(no subject)

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Because we've received a few inquiries about it, I wanted to address the issue of psychology students on the community. We basically have an open-door policy that allows therapists and psych majors, multiple and non, to join and post here. As long as they don't troll, flame, or spend excessive amounts of time attempting to cure, convert, or save us, they're as welcome as anyone else.

Now, generally speaking: students are probably going to come in with a very specific view of what multiplicity is, since that's what they've been taught in their classes. Most of us aren't overwhelmingly sympathetic to that particular view and don't find it to reflect our own lives. Taking offense to being called a disorder is certainly understandable. I will never claim I don't sympathise with that. We definitely did our share of blowing up about it when we first started out. Try to keep in mind, though, the fact that not everyone who says 'MPD' or 'DID' means to offend you in doing so. A lot of the time, it's just because they don't know there's anything else. There just isn't enough publicity for most people to be aware of models besides the disorder one. We actually used to use terms like MPD and alters, in reference to ourselves, when we first started researching multiplicity-- we didn't know there were others. If you pre-emptively jump down someone's throat for not knowing about healthy multiples, you run the risk of turning them off to the point where you may miss an opportunity to educate someone.

People usually are much more amenable to learning if they're simply guided to an informational source presenting an alternate viewpoint, rather than yelled at for being ignorant. I noticed that none of the posts in the most recent thread included any links to webpages discussing healthy multiples-- usually the first thing I think should be done is to post links to good sources.

I'm not angry at anyone, and no rules were actually violated-- I should make that clear. It's not within my rights to tell people how to respond to such posts, as long as they don't outright flame. I just think it's in our best interest to not alienate people unless it's absolutely unavoidable.

Comments

[changelyng14.livejournal.com]

pardon my ignorance, exactly what is 'trolling'

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll

[etana.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry - kick me if I sound snooty (because I probably do) - I figure if someone comes in claiming to be an academic I will treat them as one....which is what I did. And I'm an undergrad too (although I get a nice big degree I can wear to McDonalds in December). It's a peeve of mine - that it seems people use some kind of "major/minor" story as some sort of credit and then can't talk like someone who is seeking a "major/minor" credential.

Bah. I'm a snob. Thanks for posting this.

[zenboiuke.livejournal.com]

VERY well said... thanks!

~Kier

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"none of the posts in the most recent thread included any links to webpages discussing healthy multiples-- usually the first thing I think should be done is to post links to good sources."

Umm, mine did - in my first post replying to her, I suggested she go and read the links on the community's Info Page.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Sorry, my mistake; it was in my second post to her.

Here's a suggestion: the informative links on the Info Page are currently in the form of banners, which not everybody recognizes as clickable links, and they're all the way at the bottom of the page, which not everybody will bother to scroll down to. Suppose the links were put at the top of the page instead, in the form of highly-recognizable links like Please click and read before posting to this community (http://www.karitas.net/blackbirds/layman/), so people couldn't inadvertently miss them?

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

That's a good idea; I'll tinker with it tonight. Thanks.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Thank you very much. You're right -- it's true, and it's true both ways. Some of our correspondents still don't get that the text links on our website are links -- they need to see a picture before they realize they can click. Others don't catch onto the fact that the image links are links and not just illustrations. The former outnumber the latter, so I used stickers for the links on the info page. They could have text put with them, though, as we've done several places on our pages.

The reason I didn't put them up higher had to do with the fact that I didn't want people who came in to think that this was "Astraea's community" or that people needed to be a certain type of plural system or hold views like ours in order to join, be welcome, and post. I was determined to keep the community open, and to make sure it gave the appearance of being open as well. I believe the right words can be found, though. Ennai.