A question of LJ ethics

[chickenfeet]

I'd appreciate my esteemed friends comments on this.

Person X makes a f-locked post.

Person Y (in this case me) responds causing offence to person X though third party enquiries suggest it's no more than me being my, admittedly, robust self.

Person X deletes me from friends list but leaves the f-locked post and my response up. This allows allows random ad hominem attacks on person Y (me) but blocks me from replying. Polite back channel enquiries are ignored.

Is this ethical?

Comments

[australian-joe.livejournal.com]

Ethical, probably - I don't see that they've quite harmed you, although I'm not totally sure on that point.

Regardless of ethics, it's rude, it's bad behaviour, it's drama-indulgent and it certainly isn't courteous or graceful or fair.

Would bug the hell out of me, but on the other hand I'd have to regard my Friends list as improved by them being gone.

In such situations all that's really left to you is to be the better person. Anyone prepared to attack you when you can't reply is likely someone you couldn't have reached with any reply anyway.

[jen-c-w.livejournal.com]

"it's drama-indulgent" haha loving your work there.
I'd just ignore it. You've posted something about it here, so all your mutual friends will see it from your point of view, et voila. We sometimes have to accept these things like watching a leaf wash down the river.

[glowingwhispers.livejournal.com]

Don't think it's ethical.


In my own journal, although people wouldn't necessarily realize it, absolutely everyone even marginally mentioned has access to that post.

[jez-e-bel.livejournal.com]

I'd say a wholehearted NOT COOL...

am wary of anyone too easily offended (likely because I seem to cause offence more often than I should but lighten up people)...

am also unusuallty annoyed these days w/excessive drama and silliness... totally unnecessary (we are adults, are we not? if you don't like something someone says then deal w/it - we're not junior high)...

am also drunk right now so even less tolerant of excessive b.s. which seems to breed all too rapidly everywhere...

[klig.livejournal.com]

Ethical? - Doesn't matter.

Person x has clearly shown his or her true colours. You don't ask a viper if it's being ethical in biting you.

[perigee.livejournal.com]

Agreed. And set up a filter if the responses are coming through e-mail and they bother you.

[ceruleanblue3.livejournal.com]

Not only does it seem unethical, it seems a bit cowardly and/or bullying, actually.
On the one hand, I really don't like deleting comments, but on the other, if I had a problem with someone, I'd try and deal with them to their face rather than behind their back. I'd particularly try not to encourage others to wade in. That might just be me though.

I hope I'm making sense, it's past my bedtime...

[rodeo-tunes.livejournal.com]

I suppose I'm an 'esteemed friend' so I'll comment. :P

Actually, I don't think I've quite figured out LJ thoroughly enough to know if it's X made a non-ethical more or not. I think I'd veer towards saying, it's not non-ethical. After all, it is their journal and you did choose to put yourself out there.

That said, I think it's an extremely rude thing to do - to instigate attacks on someone (being offended by a comment and stating so, knowing that your friends will rally around you) w/o giving them the opportunity to defend themselves. It's also pretty passive-aggressive - if X had a problem with Y, and Y was completely open to and actively using back channels to try and fix the address the issue and make things better - well.

I suppose ethical doesn't always mean well-mannered, does it?

[frumiousb.livejournal.com]

Weelll-- person´s X space, I guess. Nice, it is not. Unfortunately it seems to be common lj behaviour.

[badasstronaut.livejournal.com]

It's lj drama; it's silly and best ignored.

[ironed_orchid]

The only think that suggests a lapse of ethics is the ad hominen attacks. The deleting you from list before discussing action with others is a bit cowardly and reactionary, but deleting people who upset one is both possible and quite ordinary on lj.

Everything else is perfectly understandable. Let's try the basic arrangement with another example.

Person X makes f'locked post.

Person Y makes a comment that person X finds offensive. Some discussion ensues between person X and person Y, but person X comes away feeling (rightly or wrongly) attacked and offended in their own journal.

Person X then makes another post on a filter which person Y can't see, discussing their reactions to the discussion, those on the filter comment, probably giving advice.
---

Now, what's different here is that person X has not deleted Y off the f'list yet, but in all other things, it's pretty much the same scenario, in which the person who, perhaps unwittingly, gave offense, is not able to see the post in which the offended party discusses their reaction.

I have done this, so have other friends we have in common. So, I would think, people do outside of lj when they are hurt or offended by something another said.

---

Although having just written this, I've thought that perhaps you mean that people are responding to your comments and you cannot reply - that sems rather unfair. I'll leave teh rest of my comment intact, as i think it's still a handy comparison.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

If this is what I think it is, I thought over-reaction to inadvertent touching off of hot-button issues.

The disabled replying to comments thing is not good.

I'm not sure about ethics: their space, and so on - but it's rather bad manners.

[karen2205]

It's unethical in my system of ethics - but I don't necessarily apply those to other people.

Deleting someone from one's friends' list because s/he has offended one = unethical.* If you're going to post and invite comments then you should, IMO, be prepared for the fact that some of those comments to disagree with what you've proposed. If you can't take the heat, what on earth are you doing in the kitchen?

*on the other hand, defriending someone because they've disclosed the contents of friends' only posts to third parties = reasonable.

Ad hominem attacks aren't unethical IMO, providing the person against whom they're made has the opportunity to defend him/herself. There was/is a private mailing list where there were the most viscious of ad hominem attacks but they were acceptable because everyone was allowed to bite back and no one was ever permitted to complain to external bodies because to disclose the contents of posts made to the list would be grounds for being thrown off the list. Complaints to the list owner/IT bod would have been met with dirision - if you can't cope with a bit of a personal attack then you shouldn't be participating in discussions on the list.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Deleting someone from one's friends' list because s/he has offended one = unethical.*

If it's a one-off, I think just mentioning, as a warning, that it's been found offensive should be enough. Repeated instances might be a different matter. Because then it gets into the issue of whether it's ethical, or at least good manners, to post in someone's lj material they have indicated that they find offensive. (And I'd perceive a difference between 'offensive' and 'vigorous debate', though everybody draws the line differently on that one, I suspect.)

[blonde222.livejournal.com]

what I want to know is, were the contents of the original f-locked post worth all the fuss, or do we still not know what was in it?

[ginny-t.livejournal.com]

Immature, unfair, and drama-whoring. But, doesn't look like there's anything you can do about it, unfortunately. If person X won't respond to your queries, there's unfortunately nothing you can do about it. Which sucks.

The people who know you will know that the offence you gave was unintentional. The others are jumping on a bandwagon.

None of which makes it any less frustrating. But hopefully, it's cooled down by now. Or will soon.