I know that Alicorn considers it harassment, and you observably know that. Given the subjective nature of the emotions at hand, that seems sufficient for me.
Compare: I have minor-to-moderate tactile sensitivity. Being touched, even gently and in socially normal ways, is often painful to me. If I tell you this, and you acknowledge that you understand it, and then you intentionally touch me in a way that you know is likely to cause me pain, claiming that your intention was not to cause pain does not excuse the action.
(Edit: I apparently misremembered Alicorn’s position on the issue.)
Given the subjective nature of ‘terror’, that seems sufficient for me.
Given some people’s willingness to abuse our deference to their subjective experiences, no, it’s not. My comment was not “use or threat of violence against non-combatants to induce fear as a means of pursuing political or social goals”. This isn’t even debatable.
People have criticized me for the extreme comparisons. I hope they can now see what I’m dealing with. If Alicorn really has such terror at seeing a general comment under her posts with my name on it, she should have thought about that before posting in “my” thread, not when her Machiavellian instincts kicked in and saw a chance to play victim.
It’s an unfortunate consequence of the reddit interface that you can’t join any conversational thread in which she is the last person to post, without your comment having to be a reply to her that shows up in her messages… even if you aren’t even trying to interact with her. I’m worried about the precedence of non-moderators on LW essentially having the power to ban people they’ve had conflict with out of interesting discussions. [Edit: realized that Alicorn is currently a moderator. My point was to discuss the potential problems from User A requiring that User B never reply to them on a Reddit-style interface, and how it can effectively become an unofficial thread-ban, not just a reply-ban, even when mod powers are not used.]
The ideal solution in my mind is if it’s OK by Alicorn for you to respond to anything that she posts (at least, when you don’t ask for a reply), and she has no obligation to reply to you. (Of course, you must limit these replies to be abstract, and resist any urge to make them personal or snide.) Given your past interactions with Alicorn, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to reply to her and attempt any discussions, but it seems a bit steep if you can’t reply to comments by her, even when you aren’t trying to have a discussion with her, because that potentially locks you out of threads that others are reading.
Failing that, the next best solution is probably to just take the high road and not respond directly to any comment by her, due to the conflict and status hits incurred to both you (and her) in the eyes of various observers every time this comes up, particularly when you make “terrorism” comments. If she posts something interesting, often other people will reply to it, and you can reply to them.
If you must respond to a comment by her simply out of interest in the topic, I suggest that you keep it impersonal and neutral, and she can simply ignore it.
As you know, I don’t think your punishment is proportional to what you’ve actually done. But sometimes people are going to be unfair to you, and often the best solution is to just move on and live your life.
The whole point was that it’s not an act of terrorism—and one should avoid blowing things out of proportion.
If you think what I did was an act of terrorism, then please stand up and be counted.
I know that Alicorn considers it harassment, and you observably know that. Given the subjective nature of the emotions at hand, that seems sufficient for me.
Compare: I have minor-to-moderate tactile sensitivity. Being touched, even gently and in socially normal ways, is often painful to me. If I tell you this, and you acknowledge that you understand it, and then you intentionally touch me in a way that you know is likely to cause me pain, claiming that your intention was not to cause pain does not excuse the action.
(Edit: I apparently misremembered Alicorn’s position on the issue.)
Given some people’s willingness to abuse our deference to their subjective experiences, no, it’s not. My comment was not “use or threat of violence against non-combatants to induce fear as a means of pursuing political or social goals”. This isn’t even debatable.
People have criticized me for the extreme comparisons. I hope they can now see what I’m dealing with. If Alicorn really has such terror at seeing a general comment under her posts with my name on it, she should have thought about that before posting in “my” thread, not when her Machiavellian instincts kicked in and saw a chance to play victim.
Get some perspective, please.
I don’t think your comment was an act of terrorism, nor do I think you needed to suggest that it might be. Couldn’t you just have said:
Thanks for the input, but unfortunately, no, I couldn’t have.
It’s an unfortunate consequence of the reddit interface that you can’t join any conversational thread in which she is the last person to post, without your comment having to be a reply to her that shows up in her messages… even if you aren’t even trying to interact with her. I’m worried about the precedence of non-moderators on LW essentially having the power to ban people they’ve had conflict with out of interesting discussions. [Edit: realized that Alicorn is currently a moderator. My point was to discuss the potential problems from User A requiring that User B never reply to them on a Reddit-style interface, and how it can effectively become an unofficial thread-ban, not just a reply-ban, even when mod powers are not used.]
The ideal solution in my mind is if it’s OK by Alicorn for you to respond to anything that she posts (at least, when you don’t ask for a reply), and she has no obligation to reply to you. (Of course, you must limit these replies to be abstract, and resist any urge to make them personal or snide.) Given your past interactions with Alicorn, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to reply to her and attempt any discussions, but it seems a bit steep if you can’t reply to comments by her, even when you aren’t trying to have a discussion with her, because that potentially locks you out of threads that others are reading.
Failing that, the next best solution is probably to just take the high road and not respond directly to any comment by her, due to the conflict and status hits incurred to both you (and her) in the eyes of various observers every time this comes up, particularly when you make “terrorism” comments. If she posts something interesting, often other people will reply to it, and you can reply to them.
If you must respond to a comment by her simply out of interest in the topic, I suggest that you keep it impersonal and neutral, and she can simply ignore it.
As you know, I don’t think your punishment is proportional to what you’ve actually done. But sometimes people are going to be unfair to you, and often the best solution is to just move on and live your life.