The internet has made defensive writers of us all
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The internet has made defensive writers of us all
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Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all
#2Not me.
(please no downvote)
Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all
#3I dunno, man. I write defensively as a default and consequentially nitpick every argument made for a position.
On the other hand, I am not adverse to changing my mind on a flip of a good argument.
If I get offended or defensive, it means that my beliefs aren't as ironclad as I thought.
There are some areas that I pretty much don't pay attention though.
Anything concerning creationism, global warming denialism, pro-smoking, god, etc.
I won't waste my time entertaining obviously wrong arguments.
Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all
#4Context is really important in communication. When speaking with someone face to face, you pick up on vocal intonations and body language to give you context to their speech. As well, knowing someone personally gives context to what they are saying.
On the internet, you have none of those things, only text. I think we are hitting a wall with our written languages because they can't adequately communicate context. Emoticons are a great evolution in this respect, because I can assign emotional context to some writing with a simple set of characters :).
Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all
#5One of the common methods people use to attack posts with ideas they don't agree with is to take the prose literally. This is much like the "work to rule" form of protest that unions use, and the "letter of the law" rather than the spirit of it, and of course all those "zero tolerance" policies.
Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all
#6I feel compelled to write about race issues because I am a person of color. The issues directly impact my life. But I'm afraid because readers might be pissed off enough to get me fired. :/
Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all
#7This is a startup opportunity and can be solved through UX and richer moderation tools. UX influences user behavior. One small example, a richer moderation system that captures -1 because violation of HN guideline #6 "avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them could short circuit entire flamewar threads. I think a psychologist could probably build the right UX to get top 1% expertise to generate incredible discussions reliably and funnel the 99% peanut gallery off to the side where they can happily contribute too. I would have liked to see reddit build this but they have had years and years to do something interesting, i guess they are too big to innovate now
Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all
#8One of the common methods people use to attack posts with ideas they don't agree with is to take the prose literally. This is much like the "work to rule" form of protest that unions use, and the "letter of the law" rather than the spirit of it, and of course all those "zero tolerance" policies.
For which the Principle Of Charity was created:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all
#9I feel compelled to write about race issues because I am a person of color. The issues directly impact my life. But I'm afraid because readers might be pissed off enough to get me fired. :/
Sadly, if you live in the states, you are likely correct to feel that way. I haven't had many racial incidents in the tech workplace, but I have had enough to understand that it definitely could be held against you in the long term.
Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all
#10I dunno, man. I write defensively as a default and consequentially nitpick every argument made for a position. On the other hand, I am not adverse to changing my mind on a flip of a good argument. If I get offended or defensive, it means that my beliefs aren't as ironclad as I thought. There are some areas that I pretty much don't pay attention though. Anything concerning creationism, global warming denialism, pro-sm…
The article's message is that non-defensive writing traditionally presumed the author's openness to (in your case) changing their mind, and that today we have all become defensive writers because there is now an expectation that someone will use nitpicks about inconsequential points to discredit the entire piece.