Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2008-05-02 12:52 pm
azurelunatic) wrote2008-05-02 12:52 pm
Place of Power
Now this whole LJ-wide conversation0 that started as idealism in the microcosm smacked right up against the face of the broader realities of society but turned into a thoughtful and (in many cases) restrained conversation on the realities of oppression, discrimination, marginalization, the responsibilities of an empowered minority member1, the things a member of a group with power can do to avoid exercising that power unfairly, and finally, the one that lodged in my brain and wouldn't come out until I said something about it -- the wish of the disempowered that someone in power, who has the ability to start change, would not just attempt to sum up the situation on their own and start change based on their beliefs of what change the disempowered need, but listen to the disempowered, attempt to understand the disempowered, and only after listening and understanding, then attempt to enact change in a way that won't screw the situation over far worse.
I hope I've been listening.
I realized somewhere in the comment thread about the male fear of false accusation of rape and the female fear of actual real rape, that I am not one of the people who needs to be speaking out about what needs to happen about female disempowerment and the fight for equality. By some mixture of chance of birth, innate skill, gene pool gambling, training and inclination, and gods know what else, I am sufficiently physically intimidating2 to occasionally walk where men wouldn't want to tread (my old neighborhood at midnight), and also appropriately respected in a traditionally male field. I can talk about female disempowerment, but my current reality is hardly disempowered. I am a natural at the game of technical posturing that geeks play to find their place in the hierarchy, so I can't talk with any validity about a struggle to get where I am.
Likewise, I can't talk overmuch about social disempowerment. I started out with the advantages Well-To-Do and White. I managed to work my way from being a bullied outsider in a great many circumstances3, to actively seeking situations in which I was either an empowered insider or on my way to becoming one, or at least a respected member of the fringe. I suspect I'll never be fabulously popular, but I think I prefer not having that kind of nonstop attention.
So there I was driving along coming back from Writers Group, and suddenly what my supervisor at my night job was saying clicked with what's going on behind the scenes in volunteer-land right now.
At work, my supervisor is attempting to impress on us all that we are the experts, and the customers who email us are very likely not experts, as they wouldn't be emailing in for help if they were (for most of it) or if they knew what needed to be done (because they'd do it). And that clicked. Technical knowledge at this level is a place of power4. Granted, it's an odd place of power that does a lot of selection on merit, but it's still a very valid place of power.
This means that I, in my place of power, am responsible for not abusing that power. I think I'm doing a good job of that. I hope I'm doing a good job of that. It means I should be more vigilant, now that I am more aware. More than just hoping to not fuck up and stomp on people, I should be a little more active in my support of those who aren't empowered in the field that I am. I think I am doing well at work. I am good at user education, and I am good at making technology a little less scary for those who are frightened of it. There are strong constraints that bind my actions at work, so even if I were tempted to go out of line, I would be caught and reprimanded quickly. If I went out of line not realizing it, I would still be caught and reprimanded.
I do not have the same kind of oversight in the primary function of my volunteer position. I am essentially my only police. This means that I only get called on the things that I call myself on, or things that my technical peers call me on. That's not a good place to become complacent in. I should go back to some of those things that I was saying knee-jerk no to, and examine my reasons for saying so. Most importantly, I must try to not win an argument between someone who wants something to happen, and someone who doesn't want something to happen, by shouting harder, and (in my role as moderator as well as maintainer) tell my peers to quit it as well. I have the authority to say so, and I should use it more often, and with subtlety and beforehand5 rather than blunt force after the fact.
It's not up to me to decide what gets implemented or not, it's up to me to attempt to pull the core ideas out of people's desires and see if I can't make impossible implementations into possible solutions that could be worked into viable implementations by an engineer who knows the codebase.
Then I was thinking about my plans to go back through the older suggestions and see what I can gather that people have spoken in the past about liking.
At this point, that concept that I should not be so quick to shout something down went click in my head with the plan of going back through suggestions and raiding it for ideas based on what I see happening behind the scenes right now. See, I am all of a sudden hooked on the idea that finally, at last, we have someone with both the power to make things happen ... and the willingness to listen. And I've been working off my knowledge of what I know the userbase as a whole likes from what I've been seeing around. But. The place for this discussion isn't in my head with me, myself, and I. This discussion should be happening between me, who has the power to speak, and other users, who know what they want even if they don't know how it would work in LJ or quite how to say it ... and me, who has the power to listen.
Footnotes.6
0)0.5 The Open Source Boob Project, natch.
0.5) I'm so geeky I start my footnotes with 0. That, and I'm going back through and adding more on an edit.
1) I'm thinking about that one discussion about "I am geek woman, what do I have to do around geek man to fairly represent my gender so as not to screw over the non-geek women following me?" in this case.
2) The capacity for berserker rage, and the knowledge that one's reactions in a fight-or-flight sort of scenario tend toward berserker rage, with enough muscle to back that up convincingly, is a great deterrent of the raff. And where a male with the capability of violence might be accosted by more of the same, the social imbalance works in the favor of a woman with the capacity to kick ass when angered.
3) My grade school years were not an utter disaster. Quite. The teachers were attentive and physical bullying didn't really happen. A very smart bookish kid raised without television is going to be an alien to the little hellions around her.
4) Which explains why a lot of geeks are so very hostile to more socially powerful people who behave in very technically uninformed ways: it's displaced revenge for longstanding powerlessness and some of the hassling that happens when people with a nasty streak realize that powerlessness means that they can't fight back. Newfound power means testing the limits of that power. Testing the limits of that power can mean turning that hassling right back around, sometimes with justice, and sometimes just continuing the cycle.
5) Like making a first-comment "I know this is likely to be an unpopular suggestion, so please be focused on the implementation of the suggestion as much as possible when disagreeing with it, and respect the person who made this suggestion." That way people who might lay into things without thinking will have a moment to think about it.
6) LJ-cut deleted because it was interfering with the footnote-linking action.
I hope I've been listening.
I realized somewhere in the comment thread about the male fear of false accusation of rape and the female fear of actual real rape, that I am not one of the people who needs to be speaking out about what needs to happen about female disempowerment and the fight for equality. By some mixture of chance of birth, innate skill, gene pool gambling, training and inclination, and gods know what else, I am sufficiently physically intimidating2 to occasionally walk where men wouldn't want to tread (my old neighborhood at midnight), and also appropriately respected in a traditionally male field. I can talk about female disempowerment, but my current reality is hardly disempowered. I am a natural at the game of technical posturing that geeks play to find their place in the hierarchy, so I can't talk with any validity about a struggle to get where I am.
Likewise, I can't talk overmuch about social disempowerment. I started out with the advantages Well-To-Do and White. I managed to work my way from being a bullied outsider in a great many circumstances3, to actively seeking situations in which I was either an empowered insider or on my way to becoming one, or at least a respected member of the fringe. I suspect I'll never be fabulously popular, but I think I prefer not having that kind of nonstop attention.
So there I was driving along coming back from Writers Group, and suddenly what my supervisor at my night job was saying clicked with what's going on behind the scenes in volunteer-land right now.
At work, my supervisor is attempting to impress on us all that we are the experts, and the customers who email us are very likely not experts, as they wouldn't be emailing in for help if they were (for most of it) or if they knew what needed to be done (because they'd do it). And that clicked. Technical knowledge at this level is a place of power4. Granted, it's an odd place of power that does a lot of selection on merit, but it's still a very valid place of power.
This means that I, in my place of power, am responsible for not abusing that power. I think I'm doing a good job of that. I hope I'm doing a good job of that. It means I should be more vigilant, now that I am more aware. More than just hoping to not fuck up and stomp on people, I should be a little more active in my support of those who aren't empowered in the field that I am. I think I am doing well at work. I am good at user education, and I am good at making technology a little less scary for those who are frightened of it. There are strong constraints that bind my actions at work, so even if I were tempted to go out of line, I would be caught and reprimanded quickly. If I went out of line not realizing it, I would still be caught and reprimanded.
I do not have the same kind of oversight in the primary function of my volunteer position. I am essentially my only police. This means that I only get called on the things that I call myself on, or things that my technical peers call me on. That's not a good place to become complacent in. I should go back to some of those things that I was saying knee-jerk no to, and examine my reasons for saying so. Most importantly, I must try to not win an argument between someone who wants something to happen, and someone who doesn't want something to happen, by shouting harder, and (in my role as moderator as well as maintainer) tell my peers to quit it as well. I have the authority to say so, and I should use it more often, and with subtlety and beforehand5 rather than blunt force after the fact.
It's not up to me to decide what gets implemented or not, it's up to me to attempt to pull the core ideas out of people's desires and see if I can't make impossible implementations into possible solutions that could be worked into viable implementations by an engineer who knows the codebase.
Then I was thinking about my plans to go back through the older suggestions and see what I can gather that people have spoken in the past about liking.
At this point, that concept that I should not be so quick to shout something down went click in my head with the plan of going back through suggestions and raiding it for ideas based on what I see happening behind the scenes right now. See, I am all of a sudden hooked on the idea that finally, at last, we have someone with both the power to make things happen ... and the willingness to listen. And I've been working off my knowledge of what I know the userbase as a whole likes from what I've been seeing around. But. The place for this discussion isn't in my head with me, myself, and I. This discussion should be happening between me, who has the power to speak, and other users, who know what they want even if they don't know how it would work in LJ or quite how to say it ... and me, who has the power to listen.
Footnotes.6
0)0.5 The Open Source Boob Project, natch.
0.5) I'm so geeky I start my footnotes with 0. That, and I'm going back through and adding more on an edit.
1) I'm thinking about that one discussion about "I am geek woman, what do I have to do around geek man to fairly represent my gender so as not to screw over the non-geek women following me?" in this case.
2) The capacity for berserker rage, and the knowledge that one's reactions in a fight-or-flight sort of scenario tend toward berserker rage, with enough muscle to back that up convincingly, is a great deterrent of the raff. And where a male with the capability of violence might be accosted by more of the same, the social imbalance works in the favor of a woman with the capacity to kick ass when angered.
3) My grade school years were not an utter disaster. Quite. The teachers were attentive and physical bullying didn't really happen. A very smart bookish kid raised without television is going to be an alien to the little hellions around her.
4) Which explains why a lot of geeks are so very hostile to more socially powerful people who behave in very technically uninformed ways: it's displaced revenge for longstanding powerlessness and some of the hassling that happens when people with a nasty streak realize that powerlessness means that they can't fight back. Newfound power means testing the limits of that power. Testing the limits of that power can mean turning that hassling right back around, sometimes with justice, and sometimes just continuing the cycle.
5) Like making a first-comment "I know this is likely to be an unpopular suggestion, so please be focused on the implementation of the suggestion as much as possible when disagreeing with it, and respect the person who made this suggestion." That way people who might lay into things without thinking will have a moment to think about it.
6) LJ-cut deleted because it was interfering with the footnote-linking action.
no subject
I certainly wasn't perfect, but I am glad that I tried. And I support anyone in a position of power who is trying to use that power responsibly and in a way that keeps those without it in mind.
no subject
Or whatever they say on /.
More people in the tech position of power need to think about this, and about the purpose of a program. It's always shocking to me how many people feel that however developers decide to write the program is the right way, and if users are having trouble using it, it's because the users are wrong. As a UI designer, it bugs me.
Earlier today, I sent the following set of questions about user suggestions to the dev staff (suggesting a rubric for evaluating user suggestions that didn't involve completely ignoring user suggestions that were unusual or close to something we were already planning):
1. What need is their request trying to fill?
2. Is this a new need for them? If so, what generated the need?
3. If it’s not a new need, have they been able to find other ways to fill it in the past?
4. If so, what are those ways, and what makes them inefficient or undesirable?
5. In what ways does their request fix these deficiencies (in not being able to meet this need or not being able to meet it effectively)?
There are then a few questions we can ask ourselves about out own implementation:
1. How common is this need? If it's uncommon, why does this user experience it when others don't? Will it become more common in the future?
2. If there's some other way we want to fill this need, does our plan fill the need as this user has expressed it? What can we learn about this need from the request?
3. If we don't have other plans to fill this need, and the need is likely to be common in the future, what do we know about the need other than what the user has expressed?
4. Does the user's plan fix all known deficiencies with the current arrangement? Will it fill others' needs? If not, how can it be altered to do so?
5. Do we have any other ideas on how to improve upon the user's need, and if so, what makes them improvements? If we implement them, will we still be filling the user's need?
no subject
Lets see if I can describe it without upsetting anyone.
This goes along with the listening to the disempowered.
The disempowered also needs to listen to what the empowered is saying back in the discussion to try and find the stop gaps in communications.
Corresponding examples:
In the admin/end user discussion, the case of a power user who is at least somewhat technological aware of the process trying to skip ahead of the admin's script because they have already tried it. But the admin just staying in the script because its "THE SCRIPT"
I sorta felt I was running into this when trying to discuss the event. It felt like I was just being told "You can't understand" over and over.
The problem is there isn't any clear cut empowered/disempowered lines any more.
Even economic status. Do I think I'm rich? No. Do I think i'm poor? No.
Do others consider me rich? Probably.
As far as knowledge goes I may be empowered but I always try and bridge that gap. I don't fix clients problems, I try to educate them.
no subject
I've almost given up on that, solely because people don't want to be educated. They don't want better understanding of how the system works, or what it can do, or how best to use it.
The want you to push the magic button that says 'make it work', even if it can never do what they want.
I've had too many people contact me because it's easier to shout at someone else than to think about anything themselves.
So many people think that computers are just boxes of magic. They don't understand how it works, so they just assume that it can do anything they want, and that we, as the technologically empowered, can make the magic do our bidding. By bullying us they can, by proxy, force the magic to do their bidding.
I've had people outright call me a liar because I've told them that our software simply cannot do something. They know that it can do /anything/, because computers are magic.
There's no educating those people.
no subject
Given, there aren't many of them at all, and our working assumption should be that this is not the case, because it is very seldom. But I think it is potentially equally detrimental to not educate/enlighten those that know you don't just smack an easy button to make the box work, because not informing those that have the capacity to learn and think for themselves usually creates the kind of user you describe.
Or not. It'a almost 2am and I'm probably just an idealist. But I like to educate users whenever possible.
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no subject
Fantastic
I'm listening.
no subject