75 replies to this topic

[MattPage]

I was part of onFilm and Novogate.  But no one remembers poor Dale.

Yeah, I'd forgotten about you, cos I was too busy wonering what happened to that guy Donald Napolean Sprim from the Novogate days?

Matt

[DanBuck]

This really does feel like a family. It's about as pleasant as Thanskgiving at my own home.

Exasperating, but I wouldn't be who I am if it weren't for these folks.

[Overstreet]

I don't want to be widely associated with the content of this thread.

Oh don't worry! To alter a popular slogan, "What you do on the Internet stays on the Internet."

[BBBCanada]

Aaaaand wondering why this thread is not closed...

[BBBCanada]

Frankly, I fail to see how any of these disputes have any relevance to the question asked. It could have been the case that a chronology is all that is needed to be shown and leave it at that. If the disputes are significant to the founding of or the history of how A&F started, then state it in such a way as to not bring on more contention. Again, I fail to see their significance.

Edited by BBBCanada, 24 November 2005 - 11:46 PM.

[SZPT]

Frankly, I fail to see how any of these disputes have any relevance to the question asked.  It could have been the case that a chronology is all that  is needed to be shown and leave it at that.  If the disputes are significant to the founding of or the history of how A&F started, then state it in such a way as to not bring on more contention.  Again, I fail to see their significance.

That's 'cuz you're a poopy-head.

[Rich Kennedy]

If Peter were standing here beside me, I'd ask this question while smiling good-naturedly and tussling his hair.  I promise I mean no offense.  But can any of you remember a single argument (excluding the "politics" area) in which Peter was not involved?

I've had a few that I was involved in early on. However Darren, thanks for this post. Nice setup for the zinger. Now if we can all poke each other like this....

[Rich Kennedy]

Frankly, I fail to see how any of these disputes have any relevance to the question asked.  It could have been the case that a chronology is all that  is needed to be shown and leave it at that.  If the disputes are significant to the founding of or the history of how A&F started, then state it in such a way as to not bring on more contention.  Again, I fail to see their significance.

Scars are like that. Some us have them from here. The great thing about continuing involvement here, though is what Jeffrey said previously. There is a lot of variety here and a lot of cross fertilization due to the broad interests of many participants. Many think that I am an unchanging bulldog over at Life & Faith, but this place has made me think through issues and beliefs in different ways. It also keeps me from slipping into an intellectual "hothouse atmosphere" where arguments and perspectives become ingrown and myopic. Basically, we have a mild "warts and all" situation in this thread. Thanks for not closing it yet, Alan.

Oh. One more thing. We can't forget Christian. I believe he's been here at least since Novogate and has had a relartionship with Doug and others since before I knew about this place.

Edited by Rich Kennedy, 25 November 2005 - 01:42 AM.

[Peter T Chattaway]

BBBCanada wrote:
: Frankly, I fail to see how any of these disputes have any relevance to the question
: asked. It could have been the case that a chronology is all that is needed to be
: shown and leave it at that.

Historians don't merely look at WHAT happened, they look at WHY it happened. And I personally think it's really interesting to see how people started something, and then stopped something, and then started something else, etc., etc. Those stories can be pretty interesting.

And as far as I can tell, the closest I came to mentioning a "dispute" in my original post was when I said that Doug found the OnFilm forum "a bit too lowbrow" several years ago, but even THAT isn't really contentious. It's just a fact. And I don't think Doug would disagree with that. I said nothing about the manner in which the differences between Doug and the rest of the OnFilm group were EXPRESSED, precisely because that would take us into less objective and more contentious territory. It was only after Alan and stef raised the "personal" issue that I responded on those points.

[Peter T Chattaway]

FWIW, I won't protest the name-deletion thing in this case, Alan, but when people publish their own words under their own names (as Doug certainly did, using his full name at OnFilm and most if not all of his own sites), then those associations are a matter of public record, period, and I don't see any point in suppressing references to those things later on. I'd hate for us to get to the point where someone quoting one of Doug's website reviews via an online archive, and attributing the author by his actual credited name, ended up being censored for it.

[Peter T Chattaway]

Check the OnFilm threads that Doug participated in between September 2000 and May 2001. We used to get along. He even posted a message called "A treat for Peter".

But somewhere along the way, things went sour. The way I recall it, it dates to the time he began hectoring people like me for giving Entertainment Weekly the time of day, and to the way he resorted to ad hominem arguments when disagreeing with people like me about the merits of Dark City and Memento; and I see that same hectoring spirit, and that same to-the-person instead of to-the-argument approach, in a lot of what he's written since. And it gets in the way of what could be genuine shared enthusiasm for film.

The fact that we have very different politics doesn't help -- and now that I think of it, the political flare-ups at Novogate, where there was no distinguishing between the different kinds of topics under discussion, were probably one of the reasons we moved to PromontoryFilm, so that we could have a forum in which the explicitly political or religious discussions were separate from the film discussions. However, Doug protested that move at the time, and indeed I believe he was still protesting it just a week or two ago in one of the threads here. He wants very much to integrate his politics and his film appreciation (his religion, on the other hand, has been somewhat de-integrated), and I do applaud that, but for years, Doug's comments in each of these areas have been tainted by moral indignation, and when you put the two together -- well, those who take a different position had best watch out!

Add to this that I privately e-mailed Doug a year or two or three ago about resolving our differences and I was, shall we say, rebuffed, and there's just this something, well, unresolved there.

There does come a time for shaking the dust off one's feet, but I guess I've never quite left the doormat. I'm just standing there and stomping. And as with so many melodramatic things, when I say "I long for healing", I'm being somewhat ironic and somewhat sincere at the same time. I don't want to have to leave the mat, at least not in a certain direction, not yet. Or, who knows, maybe I'm just providing an example of the "ambiguity" that Doug likes so much.

[Overstreet]

Anyone who "longs for healing" needs to stop picking at scabs and poking at old wounds.

[Peter T Chattaway]

Agreed, though new wounds do occur, too. (See the recent post of Doug's that I linked to in my reply to stef in this thread.) Those aren't so easy to ignore, and even when they're little, they land on the old ones and away you go.

BTW, I'm not picking at anything here. kenmorefield asked me to extrapolate, and so I did, pretty dispassionately I thought. But maybe I shouldn't have.

I will confess I've always been a scab-picker, though. Which made life really interesting when I had a bike accident some 13 years ago and landed on both my elbows and had monster scabs the size of loonies (dollar coins) on my elbows for weeks. Oy, did I want to pick at those, especially when the scabs began curling away from my arm, at the edges. But only the very edges were even remotely pick-able; the rest of it was still, very painfully, attached to my skin.

But that has nothing to do with the history of A&F.

[Russ]

Alan, the only reason I'm not using my full name is because I locked myself out of my old account and it was easier to reregister.

[BBBCanada]

Historians don't merely look at WHAT happened, they look at WHY it happened.

Yes, but the Devil is LITERALLY in the details in this case. Saying this (as JO said):

There were some extremely tough times. I was an administrator for a good while, but grew weary of spending my time trying to put out fires, calm down tempers, and break up disputes. I wanted to ENJOY the board.

is OK. It’s tolerable.

Saying this:

Doug C., who created the Movies & Ministry website (which used to be here) in 1998, subscribed to OnFilm for a while, but he felt it was a bit too lowbrow, or something. He ended up leaving the group and ditching his original website in favour of the more vaguely and artsily named Chiaroscuro: Spirituality in the Cinema.

is OK. It’s tolerable.

But your post #25 begins crossing territory from not only the history (and the why’s of history) into the arena of disputation and I don’t see how that is relevant to the question. Basically saying something like, “Well, there were disputes and these disputes began an off-shoot to another forum” is about where it should be left (if such is the case). But bringing up RECENT history (i.e. your, “He is evidently not above initiating them, though.”) is TOTALLY irrelevant (as is post #63). We don’t need to be getting “into it” because this further instigates animosity and hard feelings (not to mention the focus tends to be on the disputes and not on the history of the boards as such) i.e. JO’s

Anyone who "longs for healing" needs to stop picking at scabs and poking at old wounds.

So guess what? I’m certainly all for looking at the why’s of the history of this board, but you ARE picking. And it seems to me that while Doug has “moved on” you seem to be standing there on a door mat, stomping looking at a not a person but a shut-door. When you say:

I don't want to have to leave the mat, at least not in a certain direction, not yet.

I’m afraid that may not be your choice. Like love, if the other person has “moved on” we consider those who want to “hang on” to be somewhat emotionally developmentally arrested especially if they have not “opened themselves” to risk again. In this case, you may have to let this "die" for it to come back to life again.

P.S. If others want to know the details, then do so in a PM (even here I wouldn’t advise it for this is really between you and Doug).

[Peter T Chattaway]

BBBCanada wrote:
: But your post #25 begins crossing territory from not only the history (and the why's
: of history) into the arena of disputation and I don't see how that is relevant to the
: question.

As I already said (in post #59), I wrote post #25 after "personal" issues were raised by other prodding posts.

: But bringing up RECENT history . . . is TOTALLY irrelevant (as is post #63).

Yes, that post was ALSO written in response to prodding from another post. And I think raising recent history in response to claims about recent history is completely relevant, as far as that goes.

: So guess what? I'm certainly all for looking at the why's of the history of this board,
: but you ARE picking.

Actually, as you can see, it is OTHER people who are picking, or prodding, or whatever. Had they said nothing, I would have said nothing. (And had YOU said nothing, I would now be saying nothing...)

: In this case, you may have to let this "die" for it to come back to life again.

'Twould be easy indeed, if it didn't keep insisting on coming back to life on its own.

Edited by Peter T Chattaway, 26 November 2005 - 12:47 AM.

[Peter T Chattaway]

[DanBuck]

You gotta give him credit, that wasn't a word.

[BBBCanada]

Brandon, with all respect, you're not setting the rules here. If you don't like the tone of this thread, please avoid reading it. If you don't like that I haven't closed this thread, then PM me to discuss my approach to such things.

Perhaps you forgot to insert "personally I'd prefer it if they'd" before "do so in a PM"--if not, then please refrain from ordering others around, because that is certainly how it came across to me.

Alan, I’m not setting rules anymore than Jeffrey is by saying that one should not “pick at old scars and scabs.” Should he say, “I personally prefer it that one doesn’t pick at old scars and scabs?” No. This is not about the rules of the board it is about communication. The question is about the history of these boards and though someone “prodded” in the beginning, the snowball effect then takes on magnanimous proportions. Instead of FEEDING this (which EVERYONE wants to avoid), just keep the “details” of the history to as much of a minimum as possible. That’s how you do that. JO did an EXCELLENT job of this.

The question that I would like a response to is this: Did a new website(s) become an off-shoot as a result of ANY of these disputes. I would THINK that the response to that is “Yes.” A person had concerns with a website called, OnFilm, that they felt was too “lowbrow or something.” They then started a new website, called, Chiaroscuro: Spirituality in the Cinema (whether it was more “vaguely or artsily” matters not to me). But did this new website start specifically as a result of disputing? I still don’t know. If it did, then say so and leave it at that.

If I want to know more details from a particular person’s perspective (because the “why’s of history” are not going to be neutral, they WILL be biased)? Then I really should do so in a PM or e-mail. But that really is none of my business IMHO (because of the personal nature of it all). Sure, you make the rules of this board Alan. But I’m speaking of avoiding conversation which can be contentious and divisive. THAT’S a rule that ALL of us should TRY to keep.

[Darren H]

Peter wrote:

As I recall, the moment I began posting to the Chiaroscuro message board, he expressed misgivings about me being there.

I can't imagine why.