Post by Michael Wilbur-Ham on Apr 29, 2013 11:54:21 GMT 10
For this forum mindful is remaining open minded, always including the big picture, and using evidence and logic to move the discussion forward.
Party spin, nonsense, non-science, and 'clever' debating points are not mindful. Rudeness and personal attacks are not mindful either.
A mindful post not only states a position but some reasoning behind that position. A mindful post should have the potential to change the readers mind.
A mindful poster remains willing to change their mind based on the responses. And if they don't change their mind their response tackle the issues raised.
A mindful poster who asks a question is wanting to learn from the answer.
We will never all agree - but when we don't agree a mindful person works out why. Often the reason is that we have different values. But when values are shared the reason for not agreeing on a point is often because there is an unstated higher level disagreement.
Reading through the comments at, for example, The Conversation it is very easy to identify many comments as not being mindful. Such comments will be deleted from this forum.
But there will always be a grey area where it isn't obvious whether a post is mindful or not. The definition of mindful presented above will be used by the moderators to decide, and a major part of deciding in this grey area will be the feeling the moderator has of whether or not the poster could change their mind.
I'm sure that the moderators will delete some posts which the poster and maybe some readers think is mindful. Rewriting the post in a more mindful manner may take it out of the grey area and keep the conversation going.
If the moderators feel that someone is here to post non-mindful posts their account will be deleted.
Anyone who doesn't like the decisions of the moderators can post their comments elsewhere (or even set up their own forum). Hopefully some people will appreciate a forum which isn't swamped by mindless posts and mindful people rebutting them. So I hope most of you stay.
I welcome any suggestions on how I can improve this post.
Party spin, nonsense, non-science, and 'clever' debating points are not mindful. Rudeness and personal attacks are not mindful either.
A mindful post not only states a position but some reasoning behind that position. A mindful post should have the potential to change the readers mind.
A mindful poster remains willing to change their mind based on the responses. And if they don't change their mind their response tackle the issues raised.
A mindful poster who asks a question is wanting to learn from the answer.
We will never all agree - but when we don't agree a mindful person works out why. Often the reason is that we have different values. But when values are shared the reason for not agreeing on a point is often because there is an unstated higher level disagreement.
Reading through the comments at, for example, The Conversation it is very easy to identify many comments as not being mindful. Such comments will be deleted from this forum.
But there will always be a grey area where it isn't obvious whether a post is mindful or not. The definition of mindful presented above will be used by the moderators to decide, and a major part of deciding in this grey area will be the feeling the moderator has of whether or not the poster could change their mind.
I'm sure that the moderators will delete some posts which the poster and maybe some readers think is mindful. Rewriting the post in a more mindful manner may take it out of the grey area and keep the conversation going.
If the moderators feel that someone is here to post non-mindful posts their account will be deleted.
Anyone who doesn't like the decisions of the moderators can post their comments elsewhere (or even set up their own forum). Hopefully some people will appreciate a forum which isn't swamped by mindless posts and mindful people rebutting them. So I hope most of you stay.
I welcome any suggestions on how I can improve this post.