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

Sorry, I thought you said you were interested in tig. Apologies, will not post any more about him here.>>>> moi well what do ya know mawaaah to you too

Pin said:
"I subscribe to an anything-goes view of hootoo. It’s a bit like the on-off switch point about TV censorship: if you come here, you’ve implicitly accepted the principle of being morally, emotionally and intellectually challenged. The site’s strength is the high store it puts by the intellectual challenge."

It's a valid view of some parts of hootoo, but surely not of the whole site. It's possible to like it here precisely because it's *not* a challenge, it's somewhere where people can relax and be themselves. I have no problem with posters who stick to threads which are not in any way challenging--there's plenty of room for everybody.

Your focus on being challenged casts some light on the various run-ins we've had on and about Peer Review.


Azara

To RE :
<>

No, they're positive qualities. But I don't equate them with netiquette per se.

Same token : priggish insularity and sniping at outsiders really *are* negative qualities, but I don't equate them with netiquette either.

Politeness is not a singular mode of behaviour.

Manners definitely do not maketh the man. They're always superficial, and if taken to extremes, manners are wholly vacuous. A better saying - never judge a book by its cover. And before you cultivate courtesy, for Heaven's sake cultivate something deeper.

Pin

(Hi Azara! Fair point. There should be pools of calm here too, and it shouldn't need big notices to differentiate them from the cockpits. A little intelligence and respect should do that for all of us.
Hey, what run-ins? Well, you know I enjoy them. I always hope that you do too)

Netiquette is crucial. It is good netiquette that *enables* us to challenge, disagree and debate with each other without flame wars, personal insults and other unpleasantness.

Noggin

But what about creativity?

Surely the different, the unexpected, the rule break can sometimes produce something wonderful and new?

If everything and everyone always played by the 'law' some of us wouldn't be able to cope! We'd go completely mad and have to spend our days locked away in an asylum?

(Though some here might that wouldn't be such a bad thing! )

<> (Redpeck)

I don't see Netiquette as a 'law' but rather as a 'base' that we can all work from.

I also don't see most threads applying Netiquette with a heavy hand, it's more about mutual respect. And I think there is plenty of room for 'creativity' within those basic guidelines.

Again, it seems that it is only when a researcher's behaviour becomes disruptive to a thread that they are taken to task. Plenty of 'rule breaking' goes on that is either accepted or even appreciated on various threads. But I also think it is not only important, but also responsible, to personally get a feel for what a thread is about before posting there. Which *is* an example of Netiquette.

One should also bear in mind where a thread originates from. If it is a general Ask h2g2 thread then perhaps things are more open. If it's a specific forum such as The Forum, FFFF or Lil's Atelier where specific Netiquette rules are posted on the home page, then it behoves one to post on those threads with those rules in mind. If it's a PS conversation or a journal entry, then one should bear in mind what that specific researcher would like to discuss.

None of these are 'hard and fast' rules, and as I mentioned here before, there really is no such thing here on h2g2 as 'personal ownership' of a thread, given that h2g2 is a public forum. So it all comes down to respect in the end.

Occasional 'over stepping' is certainly no sort of 'crime' as I think many of have done this at one time or another. But repeated over stepping is showing little or no respect. Especially after one has been politely asked not to do so.



az

<>

Indeed. Respect is the prime directive. Everything else is just footnotes.

But under normal circumstances there is no reason why good netiquette should interfere with productive creativity of ideas, approaches to moral problems, humour or whatever, as far as I can see.

And there are rules that govern whether a particular breech of the rules is justified .

The problem is when certain individuals persistently fail to show respect for others. At what point should respect for them be withdrawn, and how far?

Noggin

I think we are in a whole new scenario on the internet. It is a realtively new phenomenon and therefore the groups of people that form chatrooms or message boards on various sites are young 'cultures'.

The reason I call it a new scenario is that we are international in nature. We come together from various cultures and traditions. This I find exciting but it is also difficult because some of us have no tradition in common in terms of what is and is not acceptable. Big misunderstandings are inevitable because we shall even interpret something as basic as House Rules differently due to playfullness with eg humour and irony.

IRL each country has its own laws. On the internet we are a worldwide 'country'. So how much harder it is to prescribe a definitive 'universal' netiquette. Even within countries acceptable behaviour changed and evolves over time. Around one hundred years ago Oscar Wilde was viewed as a societal 'troll' because his homosexual behaviour was viewed by society at large to be a threat to the normal functioning of British family based heterosexual society. He was put in prison, (suspended in our terms), ie punished.

Thank god people like him persisted with their behaviour. Or we would still be 'suspending such trolls!'

<> (Redpeck)

On the other hand, h2g2 is a BBC site and you are a Londoner. So I reckon you should find the basic netiquette rules here quite easy to understand.

I agree that some people from other countries, especially those for whom English is not their first language, might have a bit of initial difficulty getting 'the hang of things'. But I have seldom seen any serious problems arise simply because of language issues.

In fact, most of (if not all) the trolling behaviour that has gone on here was initiated by UK citizens. Or at least 'native' English speakers from English speaking countries.

I take your point about Oscar Wilde. Though it also has to be said that he was living in very 'unsympathetic' times for who he was. Of course now Oscar is hailed as the genius he truly was. Anyhow . . .

I don't think we are presently living in 'unsympathetic times' in terms of ourselves and each other. We have a lot of freedom to express our opinions and be who we are. But if we want to do that within an internet community such as this one, I do think that basic rules of mutual respect (netiquette) should at least provide the basis from where we start.

az

<>

I find this an interesting remark because where I live in London, (which I mentioned before on other threads), is an extremely multi cultural and multi ethnic area. In many ways far more than hootoo, which is very much traditional white British, Canadian, American, Antipodean etc etc. I hope you get the picture. And I am in no way criticising this, just ex[laining the perception I have of it.

But in many ways, away from the 'silly' threads, I find more problems with misunderstanding and communication than I do with people in my immediate community in real life. I'm not completely sure why this is but I think it may often be due to problems with misinterpretation of humour. One thing I love about London in real life is that people who come to live here from wherever quickly pick up on the tradition of irony. And for me humour is a very important thing in making connections with people and communication.

All my best friends on hootoo seem to have a good sense of irony which I have found is a brilliant way to get over arguments and make connections. I also find it a very creative form of communication. But it is also fraught with danger if people interpret it another way.

Anyway I'm starting to waffle, aren't I? And I've forgotten what point I was trying to make.......

I've been thinking more about this concept of 'Netiquette'. Which is really interesting because I have no idea who decided what the basic rules of netiquette should be. Within our democratic Western tradition we vote for our governments who then make the law we are governed by.

But of course this doesn't happen online. On this site we agree to play by the House Rules given to us when we join. But we the hootoo community don't make these rules. We are given the choice to accept them and participate, or not and be excluded. So this is a very different power structure from the one we live in as citizens of our countries.

I wonder how internet communities such as ours will evolve in the future?

It reminds me a little of being at school, where there is a school council which has input into the school rules, but for all intents and purposes has no real power. Though there is a difference of course because school attendance is basically compulsory, but hootoo participation is voluntary. (For now anyway! 1984 anyone?)

It's absolutely true that the internet community is different. Remember that this is a medium that inverts conventional social hierarchies, one in which introverts gain a voice and in which the downtrodden can throw their weight around.

As a result of this, trolling and flaming are inevitable. Just as inevitable is a hypersensitive reaction to such behaviour on the part of the community. Our world is full of unusual egos : some exceptionally large and some exceptionally fragile.

The snag with netiquette as a response to challenging behaviour is that it insinuates conformity. Perhaps its champions are the ones with the fragile egos, and its detractors harbour the large ones?

Noggin said : <>

I wish I could agree. In reality, anything that promotes conformity does interfere with all of those things. Genius is different. Creativity is very often inflammatory.

Truly stimulating experience in life comes, I think, from only two sources. There is the kind that springs from close relationships, and that spans a range from sexual intimacy to simple companionship. Then there is the kind that is kindled by challenge.

There's the rub. The first kind is very difficult (though not impossible) to develop through the internet. The second type entails risk by its very nature - and ideas like netiquette tend to frustrate it.

We all know about respect, and we all know about civil behaviour. That should be enough.

But we mustn't stop challenging people, and challenging ourselves. If we did, there'd be no point in doing this.

Pin

Hello Pin

I don't have time, now, to post a detailed critique of your arguments, but I'm confident that I'm not alone in disagreeing strongly with much of what you say.

May I suggest that you are A) playing devil's advocate in a brave attempt to reinvigorate the debate, or B) seizing the moment to exercise your flair with woids; either way, I salute you!

<>

Well, as I suggested, these do the form the basis of all netiquette. In saying that the rest is just footnotes I was suggesting that these still have to be *applied*, and that that is what a debate like this is fundamentally about.

Noggin

What I'm understanding from Pinniped, but do correct me if I'm wrong, is that some people may have worthwhile challenging contributions to make, but are unable, or choose not to make them in a conventionally civil way.

That may be fine in some contexts where people are seeking utmost lateral thought, but I'm not sure that it's appropriate or acceptable here. Nor do I think that the particular researchers spoken of as unwelcome fall into that category.

Not what I meant at all, Teaswill. Let me try again…

First of all to RE : you are brilliantly perceptive!
(The alternative is that I'm transparent and obvious, but I'm sure we both prefer the first interpretation).

I just thought it was a shame that one more interesting thread was descending into re-runs of old spats. (My - playing the victim, in the self-pitying way that some here like to do, is not only very tedious, it's the perfect opposite of netiquette too).

Taking Noggin's point, there are two directions to a possible solution to the troll problem :

Let’s forget wasps. Here’s another analogy which has current resonance. We can think of trolling as a kind of viral infection of the site.
There are two fundamentally different ways to contain the spread of such an infection.
1. Isolation and quarantine. In our analogy, this is where rules take us. They work OK (for real or virtual infections) as long as the problem is still short of pandemic, and provided that the community is willing to put up with constraints on their liberty.
2. Immunisation and boosting individual resistance. Now the idea is that we’re all bound to catch it, so we’d better learn to shake it off. The catch now is finding the right serum/dismissal behaviour. Once you do, then it doesn’t matter how rife the infection gets, because most will overcome it without much discomfort. There’s less erosion of personal freedoms too. Of course we have to keep our collective guard up, and continually develop our vaccines/behaviours, because viruses/trolls have a habit of mutating.

So you’re right, Noggin, we do need some attention to Type-1 Rules. But we also need some effort on Type-2 personal resistance.

One really controversial assertion might be to propose that whingeing ‘poor-me’ behaviour from self-perceived victims of trolling should be stamped out, because it actually makes us all more prone to trolling, by encouraging the little b*ggers.

So perhaps we need a ‘Typhoid Mary’ smiley, to shut the whingers up the minute they start...

…Now - how’s *that* for Devil’s Advocacy?

I think (?) you are more or less saying something similar to what I tried to say in post 386, Pin. That netiquette is best used as a 'base' to work from, not as a 'law' to follow as if we were all .

Using netiquette as a base doesn't preclude individual or creative expression, but in any social environment there are always some sort of ground rules to keep in mind when interacting with others. Which includes being responsible for our own behaviour and not 'allowing' others to make us fly off the handle and be too self-indulgent. Handing over this responsibility to others (either by blindly following rules or feeling that 'so-and-so *made* me do it' as a result of their behaviour) means that we are giving up our own right to individual expression ourselves.

<>

Sounds quite fine to me.

az

So it would seem that apart from differences of expression, and perhaps of emphasis, we're actually pretty much in agreement. Basic ground rules, or statements of principle, need to be in place, but the way these principles are applied is a matter of continuing negotiation, with results that are largely unwritten (and therefore not written "in stone"), and that the response to breaches of netiquette should also be governed by the basic principles.

Is that about right?

Noggin

Well, we certainly mucked that up, didn't we?! All agreed, and the thread's dead!

No, it isn't!