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

The Law of Backlog is: Read The Backlog. It goes with "RTM(Read the Manual)" and "RTFFAQ(Read The Freaking FAQ)".

Reading the backlog is an important part of netiquette. Like most such netiquette, its primary purpose is to avoid wasting bandwidth. In particular, the bandwidth between my monitor screen and my eyes. The reason is simple: to avoid asking questions that have already been made. To avoid rebutting points that have already been rebutted. In short, to avoid wasting anyone's time. To avoid asking for things which may already have been given, or already refused.

A minor reason is to avoid making comments which are inappropriate in the current atmosphere of conversation. If a conversation starts about parties, and moves on to discussion of a funeral, then one would not wish to post in a party mood and break in on people's funeral mood. That would be rude.

Whether anyone else had already responded *should* have mattered to you. Because you *should* have cared about wasting other people's time. The internet is a place where it is easy to post something which will be read by a hundred people and be useful to all of them. It is also a place where it is easy to post something that will be read by a hundred people and totally waste their time.

I hope this helps.

Lest it be unclear, the backlog refers to every post from the most recent, all the way back to the very first one. The amount of backlog that must be read varies from place to place, depending on how inflammable the atmosphere is, the nature of your post, and how rapidly the conversation is moving. You should use your judgement for this, yet err on the generous side.

Obviously, you should read the 100 most recent posts, rather than the 100 oldest posts. While repeating something that was said 100 posts ago will irritate people, repeating something that was said 1 post ago will irritate even more.

I guess I see your point, but this makes it difficult to join into a long conversation. If two fast typists started a conversation and kept adding posts to the end, you might never be able to read fast enough to catch the end of it and add your comments.

As far as "wasting your time," hell, most of what we write in these conversational areas are just killing time, unimportant topics, things that have been said before a million times by others. It's not like every word must be utterly important before posting them. There's nothing special about the web that should make conversations here any more important or worthwhile than ones we have in real life. Mr. Spock might worry about bandwidth or devoting all his time to productive tasks, but for us humans, wasting time can sometimes be fun. We call it "socializing."

[The fascination with alcohol smileys on h2g2 still bothers me.]

For another thing, every writer or every person who opens her mouth thinks she has something important to say, something that must be heard by everyone. Most of the time, we are wrong. Thinking back to my transgression that inspired this discussion, I still would have said the same things after reading the full thread that I said after reading only the first half. I wanted to add my vote to one side of the debate, and even though the general points may have been made by others, I still would have wanted to explain my belief from my perspective in my own words. I have no regrets in this case. (But I can remember many others where I did regret it.)

If you can't read at the rate people are writing, then you'd never be able to join the conversation! You could post to it, sure - but you'd never be part of a conversation, because you couldn't read everything that they wrote!

I agree - and for very banal threads you only need to read a very short amount of backlog. For very serious threads you should read a serious amount of backlog. For highly inflammable threads you should probably read everything written, just as a security measure!

But notice that I rarely hang around threads which aren't being productive - so please don't force your time wasting onto me. If I want to waste time, I shall do so, and I shall go to an appropriate place to waste time. But it should be my choice, otherwise you're just as bad as the spammer who mails me about how to get rich quickly.

> "For another thing, every writer or every person who opens her mouth thinks she has something important to say, something that must be heard by everyone. Most of the time, we are wrong."

I agree entirely. That's primarily why netiquette was invented - contrary to what people think, it isn't mainly about being polite. It's about taming people's urge to waste everyone else's time.

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Another rule of netiquette is to avoid "Me too!" posts. The archetype of a me2 post is where someone quotes an enormous, ten page epic post - and right at the bottom scibbles "I agree!!!!!". But the same thing occurs if you repeat an argument that has already been made in your own words.

The point is - force of numbers doesn't do anything useful in virtuality. If hundred people say that X is a pedant, then the effect is very similar to if just Y says that X is a pedant, except that X feels victimised and defensive. The correct thing to do is to listen to what is said between X and Y, and only post if you see a point that both X and Y have missed, that could be usefully raised. If Y ever admits defeat, THEN is the time when you can post your opinion, and explain why you think that Y was wrong to have admitted defeat - and continuing from where the conversation is *now*, rather than where it came from.

"for very banal threads you only need to read a very short amount of backlog. For very serious threads you should read a serious amount of backlog."

Agreed.

"For highly inflammable threads you should probably read everything written, just as a security measure!"

Au contraire. For threads that are already on fire have already lost concern for anything important or constructive coming out of them.

Another example occurred to me. Probably a special case, but still shows an exception to the rule. The thread titled PLEASE LEAVE NAME AND U# HERE TO ADD YOUR NAME TO ZAPHODISTA PAGE has over 600 posts. I hope new people don't have to read that whole thread before signing up!!! But that forum has a different function than others, so it wouldn't make sense to demand everyone read the backlog before signing.

Likewise the conversations on Lil's Atelier and some of the Thingite threads run to the hundreds (thousands?) of posts. But those are more conversational, and it's probably less important to read the whole thing before jumping in.

Those exceptions are just examples of what you said a minute ago.

Well - occasionally threads which are on fire eventually come to some kind of sense which IS constructive - the thread entitled "Peer Review system", for example, is slowly getting more constructive (your comment that certain posts were intentionally rude, incidentally, is not helping). Some discussions will always be tinged with fire, but they are still helping.

Thingite, et al - agree completely.

"...your comment that certain posts were intentionally rude, incidentally, is not helping..."

At least I'm not duplicating anyone else's thought. And at least I restrained myself to only one or two sentences, instead of elaborating.

I am indeed glad you did not elaborate. I just wish you hadn't said anything at all - or at least held your counsel until tempers had been given a chance to settle a bit.

Never mind - I'm sure you're right.

*Hasn't read the entirety of this thread yet, but still has to make this point.*

You say you should read backlog to avoid asking questions that have already been asked, and to avoid making points which have already been made. Ironic then, don't you think, that the point you're making in this very thread has already been made about five times elsewhere in this Talking Point.

Good lord. I hope this doesn't mean that we should feel obliged to read not only every post on a single thread before adding comments, but every post on every related thread? (Is there a jargon word for that? A "globule" or something?)

Anyhow, it's just another good illustration of how *most* of these messages ought to be treated more like human conversations than ??? important things written in stone.

Well, most of the time each individual thread is indeed a conversation. However, from my point of view in this Talking Point (being the person having to collect all the information and compile it - and I did that a number of weeks ago, so this thread isn't counted anymore) each post made is indeed something important written in stone.

There are other pages as well, dealing with multiple sub-issues in a big issue, where, yes, the other threads should be read, at least partially. All is already explained in the Netiquette article being compiled by Peta through my work, so you needn't worry about your message being put across.

Every thread attached to some entry - gosh, that *is* backlog...

I checked for any threads with suggestive titles, and couldn't find any, so I started my own. It served its purpose, which was to get mass topic drift out of line - though I was perhaps a little unfair on Deidzoeb...

-Xanthia

No, you weren't really unfair to me. Somewhere back in the Intelligence thread, I directly asked if there was a rule of netiquette about this. I appreciate the clarification -- even though I will probably ignore this rule for most conversations that I'll ever take part in.

A post I made elsewhere, when I was in a somewhat despairing mood...

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Yeah. I'm starting to think that should be one of those sets of rules:

1) Don't criticise someone until you've read all the backlog.
2) No one has read ALL the backlog.
3) Some of the backlog - you can't even SEE.


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Current mood is roughly the same, by chance.
*sigh*

-Lucinda