What is "conversation"? ... by Bob Nelson
At the end of the "Great Red Rules Debate", I posted an article with the intention of testing the waters.
The waters were boiling!
In retrospect, I chose a bad topic. I had not known that the word "Obamacare" would provoke such vehemence.
In retrospect, I see that many NTers cannot -- literally cannot -- converse calmly about anything related to the President, and so my experiment was condemned to give a predictable result: massive off-topic derailing.
My initial reaction was a kind of satisfaction at having had my thesis validated: "Red Rules are necessary because people intentionally demolish anything that challenges their thinking"!
On the other hand... I would never accept conclusions from another person, drawn on a single data point. So I decided to pursue the experiment. For three weeks, I have posted seeds and articles without Red Rules, to see how NTers would behave.
I read eclectically, and seed stuff that I think important or interesting... without much attention to whether it will be popular. I post quite a bit about economics, which I think to be interesting and important... but which most people think a thunderous bore. Several such seeds have gone without a single Reply. No matter. It is quick and easy to seed. I put the stuff up, available if anyone is interested. If they aren't , there's no harm to anyone.
I've put up a couple of technology bits. Several religion items. These have been the most useful in my "experiment". There have been three sorts of Reply:
- commentaries on the topic! This is what should happen. Some excellent exchanges, not necessarily long... but thoughtful.
- tangents. Not completely off-topic, but not on-topic, either. (More on these later)
- derail to politics.
After these three weeks, I've come up with a few ideas that I would like to share:
"Politics addiction". I think some NTers are so passionate about politics that they have great difficulty discussing anything else. These people will derail any topic to politics, and they honestly will not see that they are derailing. For them, everything really is politics, so they are necessarily on-topic. This is a hard nut to crack!
Aside. In a serious real-world conversation, the participants make a voluntary effort to stay on topic. At the same time, they occasionally say something that is totally off-topic, momentarily derailing, but with the obvious intention of quickly returning. I think this notion is important, both for authors invoking Red Rules and for Mods. Asides are useful, because they lighten the mood of the participants. The danger, of course, is that the "return" never happen...
Chat. A conversation entirely composed of asides. These can be fun, but are not to be confused with " serious conversation". Chat and serious conversation are like oil and water: they don't mix!
Tangent. A "slightly" off-topic Reply. A totally off-topic Reply is pretty easy to spot, and stop. A tangent is much trickier! If an author/Mod calls "off-topic" at every tangent, the conversation is stifled. So some latitude must be given. On the other hand, after three or four Replies, that thread may be quite far away from the original topic, and its participants must be ready to accept a "Hey folks, let's get back on topic, OK?"
Derail to meta. This is a killer! Any conversation can be destroyed instantly. We really, really REALLY need a general "good manners" rule that meta is not to be treated within a conversation. I say "good manners", because when a person brings up meta in a conversation, they are in effect contending that the manner of managing the conversation is more important than its content. That's pretty insulting. We need to agree that meta is important and that all of us should be ready to discuss our decisions... but that meta should be treated outside the conversation , by email or messaging or chat... Each of us should be aware that shifting to meta is a way of killing a conversation . If you didn't realize that before, I hope you do now!
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Now that a bit of time has passed... and passions cooled... I'd like to present my Red Rules again:
Red Rules
- Be polite. No insults. Insults never improve a conversation.
- Stay on the topic of the seed/article.
- Explain your own thinking. Ask about others' thinking. Do not try to explain others' thinking.
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Meta is off-topic . Please send me any questions or comments about meta via chat or email. Let's not derail the seed into meta. Thanks.
Three strikes and you're out . Three deletions and you're evicted from the conversation on the presumption that you are intentionally disrupting.
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The topic of the seed/article appears to me to be yada yada.
You may challenge this interpretation, but please be explicit, something like, "It seems to me that the topic of the seed/article is yodo yodo, because of the following excerpt: "yyyyy yyyyyy yyyy yyyyy yyyyyyyy yyy yyyy yyyyy ". Please be factual -- you are changing the topic, after all !
If you do not challenge my definition of the topic, then please stick to that topic. Thank you.
I hope that you can see that if people want good, serious conversation... they will follow these rules, even if they are not enunciated! These rules are not constricting, for anyone who is truly interested in the topic.
They are only constricting for someone who wants to change the topic ...
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I shall continue to post without Red Rules, and we'll see how it goes...
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There are two topics here:
I'm probably the worst person to ask about keeping a conversation on track. I think it is inherent to a conversation in this part of the country, though.. As an example:
Me: Did you know that gas has gone down to $1.99 at the Thornton's on Shelbyville Road? (topic)
Friend: Really? I'm going to go fill up quick! This won't last to the weekend, as usual!
Me: Probably not, they always raise prices for the weekend. (topic) Say, did Joey get his braces off? (off topic)
Friend: Yes, on Wednesday! He wears a retainer at night-- is Matthew still sick? (off topic)
Me: He's feeling better...
Inquiries about the health and well-being of one's family, the general state of the world, and other friendly exchanges are very likely to go off topic, even when serious...
So, I'm sorry if I'm off topic, but I think it is an illness called "social exchange"...
You said:
Please forgive me if I'm being somewhat obtuse, but isn't this whole article meta?
As for your comment that you post articles which rarely get a comment - try posting articles on groups like "Classic Cinema", "Canada", "Middle East Affairs" etc if that is of no consequence to you.
In order to derail the topic, I thought I'd ask this: Why is it that out of approximately 3/4 of a thousand members, only around 20 or 30 post regularly and perhaps another 20 or 30 might heard from occasionally while the rest are as active as barnacles on the bottom of a boat?
Thanks, Robert!
Dowser,
That's a fine example of tangent / derail. Perfectly on-topic!
Ummm....... Buzz?
What part of "shifting to meta" do you not understand?
;-))
What one man sees as conversation another man could see as an insult. Take this famous statement from John Wayne for example. "I believe in welfare a welfare work program. I dont think a fella should be able to sit on his backside and receive welfare. Id like to know why well-educated idiots keep apologizing for lazy and complaining people who think the world owes them a living." I see value in this statement while some liberals might take it as an insult.
Isn't it short form for metamorphosis?
The lazier the liberal the more likely that is.
Themore out of touch with realitya conservative is, the more likely they are to believeyour nonsense.
Is that an insult or is that conversation? It's a slippery slope when we restrict freedom of speech.
It's a response to your comment Dean. It's free speech at it's finest.
And I would hate to see it deleted because of foolish red box rules.
In response
Thanks, guys!
You have brilliantly demonstrated "tangent becomes derail"!
I tend to be an optimist.
Or fantaisist, some might say...
In your eyes. That's the problem with red box rules.
It's my article, Dean.
It should not make any difference who posted the article.
That is a key presumption.
I disagree absolutely!
I'm not too confident in your red rules Bob . I was thinking about putting something up about the responsiveness of commenters to questions [which would also include the article seeder ] . What do you think?
Petey
Now that would be an interesting a rule, e.g. a question is posed to a member, if the member comments but fails to answer the question the comment could be deleted as a violation of the red rules. Very interesting
Yeah ... you know you would be in deep doo-doo with that rule . Your penchant for ignoring questions posed to you is pretty much record breaking .
Petey
I see we were thinking along the same lines
I will use that approach in a future article . I will name it the John Russell repellant rule ... in your honor {grins} .
Oops! My bad! I should have defined "meta" since it isn't actually a word.
"Meta" is "how the forum is run". When we discuss the CoC, that's "meta". When someone complains about how a Mod intervened, that's "meta". When we discuss Red Rules, that's "meta".
It's surely short for "metasomething", but I have no idea what.
It's an interesting idea, but too easy to subvert. Just ask a series of annoying questions that you know the other person won't answer... and then ban them for not answering.
OTOH, a participant can always underscore another participant's refusal to answer questions. This is for third-party observers, since it won't have any effect on the person who isn't answering. And if the questions are "just to annoy", those observers will see that, too.
As a general rule, I don't care much for coercion.
Ummm..... Yes...
That's why one of the article's tags is "meta"...
Nah , not as they "go along" . The idea proposed was that the rules would have to be posted as the first comment so that they could not be changed later on ...
Questions are only annoying to someone pushing an agenda . The questions also have to be relevant to the flow of the topics and the discussion about it . But I am going to be flexible here & ask for clarification in case you have something else in mind . Do you ? Remember : if a seeder goes out of his way to be obscure , he will end up being ignored ...
That's what I meant. Asking irrelevant questions is "annoying".
Requiring relevance creates the same problems as requiring on-topic: it's a judgment call.
If a seeder/author did that , they would be ignored ... and the article would soon fall off the FP . Problem solved . Next point ?
Three things:
Is someone keeping score?
That is also the reason that an author won't abuse Red Rules.
More importantly... I have been thinking about the actual situation, and trying to imagine how "required to answer questions" would go down.
In a serious conversation, questions are welcome, because they give an opportunity to reformulate/explain. So if someone refuses to answer a question, something is off-kilter.Perhaps the conversation is not serious, is more of a shouting match, and the questions are perceived (perhaps rightly) as aggression rather than request for information. (The execrable "So what you are saying is xxxxxx?" is a question, but it is not a request for information!)
So... I agree that unanswered questions are a vital symptom of a conversation going sick... I agree that an author / Mod should be alert to such cases because they demonstrate that the conversation is in trouble.
I'm not sure that a "ban" would be much different from Red Rules.