An Open Letter to Curt Olson

[legoboyvdlp]

My reply:

I can only say in response to this:

unable" to comply with my request to remove my PM from the forum, despite a number of fgmember/jbw forum admins being involved.

I am not able to remove it in any way. I am not a moderator or administrator -- ie. I do not have the powers to do so. The person who posted it is unwilling to remove it.

You told me that if I wanted to share it, to do so in private. I complied. But another person did not.

[SkyBoat]

To All FGMEMBERS and to HOORAY—

Having read Hooray’s public response, I’d like to respond myself to clear up some inaccuracies in his comment.

First, I was not banned. The political circumstances and the total loss of credibility of the FlightGear leadership through their transition to a heavy-handed suppression of dissent on that forum was not an atmosphere that I could tolerate, so I requested that my account be permanently closed.

I wrote a statement at that time explaining my action and detailing, including a number of the points I made in my Open Letter to Curt Olson this week, why I was resigning from the forum. My guess is that it was taken down in less than an hour after it was published, so no one on that forum except perhaps a tiny handful that stumbled upon it ever got to see what I wrote.

This was exactly what I expected. When an organization begins to focus on the suppression of dissent, the need for quick action to quash that disagreement becomes a very high priority. And the penalties have to increase exponentially to keep the riff-raff in check.

It is true that Hooray and I were working together on a project examining the organizational structure of FlightGear when the split took place. We had many discussions, some of which were philosophical arguments which we never got to resolve, but I can say, as he points out in his comments, we were onto some good stuff that never came to bear fruit. We also had developed a cordial working relationship, one which I continue to miss.

What I would take issue with, however, is Hooray’s point of view that this whole thing is the fault of the FGMEMBER’s side of thing and that nobody is going to take seriously our side of things. And I also take issue that what we created was due to our messing up the entire FlightGear fruit basket. Hooray well knows that the undercurrents of today’s problems, both political and personal, existed and were percolating long before either Israel or JWocky appeared on the scene. And some of those problems resulted in pitched battles that brought the whole simulator project to its knees years before even I joined the project in 2010.

My point here is that the FlightGear inner circle see themselves as having weathered all of these storms. In one respect that is good, because, amazingly, FlightGear has actually survived. But my second point is, over time, the inner circle has become both insulated and, here is the rub, pathological; as a consequence of these battles over time they have lost the ability to be sufficiently adaptive and to see how that pathology is now threatening the very existence of the flight simulator. They are aging. That is the reality—They are aging. They view FlightGear as their property, their “precious,” rather than an Open Source project that has to—has to—constantly be bringing in new hands to sustain it across time into the next generation.

It is my contention they, themselves, now pose the bigger threat to the success and future of FlightGear than anything FGMEMBERs might generate. Simply because as they have gotten older they have forgotten to share.

I think that Hooray gets this idea, but I fear his enmeshment with the Old Guard prevents him from taking the action needed to break the cycle of self-destructive behavior of this group of who look at freedom of expression in their forum, or criticism of their core developers, or the infusion of new ideas such as FGMEMBERS or terraGIT and are terrified. Strong ideas proposed by bright, strong individuals is something they have not had to deal with, well, pretty much ever, because, that kind of person saw how closed the FlightGear group was and didn’t bother to try to join. Why bother wasting your energy on a losing situation? Or those individuals who were the less assertive types, who thought they could slowly work themselves into the good graces of the core, with a few exceptions, eventually found themselves forced out into the cold. I’m not making this up. I’ve read their letters.

So, after nearly two decades they never saw an Israel or JWocky coming. Individuals who, for their own reasons had a passion for what FlightGear was and could be, and for the first time in the simulator’s history, collided with the core group and didn’t crumble when confronted with the fact they weren’t part of the in-group.

As for me, I’m a visionary, and although, I’m not the kind of more aggressive, in your face, don’t back down, no expletives deleted kind of visionary that Israel and Jwocky can be at times (well, okay, lots of times), when I met these two guys, the visionary part drew us together, even though our lives, ages, and the fact we were born in three countries on three different continents with three different world views, couldn’t have been much more different. We are a cross-cultural experience.

So, I would close this by reminding the readers from the original forum that any and ALL accusations that you are without culpability in the split and that by going around refusing to allow your comments to be posted is blatant evidence that your word has no value whatsoever.

A great man said, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot comprehend it.”

(Note to Thorsten Renk and Bugman: Regarding writer556: you are not anywhere nearly as clever as you hold yourselves up to be.)

[bomber]

Kettle calling the pot black.

At the time of T4T looking at Flightgear, on our own forum over at T4T we used to post up our daily skype conversations so as to maintain momentum. Hooray would cherry pick to his own agenda bits and pieces from these posts and cross post them over at FG forum feeding Thorstens and others desire to ridicule our conversations and ideas. Eventually the T4T guys decided to discontinue posting up our Skype conversations as the cross posting was becoming upsetting.

There are at present 14 of us in the Skype conversation of Outerra... wouldn't dreamn of giving Hooray the same oppurunity.

Now let's look at RESPECT.

Hooray says it was a test or trap.... I say it was a calculated and thought through lack of respect shown by him towards FGmembers.. If you have respect for a person and see them as an equal you don't 'test' them, Yet he himself expects us to respect him and his wishes..

You reap what you sow... treat people like shit and don't be suprised when they treat you the same.

I didn't read his post resent to me by PM... and yet he's attacked my post and had a go at my character...

I know I have integrity... he on the other hand I'm not sure of.

[KL-666]

I fail to get good height of Hooray. He is often very reasonable and stands for his words, even when the establishment does not like it. But on the other hand he sometimes slips over such issues that Bomber mentions above. I must admit that i have read over the character attack myself. It is so easy to miss, and unfortunately very much used at the other forum. It is one form of the bullying in sociable wordings that is never moderated there. Sure once or twice it might have happened, do not bother to try to prove anything with those examples. Because it is so widespread and never corrected there, no worse, defended, i can understand Hooray slipping over a bad old habit once in a while.

He took great risk in admitting that in his mind not everyone is completely insane here. Though he might never admit this, i am absolutely sure that he is taking the full brunt for this at this very moment from his "friends" at the other end. That makes me wonder again about him. Having gone so far, why not simply feel free to post on both forums?

Kind regards, Vincent

[Lydiot]

:idea:
OK. I have been thinking about the last few transactions in this thread. (except Lydiot's last, which needs captioning so far)

something something 'ironic'..... something something 'think'....

[KL-666]

I want to draw attention to two fossils of protective thinking, that also come forward in Hooray's posts. I bet he does not realize himself that he is doing it.

because he [DrDavid] could have contributed to this project at the organizational level, had he had access to the facts.

First people are kept out of the loop by not doing things publicly, and then you can easily discredit their contribution by stating: You are not in the knowing. A Catch 22. It is happening right now with the private messaging instead of public writing. I think the people that communicate privately with Curt et al should keep things private when asked. But i also think they should show some backbone and refuse further communication on such basis. Else you are in danger of being drawn into "the same psychological mechanism" Jwocky was talking about earlier. You'll start enjoying the power of knowledge others do not have.

but there are certain rules to be followed - regardless of your age

This is in theory only. In practice the non-moderation here works remarkably well. There are sometimes heated debates with strong opinions, but in the end everyone respects the others opinion. It does not end in character attacks by people who can't win the discussion. Small incidents with a bit stronger language are easily solved by someone or a moderator saying: Well, that could have been expressed a bit less strong. Then the "offender" also realizes it, without moderation. Great experiment this forum, and it works.

Kind regards, Vincent

[SkyBoat]

Controlling the Narrative

KL-666 gets it exactly right. I want to build on his excellent insight.

What Curtis and others are doing by demanding that we hold their emails and communications in private and not publish them on either forum is called “Controlling the Narrative.” It is a very time-worn technique of political manipulation that is used to not just silence foes but also to control the direction of the conversations. It keeps the focus on the person demanding the anonymity but also keeps the recipient(s) guessing what that individual might do next.

Curt and company have enjoyed this advantage for quite a few years and have honed their skills at how to apply it with the most force possible with as little energy expended by themselves, to make their point: either get in line or get out. Except they don’t make the “or get out” voluntary. They use a series of warnings, more or less vague, depending on the moderator, that you will be forced out if you don’t get back in line.

They use this technique so they can appear to be “reasonable” when really they are pushing you to escalate the argument so they can ban you because that is where they get their emotional satisfaction. It gives them a rush to ban someone, to have won that battle (although the outcome was never in question) and a feeling of superiority over you and over Free Flight. In reality, if you cave and back down, they have a feeling of disappointment because there is really no sense of victory in that.

What they didn’t anticipate was an Israel, Peter, or me who saw what was happening, realized how harmful it was to FlightGear in the present and future and began to push back, stepping out of the well-worn path of adhering to acquiescing to the message of Controlling the Narrative normative culture.

One I figured this out, having an “Aha!” moment reading one of Jwocky’s posts last week, the solution to the problem was deviously simple. I realized how I could take control of the narrative.

I informed Curt that any reply to my latest email to him would indicate that he was giving me permission to publish his document in full and unedited (a courtesy they don’t extend to us) form on Free Flight. Even if he protested in the strongest terms that he was not giving me permission, by virtue of his replying to the email, he was willfully conceding to my conditions.

This is called “Informed Consent.” I have told Curt in advance what the conditions are from here on out are for replying to my emails. I have taken away his control of the narrative, because I am no longer agreeing to his demand for total confidentiality. I also stated that there would be no negotiation over any conditions regarding the Informed Consent. He can still reply to me, but now he is in a box.

Curt only has two options. First, he can choose not to reply to me and therefore deny himself the satisfaction of replying to my last email to him, which had numerous comments in it he wants to rebut. Second, he can either reply to that email, knowing full well that it was previously fully confidential but now would be posted as is on Free Flight with his comments, or he could write a whole new email addressing whatever issues he wanted to. As of this writing I have not received a response from him.

What if he writes in the response he still prohibits me from posting his email? It makes no difference. I have stated clearly that from this point on when he hits the “Send” button he is agreeing to my condition of Informed Consent. I have taken control of the narrative. If he wants to communicate with me, he will have to do it in the open.

You may say, well, then we won’t know what he is thinking. The answer to that is while he was controlling the narrative, his demand for secrecy only gave me access to his thinking, and my assessment of that was nothing he was telling me could not be shared with the Free Flight community. I literally had heard it all before the split. So, taking this action was of no damage to Free Flight because there was no new vitally important information contained in his emails that would require a different approach.

This technique is open to you. State in simple terms that from that point on all communication will be considered as that person having given their consent to publish the full comment on Free Flight as a result of clicking the “send” button. Mention that there will be no negotiation of this new condition. Also state that the comment will be posted without being edited.

If you receive a reply from someone that you think is extremely offensive, so much so that it is clearly an attempt to test whether or not we would refuse to post it, send it by PM to me, IAHM-COL and Jwocky first before posting it on the forum so we can consult with you about it.

[IAHM-COL]

On these matters, dont send private information to me. I am not worn to secrecy, and I'll post publicly. (even If Hooray calls "trap")

[KL-666]

Hi Skyboat,

Really chicken to not respond to you anymore now. Well, maybe he still does soon. But if i does not, there is no grain of leadership in him. I find it actually a bit disgusting that in the mean time he is still working on itOuchpods. I mean how old is itOuchpods?

Kind regards, Vincent

[IAHM-COL]

I dont know for sure, but I grasp it0uchpods is a teen,