“If everyone would just…” OR How To NOT Change The World
Comments: 5 - Date: January 10th, 2008 - By: Schwern - Categories: people
(This is in reply to Sam’s comment about my solution to Warnock’s Dilemma. His response leads into a classic problem, so I hope Sam doesn’t mind that I hijack it to lead into another topic. It’s not personal, just a convenient straight line.)
I don’t really like this no-input-upvoting idea; I think it discourages discussion and encourages establishment of egos and mob rule. You agree? Great. Spend just ten seconds saying WHY, thanks.
I’m one of those people who will fight like hell for the ideal solution, but if it’s not going to work out will settle for a pragmatic one rather than no solution at all. It sure would be great if everyone read my stuff and wrote out their thoughts, but I can’t change how everyone else behaves (because my ORBITAL MIND CONTROL LASERS are busy with the US presidential primaries) and it’s a bit egotistic to assume that people have time to devote to my little post.
Instead of lamenting “if everyone would just do it my way there’d be no problem” I’ll adapt my technique to fit how everyone else acts to get something like the result I wanted in the first place. One might call this manipulation, and it is, but it’s not a dirty word it’s a tool. One you should have in your toolbox and know how to use. Setting up circumstances so that people do what you want without their even thinking about it is a central idea of usability design, and the usability is just another expression of geek communications… but that’s another post.
I agree with Sam’s sentiment about mob rule — you’ll note that the votes don’t do anything — but rather than no input at all I’ll take some input, even if it’s flawed, and apply the necessary grains of salt. It is better than, in the absence of any information, making shit up (which is wholly reserved for these posts). 
(Sam, you’ve been a good sport. If you’ll just remain under the microscope for a few more moments this will all be over soon. It’s for science. And stop wriggling, you’ll throw off the readings and we’ll have to start all over again!)
Speaking of making shit up, it’s interesting to observe Sam’s tenor towards the users who don’t reply or just give a +1. It comes across as decidedly negative, the “thanks” is bitter and sarcastic. As if he’s already decided that the people who didn’t give a thoughtful reply are bad people. They’ve done something wrong. And this is the interesting thing about information voids, we abhor them and tend to fill them with negative emotions. Who knows why they didn’t reply? That’s the crux of Warnock’s Dilemma, you can’t know. Yet a decision has already been made at some level. It is particularly interesting that the +1 equivalent in real life, a head nod of agreement, does not illicit such a negative reaction. Why is that? Perhaps because the thing keeping us all basically positive social creatures in Real Life is empathy hard-coded to faces. But that, too, is another post.
(Thank you, Sam. You’re free to go.)
Comment by Sam Vilain - 10 January 2008 @ 3:44
Don’t get me wrong. Lack of conversation is a bad thing. I just think virtually zero-input braying from the subscribers is next to worthless and just noise. And I was pointing out that even the first of the options is worthless - you sent a message to a list and didn’t give anyone the chance to put their bit in. That’s what I meant by “intellectual discourse” - you’re then not conversing, you’re lecturing. So, either way - you, the poster - fail.
By comparison, let’s look at the Linux Kernel Development protocol - if you want your proposal to be considered seriously, submit it as a patch against something (and there is usually something relevant - be it a section of documentation, a project TODO list, a policy document - not just source code). People who have implicit responsibility for that section of the code base may respond with “Acked-by:” if they think it looks good, or “Signed-off-by:” if they did some serious testing of it, or they respond by critiquing an area of the patch. Or maybe the maintainer decides it is up to scratch and responds saying they applied it.
Now that’s a protocol which puts egos behind actual fruitful discussion of code, establishes an open meritocracy, and hence moves things forward. In the end people chill out because they realise that really the protocol is empowering them to show the world that their idea is good or that they are a good programmer or designer or visionary by polishing their code or design or policy amendment to the point where it can withstand criticism. And the result is far less frustration, and more participation in development of whatever it is being developed in the forum.
Comment by Schwern - 11 January 2008 @ 7:08
So if Apache has their voting protocol and Linux Kernel Dev has a protocol for commenting on patches… what does the Blog Comment Protocol look like? There’s already actual formal protocols like pingbacks and trackbacks, but can we sum up the simple, common things people like to say about blogs and come up with a selection of simple shorthands that people can use to respond while keeping the channel for detailed discussion open.
This shorthand will, of course, be in lolcat. And that’s probably the first: “lol”. It was funny. Another is “tl;dr”, the post was too damn long. Something to indicate “I learned something” and perhaps “I have that problem too!”
Skimming through Slashdot’s moderation categories might be helpful although they are often very subjective.
This may not be possible but it’ll be fun.
Comment by Sam Vilain - 11 January 2008 @ 8:35
Ok, we’re pretty off-topic now - and to stay true to form and “have an answer to everything” - let’s carry on the thread
You could start with categorising (both the votes from visitors and what the author intended) the reply based on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Thinking_Hats or some similar system. This would be orthogonal to any rating the request, though not dependent on any such rating.
In the classic Usenet discussion protocol, it was the done thing to quote the section of conversation that you were replying to, so that the conversation could branch naturally. This is one thing that I think is to the detriment of the blogosphere hasn’t been preserved. So, positioning the comment - in concept, at least - against the block that is being commented on should be a firm deliverable of the protocol.
Ideally I would like to be able to select a section of a post that I want to comment on, and then select my colour of comment (that is, the nature of the reply I intend to make) and then put the post in. The original post can be annotated using a coloured segment that there is a reply to that part of it.
Here, another example of taking a protocol to help the nature of the conversation transcend its original bounds - whereas without this protocol, the conversation is a simple “position, rebuttal”, with it, a reader could see instantly that a particular point has been rebutted as they are reading the original. This could have the effect of avoiding unnecessary duplicate rebuttals, and scanning over a post would give a quick picture of the nature of follow-ups that occurred.
Human Protocols. Isn’t that what this geek2geek is about, anyway?
By the system I just described, this would probably be a green-hat follow-up - that is, a “creative” post - one that is introducing a new idea that was led from another idea. My first was probably generally black hat.
Comment by Brenda - 11 January 2008 @ 9:20
Why is everyone always picking on Sam?
Comment by Schwern - 11 January 2008 @ 11:29
Because, Brenda, he always speaks right up and he makes such a great straight man.
Sam, it’s my blog and we’re not off topic until I say we are! And what you wrote is spot on the sort of thing I want to hear about.
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