From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Aug 29 2002 - 14:50:11 MDT
Michael Wiik wrote:
>...
>
>Sometimes I also think that the typical extropian rejection of religion
>has thrown out the baby with the bathwater. Yeah we've excised the
>mystical crap but maybe we've also tossed the civil behavior,
>fellowship, charity, and compassion (admittedly, historically quite
>limited) along with it.
>
> -Mike
>--
>
>
I've been thinking about that. Flames seem to be endemic in on-line
groups, and I think that a part of the reason is the etiquette that has
grown up. E.g.: If you realize that you have been wrong, and that
someone has clearly refuted you, you are supposed to stop responding.
This limits the noise that others must encounter. Yes, but is also
eliminates apologies, and acknowledgements.
I don't think that the "civil behavior" had much to do with religion.
What it had to do with is the conversational habits that people had
grown up with, and that had evolved over centuries. On-line speech is a
new form with a lot of rough edges. Of course, even off-line, if you
are at a public debate, or meeting, then you frequently must shut up
before you are done, in order to eliminate noise. Some of this is
endemic in large group interactions, but mailing lists and newsgroups
give the large groups a part of the feeling of a small group
conversation. Yet those dynamics don't work.
Most people that I've met on-line have been polite, but working in a
constrained medium. I won't deny that there are others, and that I've
encountered them. The kind of people who are only restrained in a
face-to-face conversation by visible signals that a forcible termination
of the conversation is imminent. (I'm really thinking here of getting
up and walking out the door, but more violent imagery exists in my
visual background.) The analogue of this is filters. But this isn't
the problem.
Mailing lists are a constrained, low-bandwidth, medium. You don't hear
the tone of voice, see the position of the body, etc. And this hampers
normal social mechanisms. This, I feel, more than religion, is what
causes lacks in on-line civility.
-- -- Charles Hixson Gnu software that is free, The best is yet to be.
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