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What are the pros and cons of direct vs indirect conflict resolution? Question
Occasionally a situation develops in a community of people where two members come into some personal conflict. Let's suppose that neither member is doing anything particularly against the community's established rules of conduct, but they happen to clash in a way that's causing issues.
There are two common approaches to handling this, which I'll call "direct" and "indirect":
- Direct: Whenever you have beef with someone, you're expected to first approach your antagonist, and attempt to talk it out with them. If this fails, then you ask other people in the community to intervene. You're not supposed to complain about someone if you haven't tried to approach them yourself.
- Indirect: Whenever you have beef with someone, you're expected to immediately minimize interactions with them, and ask someone else to intervene. You're supposed to avoid any further confrontation, including talking to the other person directly.
The propriety of either approach varies greatly depending on factors such as the specific nature of "the beef" or the type of community. I am not expecting an answer like "direct is always better because..." as I cannot possibly such a claim being correct.
I am curious, what specifically does it depend on? What determines whether direct or indirect will work better in a given situation, and what can be said about their pros and cons (at least some of which surely also depend on the situation, while others may be universal)?
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