Posted by Katy Darrah in Question for the Candidates - About Questions

Posted by Admiral Joe P (Election Coordinator) in Question for the Candidates - About Questions
This question is for any candidate who chooses to answer.

I was in a conversation with someone discussing the election yesterday, and at one point my interlocutor expressed the following sentiment:

If only questions mattered other than to piss off the candidates…

1. Do you agree with this sentiment? Why or why not?
   I do and I don’t. On the one hand, I do agree. Text is very hard, if not impossible, to convey tone, and especially to someone like myself who might already have issues with that with normal speech. So a genuine question not meant in a heinous or aggressive manner can easily be taken out of context or in the wrong way from what the writer intended. On the other hand, I don’t agree. If we’re breeding such an environment where every candidate is pissed off about every question, or a majority of them, then we need to re-evaluate how we handle ourselves and reading questions with tones not intended.

I find this interesting because you seem to put the primary burden for not taking offense on the reader, e.g. the person being asked questions. Others could suggest that the burden of not offending that is put on the writer, e.g. the person asking the questions. Is my summary of your position accurate?

1. If you were in a conversation with someone and they said something like this, how would you react?
   I’m not actually sure, as I don’t know the context of the conversation. Was it in a sort of dejected manner as in “well i’d like to ask a question, but if only…” or was it in a hostile way as in “well the questions only exist…” or was it simply an observation, “if only questions didn’t…” For me, situation and context would dictate how I’d approach the situation.

To fill in some more context, this was in a conversation that was about something STF related, but was not about the election. I think I suggested that our topic of conversation would be an interesting one to ask questions to candidates about. The response I got was the quoted line. I would personally classify it as a cynical observation based upon the context; a kind of quip, if you will.

Does that context change your answer?

1. Do you think this sentiment is indicative of a larger problem with our club? If yes, what is the problem and what (if anything) would you do to solve it? If not, why not?
   Uh…yes. As I stated in my first answer, if we really have that much of a problem where people aren’t wanting ask questions for fear of “pissing off” the candidates in some way, then we need to take a twofold approach:

1. Stop giving text tone it doesn’t have. As humans, this is hard, because as I said previously, this is next to impossible. We read whatever tone we think the writer is conveying, even if said tone doesn’t exist. This is often why I will preface statements with things such as “not trying to be rude” or “not trying to call someone out”, simply because I know, from experience, that no one is going to bother to ask how I mean something and will instead jump down my throat because of a tone they put to my text.

I find this interesting, because you simultaneously put the burden for giving charity to the reader, but you also add prefaces as the writer. I personally would find that extremely burdensome, and I’ll share a story about that with you afterwards if you’re interested in it (I almost posted it here but it made this post way too long and self indulgent). Do you think you should have to preface every one of your statements like that? Is that fair? Do you find it necessary in life generally? Or is this just something you do here?

1. Follow the first rule of Command discussions that seems to have been forgotten: leave the post and come back to it later if it’s irritating you before you hit post. If a question pisses you off in some way, type up a response in a gdoc or word document or the notepad on your phone or anywhere, really, and then just leave it. Come back after an hour or two. Then re-read what you said and maybe even what the question said. We all need to do this, no matter who, or what, we are in the club.

Okay. What if you’re still mad after an hour? What if you’re still mad after a day? What if you’re still mad after a week? The rule on the board is that you shouldn’t post in anger; not that you should never feel angry. Is anger itself ever appropriate to express? Do you think Command should lack emotional expression, generally?

I have to continually go back to my first point here, this all stems from one major issue: We give text tone that it isn’t intended to have. I can type out the sentence “I don’t like <person A> because of <reason>” and not mean it with a hostile tone. However, someone else (whether that person or not) could read it with said hostile tone or even a tone of sarcasm that I, again, didn’t even intend.

Because of that, we are hasty to jump to conclusions about things. Because I say I don’t like somebody, someone could then jump to the conclusion that I, for some unknown reason, want to force them out of the club, all because of the tone they give to my post, which is simply an innocent comment I make that’s meant to be blatantly candid.

If we cannot look at a question and ask the writer what they meant by it, tonal wise, then I honestly think we can’t be a social club. Because this is how we make arguments out of innocent topics like which series of Trek we like best or something.

Katy

Joe