User blog:TheShadowAssassin/A little of what's been on my mind lately...

This all has to do with what I think of the recent (and any past happenings) situations on (and in some cases, off) of chat. These arguments/debates we partake in (I got any quoted text from a guy on another site, and although it pertains to a different subject, I believe it is just as fitting here).

"Some debates/arguments are worth supporting and some actions are worth denouncing, but some fights aren’t worth fighting. Some fights, we find reasons to justify simply because we want to fight, not because it actually accomplishes anything.

It’s when we lose ourselves in a cause - even good causes - that we start becoming hypocrites and guilty of creating more mayhem than we fix. We often not only lose sight of the cause itself, but blind ourselves to self-criticism to check our methods, our motives and our message. Our zeal can send us careening down a careless path where we discredit ourselves, the very cause we may be trying to promote others who support it.

We can bolster our reasons with a lot of emotion-pounding arguments, or we can step back and be objective. The former may make us feel 'empowered' for a time, but the latter will take far greater strides toward actually solving problems. In the end, we have to realize that even though some subjects are very important, getting upset over them doesn’t help us in the subject, nor does trying to pound anyone we view as opposition into the ground with insults, accusations or telling them they’re worthless."

When I say all of this, I really just want everyone to understand that most arguments (that we consider important) are not worth fighting for. That we should all step back, take a deep breath, and look at what we're doing. This community could be much better if we all did this. If we all took a moment during these arguments, to ask ourselves why the heck we're even arguing in the first place! What do we accomplish by destroying our relationships with each other, simply over whether or not this user is right or wrong about something? In the long run, will it benefit us, or simply tear us apart and not even matter in a month's time? It saddening to see that almost everyday there are these heated debates that end up ruining one's respect for another.. If all of us would just slow down and look at ourselves for a second, we wouldn't need Chat Moderators to resolve such situations as arguments or debates. We wouldn't have senseless arguing among users about some really pointless subject.

This would fix a huge part of our wiki. We'd become better people here. We'd become a more friendly and welcoming community. Does nobody care when a new user walks into chat, only to find that a few users are having a heated (and, well, rude) argument about something so trivial like how this one other user behaves? Doesn't that leave a bad impression on the wiki? It does.

To sum up all of what I said, let's fix the way we act. As a community. If we all could get along nicely, how much better do you think the wiki could be? "While not everyone may want to change the way they act, I believe anyone can change. When we allow ourselves to get so upset that we start flailing like a wild animal in a frenzy, taking offense at anything which might be interpreted negatively, we need to stop and reconsider our position. It’s at that point our goal has become to tear down and destroy rather than teach, and it’s at that point my thought from days before becomes apparent:

 'Those who lose themselves to a cause rarely see their own hypocrisy as anything less than justice'."