h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"No one's advocating removal of criticism, Hell. Just the most productive form of criticism."

Sure. No-one is doing that. But I am not sure if being overly fluffy is actually *productive*.

I think there's enough room for all kinds of Scouts, fluffy ones and more direct ones. (Note: I am not saying you should go in there and shout an author to his face that he's posted cr*p to the wrong forum...)

HELL

When did something like *that* happen?

I don't think I ever saw a scout saying 'This place is sh*t, because of newbies like you' - at least not without a good reason.

On the treatment of newbies, I think that more often you'll find postings like, 'Welcome. Don't panic, but I think this is not a good one. Read the Guidelines, you'll understand why.'

HELL

Erm... The posting above is a re to "Meaning if you are a newbie in PR and someone says you are the reason, etc..." Mina's post above...

Sorry,

HELL

F2370342?thread=799037&post=8690258#p8688986

There's no good reason to say things like this.

OK, but this is a very (rare and) *extreme* case, Mina. I think any newbie would reckon that this kind of post is likely to appear in a thread like that.

HELL

Well, I've tested the waters (so to speak) and no-one has been overy hurtful to me yet

Just to pick up on a phrase of Oojakapiv's in post 48 - "Any fear is purely in the mind".

Well, yeah, Of course it is - ALL fear is purely in the mind - including fear of flying, fear of small spaces, fear of neuclear war, fear of being beaten up on the way home, and fear of dying of cancer.

You then go on to say that because PR doesn't present a physical danger there is no need for people to fear it.

Well whoopie-doo for yooo.

It is quite clear that people who are not given to lying are saying that they *are* afraid of putting their work into Peer Review.

You say they can't be.

They say they can.

You say they can't be.

They say they can.

People are daily intimidated by words on the page, ('in the light of your failure to meet your mortgage repayments we are instructing our solicitors to...') just as words on the page can make us cry real wet tears, ('... he asked for you before he passed away....'), whooop with joy ('... we are pleased to offer you the postition of....') or shake with anger ('... the Prime Minister has decided to go to war ....').

You've got yourself stuck in a stalemate, but if you try accepting the testimony of those who say that this is their experience, you can then find out where that leads you.

Stuffing your fingers in your ears and saying "it's not true" doesn't really help, now does it?






"Most of us will never meet the others...."

Not true.

I spent Saturday evening a fortnight ago gossipping with another half dozen site members at another researcher's wedding. On Saturday I am viewing the house which two site members are considering buying. In March I am staying in the house of a researcher and their partner overnight and then going to visit half a dozen or more for the weekend. I will meet 20-60 at the Winter Meet. I am going to watch a game of footie later this season with another one. I had another stay over at mine earlier this year, in fact make that two on two separate occasions. No, make that four on three occasions.

You get the idea.

For some of us this site is not a theoretical construct of turing machines placed on the internet for our amusement. It is a way of keeping up with rather a lot of our real live friends.





Sorry to be arriving so late. But I do want to put these counter-arguments to things which some people seem to be taking as axiomatic.

Ben

Oh Ben, you've always put together much better arguments than that.

"in the light of your failure to meet your mortgage repayments we are instructing our solicitors to..."
There is no comparison between those words, and words in a website forum. The words you quote have very real power to mess up your life good because they have legally binding consequences in the real world.

"Well whoopie-doo for yooo."
Yes, whoopie-doo for me. And for the hundreds, perhaps thousands of other people who don't fear PR. Why should they fear people they'll probably never meet and who have no power over their lives?

It *is* true that most Researchers here will never meet most other Researchers. I've met four (including one ex-Italic), the Italics. Anyone who goes to meets regularly will meet several more, but to use the fact that you have met so many doesn't mean that everyone else has or ever will. So no, I don't get the idea or agree with it. I would agree with you though if you were to suggest that the percentage of Researchers who have met each other is higher among PR regulars (both writers and reviewers) than it is around other parts of the site, but it's still going to be a pretty small number compared to the count of registered Researchers.

I am going to go along with Felonious and curb my excesses, but not my style - I'm too much in agreement with Hell to do that. If someone - newbie or otherwise - submits something execrable to PR, I'll let others deal with it.

And in case anyone is labouring under a misapprehension, Master "Words fail me" B isn't a Scout.

>> Why should they fear people they'll probably never meet and who have no power over their lives?

I could tell you why, but I am going to flip the question round and ask you this one instead: - Why can't you accept that they do, and leave it at that?

It isn't a rhetorical question. I do want to know why you have problems accepting other peoples' right react differently from the way in which you do.

As a creative writer, I recieved a really brutal knock-back on another forum, which has more or less silenced my poetry.

That had power over my life.

It changed it, and changed it for the worse.

I know intellectually that my poetry is good. I know emotionally that it is good. I know that one single brusquely-worded post telling me to post in a different forum should not silence me. But.... .... It has.

So words on a website cannot reach *you* that deeply. What is so difficult for you to accept that words on a website do reach others that deeply?

Regarding the friendships formed on h2g2 - Do you really truly only care about people you meet? I find that ability to de-personalise the people on the site here very sad, at best, and rather disturbing, at worst.

Oojakapiv, and Felonious Monk for that matter, I am asking you to accept three simple evidence-based premises:

1) People can be hurt and their writing can be seriously damaged by dismissively worded comments on a website

2) People do make real and meaningful connections here with people they may never meet

3) Many of the site's regular users have met and do know many other researchers - (I have published stuff here pseudonomynously for just that reason, and I know for a fact that I am not the only one to have done that)


The problem with accepting that these are facts rather than theories, of course, is that it means that we all have to accept that clumsily worded posts really hurt real live people.

Oh, and the reason I included the mortgage example is because of the number of people who don't appear to think that over-spending has real live consequences. Seemed appropriate, somehow.

Ben

HELL wrote "But I am not sure if being overly fluffy is actually *productive*."

I guess I'm not sure why "not being outright rude and/or uncivil" automatically seems to equal "being overly fluffy" for so many people here.

For me, it's a pretty clear line. I do make quite critical comments about the entries people submit, but I try to keep my comments specific rather than overgeneralized, and and to keep my about the entries rather than about the authors.

There's a tremendous difference between saying:

"Sorry, this entry is worthless cr*p, please remove it." "People like you are the reason Peer Review has gone to the toilet -- do we need to clobber you over the head to get you to RTFM?"

or, alternatively, something like:

"Have you had a chance to read the Writing Guidelines for Peer Review yet? If you do, I'm sure you'll see that there are several ways this entry isn't really what we're looking for here. To begin with, writing in this part of h2g2 needs to be about reality, and what you've written about here seems to be something made up. And while this isn't a composition class, we do need people to put some work into making their entries as readable as they can before submitting them -- for one thing, this definitely means no textspeak."

I don't think the latter is fluffy, nor do I think that it gives false hope. It may take longer to write, but that's generally true for *all* useful criticism in Peer Review -- it does take more effort to explain what needs work than to just say "This s*cks" or "This is pretty good".

Don't get me wrong, I certainly have seen many a scout be what I considered "too fluffy" in a PR thread, and give the author a confusing impression. But I think there will be some who do that regardless of whether or not rudeness is employed by others -- they are two distinct problems, at opposite ends of a spectrum where there is indeed a workable middle ground.


Mikey

Look, I really don't want to belabour this point any more. I have agreed to temper the rather more bear-like aspects of my behaviour because I think it might damage my standing with people whose views I do respect. It *won't* stop me thinking that some of the posters to PR actually deserve to be upbraided for posting lazy, offensive, illiterate or mendacious material, just that I am not going to be the one doing it.

So why do you care what I think? If it doesn't materially affect my behaviour?

What Mikey said.

It really does make the difference between people coming back and learning, and people either flouncing off, offended, or having their confidence completely knocked sideways, for who knows how long.

As I said, I wasn't a poetic newbie, and a remark gentler than the one Mikey made up knocked me off track completely, and that was over 18 months ago.

Ben

>> So why do you care what I think? If it doesn't materially affect my behaviour?

Because you are an intelligent and intermittantly sensitive guy, who I find myself agreeing with some of the time and disagreeing with some of the time.

Because my default approach to other people is to be interested in what they think and why they think it - that way I find out a whole lot more about them and the world and me.

Because I really truly do not understand that kind of arrogance and dismissiveness.

Because I want to work out the most effective response.

Because I want to work out whether I consider it to be morally culpable, or the result of stupidity, or something which can in fact be safely ignored.

Because - ultimately - the most important word in that sentence of yours is 'materially'. It takes most people an enormous amount of self-discipline not to let their emotions leek through their behaviour.

So, a number of reasons, really.

B

'intermittantly sensitive'? Well I suppose that's better than being branded totally unfeeling. Still, I'd rather be seen as that than 'intermittantly intelligent' :-/ One thing you'll find out about me is that I *never* indulge in ad-hominem attacks. I commented about an entry being semi-literate (which is what it was) rather than the author, as Phred seemed to think. True, it's pretty dismaying to have tear your latest opus to shreds, but is it any worse than building up false hopes? Take a look at http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F48874?thread=745649. This is a thread where I wore the bear costume almost continuously. I did so because unlike most other people around here I happen to know something about the subject matter. Unfortunately for the author, what I *do* know about the subject matter is from a perspective that doesn't have rose-tinted lenses interposed between me and it. Now, I can either (a) walk away (b) be unerringly positive about it or (c) stand my ground and say exactly what I think to be true. I found it a lot easier personally to exercise the last option, mainly because I believed that challenging this hagiographic treatment of a psotmodernist hack might lead to a better and less disingenuous PR entry at the end of the day. It didn't, because the author refused to acknowledge I had a point. Now, being somebody of strong and I hope well-thought out principles I found it difficult to do either (a) or (b) while thinking (c). This is because I am not a hypocrite. I also think it fair to say that when I hold my tongue in future it will therefore NOT be to the betterment of the Guide, as equally highly questionable assertions in EG entries may well slip past other reviewers. Now, if you are really interested in what I think, by now you will have realised that I put a higher value upon quality, rigour and honesty than the feelings of authors, mainly because with any luck the Guide will be here long after I and they have gone. When, as in many cases, it has come down to that simple dichotomous choice, I know which way I will invariably tend. If I don't *say* so then it's because I want a quiet life now, that's all.

I've bookmarked the thread.

I do find it interesting how many people will use 'being honest' as a synonym for - almost as an excuse for - 'being rude'. One can be honest without being brutal, as Mikey so amply demonstrated further up this LED.

>> I put a higher value upon quality, rigour and honesty than the feelings of authors,

Interesting. Unpleasant, and probably unnecessary, but interesting.

One of the odder and more subtle differences between myself and my ex was that he didn't care how people felt, but did care what they thought. I on the other hand don't give a stuff what people think, but do care very much how they feel. As a result, I will happily make a complete fool of myself, and am willing to be a complete bitch at times, but I am devestated if I've distressed or upset anyone. The only reason he was worried about offending people was that he didn't want them to think badly of him.

I personally find it easy to respect the feelings of others AND AT THE SAME TIME value quality, rigour and honesty. What need is there for an either / or there? (Another question which is not rhetorical, and which I really do want an answer to).

I find it odd and curious and slightly disturbing that other people do think it is a matter of respecting the feelings of others OR being honest.

Thanks for the link. I'll check it out in the morning.

Ben

I'm not aiming to have a dig, and rarely post here anyway, but I just spent a good while reading all that stuff from the link and article so what the hell...

You just said

"I believed that challenging this hagiographic treatment of a psotmodernist hack might lead to a better and less disingenuous PR entry at the end of the day. It didn't, because the author refused to acknowledge I had a point."

That kind of sums it up for me, you wanted the article to follow your opinion and biases, as opposed to the guy who wrote it. You didn't seem to really give a damn about how the article was presented or its suitability for the EG, instead simply repeatedly attacking the theory of the guy the article was written about.

At one stage you were even slating the fellow for his pointless use of unnecessary big words (talking of which, I just learnt a rather cumbersone new word for the study of saints), but still not bothering to mention the entry itself!

By the second page you began to talk about the entry, but the majority before that struck me as totally out of place, and needlessly agressive.

Sorry to write such an essay, but !!!

I guess I'm not entirely sure why this previously productive thread is turning into a thread about "let's bash these guys about whatever they said in PR that we disagreed with". How is this useful?

From what I can see, those being bashed here have already said that they're willing to try taking a slightly different tack in PR. Why not respect that and take it for what it is?

Once again, what Mikey said.

B

How fascinating that the thread you've pointed me to contains a discussion of our perceptions of what is and is not real, in particular the following from Otto:

"Imagine that X likes to play games like 'The Sims' and also online games like Everquest and that sort of thing, and participates in various online communities. ... If I understand B correctly, he's arguing that large bits of X's life aren't real in some sense - they're simulations of the real. [Though of course members of online communities differ from Sims in that we are real - B]

"So far so good. But X knows that her computer games aren't real in the sense that the Sims aren't real people. She also knows that her TV programmes and films aren't real, although while she's watching them they may seem so. ... Some people might think that X would be happier if she spend more time talking to real people face-to-face and that she's living some kind of less authentic and fulfilled life than she could do."

FM - were you conscious or unconscious of the irony of picking this particular thread as an example of PR?

a real person called Ben

Oh, I missed the irony.

I tend to care more about what people think than what they feel. Typical ENTP behaviour, as it happens. But coming back to that thread:
It might seem as if I were following up my own biases, but that entry gave an extremely uncritical view of this material, IMVHO. I knew that this philosopher had been publically hauled over the coals for spouting what most people took to be gibberish. I was trying to get the author to see that he/she needed to acknowledge that this dialogue had even *occurred*, at the very least. They wouldn't.

Now, if an author is going to take a one-sided view of a subject then, as far as I am concerned, I am completely justified in taking the opposite view if believe this to be true. After all, what's sauce for the goose...

But look at my very last comment in that thread. See what I say. All I'm after is balance and clarity. OK, so I think that 90% of postmodernist philosophy is pointless verbiage, but so do a lot of others, and theat viewpoint has to be addressed at the very least in an entry which purports to be unbiased.