Thoughts on exclusion and culture

[davewitley]

The real Amy Z wrote:

> David has explicated how it is that people may legitimately reach
> opposite conclusions about TBAY's politeness. One conclusion is 
that
> it's polite to allow it because it's some people's best way to
> explain their theories, and after all, we're all at a party and
> expected to wander to whatever discussion we find interesting and 
> accessible.  Another is that it's polite to exclude it because 
it's 
> impenetrable to some people, and after all, we're all at a seminar 
> and the speaker's supposed to be addressing us all. So appeals to 
> politeness will not resolve the Gordian knot of TBAY.

Just in passing, I want to register that the above conclusions would 
only apply *within the context of the metaphors* I discussed.  The 
politeness would apply to the poster, not those with the power to 
allow or disallow posting.  How the list admins *deal* with 
impoliteness is a whole different discussion of enormous but, I 
hope, temporarily deferred interest.

I, David, had written:

> > I suppose the main conclusion is that all this is a matter for 
list
> > members, not list administrators.

Amy asked:

> So, anyway, could you say more about what you mean by "a matter for
> list members, not administrators"?

I suspect there was less to my meaning than meets the eye.  I didn't 
mean that issues such as defining the bounds of acceptable posting, 
whether on grounds of tone, topic, format or even length are not 
matters for the list admins.

If the list admins are poring my runes trying to work out whether I 
had issued an obscure challenge, please relax.

All I meant was that I had introduced a new idea to the discussion, 
that of the pre-conceived and slightly inaccurate RL metaphor.  The 
natural question is, what does one do about it?  After all, if there 
isn't something for the reader to take away from my chain of 
reasoning, might I not just be using up expensive bandwidth?  I felt 
that the main benefit of my contribution to the debate was likely to 
be increased self-understanding by list members posting and reading, 
and that it wasn't going to give the admin team any useful 
guidance.  For example, I think it would be deeply unhelpful to 
declare that one type of metaphor is the correct one for HPFGU.

I think the use of metaphor shows something about the nature of the 
human mind.  We are very good at finding patterns in our experience 
that match new situations, and then using our knowledge of what 
worked in those patterns to guide our behaviour in the new 
situation.  We are not very good at reasoning our way from first 
principles to the best behaviour in a situation for which no pattern 
is known to be right.  In the case of an Internet discussion group, 
I really believe we have a new phenomenon for all of us (including 
those younger than the form), and there is no pattern from the pre-
internet age that provides a sure short-cut to good behaviour 
(though thank you Richard for the suggestion of the letters page of 
a newspaper - oddly enough that's how I see *this* list, but not the 
main list).  It is IMO an unreasonable burden on the list admins to 
expect them to reason their way to best netiquette for all of us; 
it's a collective exercise, primarily for the entire oinline 
community, and secondarily for each forum to work out in its own 
sphere.

So I think all I meant was "if you find yourself reacting against a 
post, think about the nature of the expectations you bring when you 
read a post, and consider that it may be those expectations, not the 
post, that is the source of your discomfort."  That's an admonition 
to list members, of little direct relevance, I believe, to list 
administrators.  Then again, you could just complain to Yahoo ;-)

I hope I haven't thereby lost Haggridd's hearty 'amen'.
> 
> Amy Z
> who speaks American and therefore doesn't know what the 
verb "major" 
> means, outside of "I majored in Harry Potter Studies, with a minor 
in 
> Lord of the Rings"

I, David, had written:

"couldn't we major on the casual things we *can't* do online, like 
just hanging?",

by 'major on' meaning 'concentrate on' or 'emphasise' or 'devote the 
majority of our time and effort to'.  Maybe I just made it up from 
the American usage 'major in', but I think it's essentially the same 
meaning.  I should add that it was a parenthetical remark describing 
my reaction at one time: it is not meant as advice to conference 
planners.

David