel it's also ok to have an agreed on language that is the default for any forum, but given this is such a niche field having dedicated sections for non-English languages would seem to be useful. One obvious issue is moderation, as even with translation tools having moderators who are fluent speakers would make a huge difference. 

    Also, I am totally ignorant on what other forums exist for people not using English, there might already be some great places that exist and it's just and we have links to them on here.
  • Oliver Weiss (Walden Font Co.)
    Oliver Weiss (Walden Font Co.) Posts: 213
    I like @Justin Penner's upvote/downvote suggestion, though it would also require a reddit-style subthread functionality, so that folks can talk amongst themselves. Though at that point, typedrawers could just become a subreddit in its own right, and I feel that would be unfortunate. 
  • Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian
    Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian Posts: 2,044
    edited June 2021
    Please don't create ghettos. Let the dominant culture see other languages –and especially here, other scripts– right in its face. And auto-translation works just as well/poorly to English.
  • Claudio Piccinini
    Claudio Piccinini Posts: 681
    Chris Lozos said:
    Must we resort to this? If you don't like a post or poster, ignore them. We don't need to be treated like middle school children.
    I have a very fond memory of some of the long but VERY helpful posts by John Hudson and his in depth explanations.
    Yes, it’s just about patience and respect. I remember the wonderful discussions on Typophile when we met, and then my brief, beautiful season when I started wandering in all of the middle-east scripts sections (where I befriended many great guys, R.I.P. Vladimir Tamari, and some I no longer see around so I hope they’re OK).

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