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Too many people have peed in the pool

stephenfry.com

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Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#331

Post by kedean »

hueving wrote: post #305
skybrian wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with downvoting (at least simple versions) is that it allows separate communities to interfere which each others' communications. So, say you have hunters and animal-rights activists. They should be able to talk among themselves on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook without interference from the other side. You don't want one side to start downvoting the other side's posts into oblivion so they can't even talk…

But your defending the problem we have now. People are encouraged to get into feedback loops and not ever see anything that disagrees with them. If you're a hunter or animal rights activist, it would be much better for you to be reminded that there are people out there that disagree with you.

The problem isn't the occasional disagreement, it's when communities raid each other, since people are much more brazen online than in person. In person, thousands of atheists would never march into a church during mass and start berating members for their beliefs, but that's very common in unmoderated communities. Moderation solves this issue when you can shard your communities (see reddit), but Twitter is just a global blob. Whose going to moderate it?

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#332

Post by adrianN »

zazen wrote: post #316
hueving wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But your defending the problem we have now. People are encouraged to get into feedback loops and not ever see anything that disagrees with them. If you're a hunter or animal rights activist, it would be much better for you to be reminded that there are people out there that disagree with you.

This is a very interesting question: when does a community become an echo chamber? To use the hunting example: I imagine sometimes the hunters talk about stuff to do with hunting itself; the merits of different rifles, or where to find game, or whatever. And this is a reasonable community discussion for them to have, and it wouldn't help to have activists shouting "hunting is evil" over conversations such as that. Bu…

That's the job of good moderation I think.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#333

Post by kefka »

Kalium wrote: post #290
skybrian wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with downvoting (at least simple versions) is that it allows separate communities to interfere which each others' communications. So, say you have hunters and animal-rights activists. They should be able to talk among themselves on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook without interference from the other side. You don't want one side to start downvoting the other side's posts into oblivion so they can't even talk…

A lot of people believe it's their right to disrupt the communities of others. They call it "activism" or "advocacy" or "defending family values" or whatever the justification du jour is. It's all basically trying to stake a claim to the whole service as the territory of your tribe. I like the idea of reinforcing some separation, but I also fear it may be too late. A lot of people seem to derive joy from attacking th…

> "defending family values"

Which is what I hear exclusively regarding Christian activists. They disregard any non-Christians whom have families, or of other value systems.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#334

Post by braythwayt »

askafriend wrote: post #315
braythwayt wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Society has the problem. Twitter just makes it public. Every tool, every medium, has some effect on its content. It makes something things easy, others difficult. It amplifies some channels, squelches others. It speeds some things up, slows others down. Society has all sorts of wonderful things and terrible things. But we humans choose which tools to build and which media to promote. We can observe this and critici…

So you would prefer to build tools to mask society's problems instead of uncovering them so that we can stare them in the face and have some type of discussion about them? (Just playing devil's advocate here)

That's not playing devil's advocate, it's constructing a false dichotomy.

As a counter-example, are you saying that the best way to have a discussion about Young Earthers is to give them equal space in every geology textbook?

I don't think you're saying that, and I don't think I'm saying that we as a society should mask our problems.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#336

Post by Someone »

AJ007 wrote: post #102
jonstokes wrote: post #38

I have a theory about FB and Twitter -- or maybe more of an observation. Anyway, back in the stone age, people had bumper stickers with little slogans on them. And in the break rooms of various places of work, there was always a bulletin board an on a corner of it there was always some faded-from-to-many-xeroxes bit of humor/racism/sports fandom/sexism/dirty joke or other us-vs.-them thing on it that people would loo…

There is no friendly way to say it, the mass market are morons. It might be derogatory jokes, but this can also include things like spreading urban legends which were debunked four decades ago. Just like Usenet and countless other online communities, what starts a a small group of fairly privileged and elite eventually degrades in to garbage as the reach increases. This is not so much an overall size issue but a rela…

"There is no friendly way to say it, the mass market are morons."

Yes there is, to some extent. The trick is to start with observations, not interpretations. If you ask a really angry guy "Why are you angry?" chances are the reply is "I AM NOT ANGRY", possibly combined with a punch to your nose. Instead, ask "Why are you slamming with doors?". That starts the discussion with something that is harder to deny, and doesn't directly relate to the person, but only to his behavior, which he can change. Because of that, you are less likely to be punched, and it is more likely that you will get the answer "Because I am angry", which can be followed up with a discussion about the why, about whether he likes to be angry, and about the fact that you don't like it, either. If you want to be really inoffensive, start with "I don't like the noise of those slamming doors", but that feels a bit too indirect to me.

Similarly, don't say the mass market are morons, say they behave like morons or, even better, that they come over as morons on the Internet (my theory is that that is because people do not see facial expressions there) That not only is more polite, but likely also closer to the truth. At least, I haven't met someone who is like a real life Internet troll.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#337

Post by skybrian »

hueving wrote: post #305
skybrian wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with downvoting (at least simple versions) is that it allows separate communities to interfere which each others' communications. So, say you have hunters and animal-rights activists. They should be able to talk among themselves on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook without interference from the other side. You don't want one side to start downvoting the other side's posts into oblivion so they can't even talk…

But your defending the problem we have now. People are encouraged to get into feedback loops and not ever see anything that disagrees with them. If you're a hunter or animal rights activist, it would be much better for you to be reminded that there are people out there that disagree with you.

Better for whom? I think that's condescending. People already know that some forums only contain like-minded people - that's the point! Connecting with like-minded people about some specialized interest is one of the great advantages of the Internet. You can get valuable things out of it, without being under any illusion that you're talking with a diverse crowd.

Maybe the issue is that we don't have enough forums for people who want to have that debate? A "hunting versus animal rights" forum, for example. You'd need really good moderators, though. Lots of people wouldn't be interested in participating, but sometimes there might be interesting posts to reshare.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#338

Post by bambax »

The irony here is that the person acting most offended is Stephen Fry himself, who decides to quit in high fashion because, alleges he, some people pissed in the pool.

Twitter is not his pool; it's not even a pool: more like the sea.

Many people -- and all kinds of living things -- piss in the sea and do many other things in it; if you're unhappy with that, well yes it's better if you stay on the shore, but don't go around pretending you're so pure.

You're just afraid of the sea.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#339

Post by askafriend »

braythwayt wrote: post #334
askafriend wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you would prefer to build tools to mask society's problems instead of uncovering them so that we can stare them in the face and have some type of discussion about them? (Just playing devil's advocate here)

That's not playing devil's advocate, it's constructing a false dichotomy. As a counter-example, are you saying that the best way to have a discussion about Young Earthers is to give them equal space in every geology textbook? I don't think you're saying that, and I don't think I'm saying that we as a society should mask our problems.

Twitter isn't a textbook though. It's goals as a communications platform are completely different.

It's like saying, would you rather design SMS around masking Young Earther's ideas?

In the 20s, you would have had these services designed around not conversating about alcohol. Is that right? Is it wrong? I don't know if it's for the communications platform to decide.

However the communications platform can provide the user tools to control what/who they hear from so that they can make those decisions themselves.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#340

Post by blakeyrat »

gilleain wrote: post #57
willvarfar wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joel Spolsky wrote an excellent post on building a community: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswi... Of course he later closed his flourishing community suddenly. Very suddenly. Everyone was confused. And the worlds he's built since, such as StackOverflow, are deliberately completely devoid of all community. The smallest remnants of the community survive and evolve at http://www.crazyontap.co…

Totally agree that SO has little community (or quite a hostile one, if any) but that may be because it is a victim of its own success. I see the same thing happening in other stack-exchange sites, sadly. The underlying problem may be the gradual fatigue at questions of the form: "HOW DO I DO DIS???!! SOLVE THIS FOR ME NOW PLZ!!" or even the more subtle "I was wondering about this homework-like question...?" which are…

My own personal experience with SO as a Q&A site is I've had a literally 0% success rate. None of the questions I've posted have ever been successfully answered. (Now I don't even bother.)

I think that's because the site encourages people to get all the internetpointzzz reputation currency, and not to, you know, actually answer questions. And the questions I asked were somewhat difficult, because I'm not a dummy and I did a lot of research before posting them. So, as a software developer, I do not find SO "successful" as a Q&A site.

As a community, it seems their biggest flaw is they try to solve literally every problem with the reputation system, and they've turned it into a weird mess. For example, the SO FAQ says "if you know or find the answer, go ahead and answer your own question". But the reputation system says, "Nope, no permissions. We were just yanking your chain." Very off-putting for literally everybody who doesn't spent 4 hours a day there farming reputation.

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