Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Incubator Q&A

Welcome to the staging ground for new communities! Each proposal has a description in the "Descriptions" category and a body of questions and answers in "Incubator Q&A". You can ask questions (and get answers, we hope!) right away, and start new proposals.

Are you here to participate in a specific proposal? Click on the proposal tag (with the dark outline) to see only posts about that proposal and not all of the others that are in progress. Tags are at the bottom of each post.

Post History

66%
+2 −0
Incubator Q&A What are the pros and cons of direct vs indirect conflict resolution?

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...

0 answers  ·  posted 5mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

#1: Initial revision by user avatar matthewsnyder‭ · 2024-07-19T19:20:42Z (5 months ago)
What are the pros and cons of direct vs indirect conflict resolution?
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)?