[ProgSoc] Etiquette; signal vs noise

Pat Morgan patwm18 at hotmail.com
Tue Aug 29 22:24:18 AEST 2017


I had forgotten I was still on this list, having joined not-quite-so 19 years ago (as I was playing with toy trucks at the time) and am by no means still in the Progsoc culture via either membership or cognitive consonance, having banished myself to the far corners of the earth and sworn fealty to the Night's Watch in Canberra. I now find throngs of more than five people such that frequent Broadway threatening, dislike queues, complain about cold weather and, having learnt to drive here, am now terrible at it. 

The above is no doubt true and salient information, but I doubt many members are really interested in reading it. 

I strongly suggest that anything resembling a personal issue be raised offline for privacy reasons to not scare new members off. I think either a list etiquette or manifesto acceptable to the Society as determined by current paying members be established if not already, incorporating behaviour and values. 

Debate and discussion on intellectual topics is great, but what seems to have happened has been a lot of broadcasted material which is not particularly relevant (though I find the articulate banter somewhat entertaining on both sides). This material has been followed by conversations of a personal nature being raised to a list of potentially hundreds of participants. While it's nice to be able to read everything and lovely positives messages, a filter process is also nice for things such as 'going to the pub, friend?' or 'I don't like you very much, friend!' so the rest of the list and anyone in future who cares to browse it, doesn't have to read it.

Perhaps the time for things like mailing lists is over. I actually thought they were going to decommission the Progsoc lists now we have Facebook and the like, which is possibly a more acceptable medium where public messages/behaviour outside the spirit of the club can be deleted and private messages are dealt with via another system (Facebook Messenger). Here I think they sort of stay forevermore...

On a final note I still have very fond memories of UTS and would like to say hello to those of us still reading :) I apologise if my third party perspective, probably unwelcome email, has offended anyone. Hope you are well John, Tom & Co and I hope the new building and society is going well.

Yours in geekiness,

Pat

Sent from my iPhone

> On 29 Aug. 2017, at 9:55 pm, Tom Hale <tom at hale.ee> wrote:
> 
> Hi John,
> 
>> On 24/08/17 09:43, John Elliot V wrote:
>> If you are going to school me on etiquette, please do it on-list. There
>> are pretty much no circumstances where I want an off-list reply from
>> you. If you have something to say, please let everyone see it. If you
>> don't want everyone to see it, you probably shouldn't be sending it.
> 
> I deliberately replied off-list because I wanted to minimise anything
> that distracts from the objective of Progsoc Redux.  The intention was
> to be tactful - to not diminish your standing in the eyes of the list.
> 
> I thought that it was an unintentional mistake to send two emails which
> I equated to "are you coming?" to the whole list. I'm sorry for the
> schooling tone.
> 
>> If I'm going to bother having a conversation about what is and is not
>> appropriate, I'm not going to waste my time doing it one-on-one off-list
>> when I could do it once and let everyone see. Community values are
>> created and reinforced by demonstrating them out-loud and in public.
> 
> I understand the value of efficiency and building community behaviours
> you mention here.
> 
> I believe you may be talking more about behaviours rather than values
> though.
> 
> Which community values did intend to create / reinforce / demonstrate by
> your reply?
> 
> Personally, I felt shocked, disturbed and disappointed when you
> forwarded my private email to you to the list.
> 
> My needs for consideration and privacy were not met. Now, it's not your
> job to meet my needs, but in future I ask that you either:
> 
> * Ask if it is ok to forward my the email to the list
> * Anonymise the email before forwarding it to the list
> 
>> There are many good reasons for sending posts on-list even when they
>> appear to be directed mostly at a single person. In these specific cases
>> it was to let everyone see that they are valued and welcome to attend
>> our function. I also took the opportunity to potentially start a
>> conversation about Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Even the most
>> interesting technical discussions can start with a simple "Hello".
> 
> Beauty, like signal, is in the eye of the beholder. The emails I refer
> to may have been very valuable to the two people you intended to
> include, but were basically noise to everyone else - they knew the event
> was on given the vast volume of emails already sent on the topic.
> Perhaps a personal email would have been more valuable and eliminated
> any possibility of people feeling pressure / under the spotlight?
> 
> As a thought experiment, if your posts were valuable, would it have been
> of greater value if instead of only sending two such emails, you sent 5
> or 20 such inclusive emails?
> 
>> The other reason to force conversation on-list is that when people first
>> arrive on this list and are new here it can be very daunting. When you
>> arrive you find a bunch of very smart people with very strong opinions,
>> and it can be scary to post your thoughts on-list, in public.
> 
> Perhaps I am reacting poorly to the choice of the words "force
> conversation on list" -- to me this smacks of non-consent, coercion and
> domineering.
> 
> I suggest you'd achieve a better result with newbies with the personal
> touch. Perhaps an encouragement that what was posted was really useful
> (and perhaps a request to reply on-list), or an anonymised forwarding to
> the list if you believe the reply to be fucktardish. They'll know who
> they are -- there's no need to use the list as a weapon against them
> personally.
> 
>> I remember when I arrived here (around about seventeen years ago) at
>> first I sent my thoughts on various topics off-list to people, because I
>> was afraid to be seen in public, and they would respond by replying to
>> me on-list, and pretty much just forcing me and my conversation on-list.
> 
> I'm sorry that you were subjected to this behaviour when you joined the
> list, but I hope it was just a phase. To me this is untactful,
> inconsiderate and even toxic if the list is used to publicly shame, out
> or "correct" somebody.
> 
> Everyone has a right to a reply off-list, and to privacy.
> 
>> I learned my lesson, and now I post on-list. That's the way things are
>> done around here.
> 
> That's the way that you and some others have done it in the past. That
> doesn't mean that there isn't a better way forward.
> 
> I request you consider whether putting somebody under the spotlight
> indeed makes this, as you say:
> 
>> a place for a friendly public chat.
> 
> To me, the "force it on list" policy makes interacting with Progsoc
> unsafe in terms of respect of privacy and consideration.
> 
> The public chat can be optional, rather than enforced.
> 
>> If
>> you are going to call polite inclusive public conversation "noise", then
>> perhaps you would be better served by another forum:
>> https://stackoverflow.com/
> 
> Thanks, I love the stackexchange network. Did you know about
> https://chat.stackoverflow.com? There are 75 rooms on programming and
> related friendly chit-chat?
> 
> I've recently discovered https://interpersonal.stackexchange.com/ and am
> learning a lot there. Let's face it - I'm a programmer not a
> toastmaster, and if the stereotype is accurate, I have a bit to learn in
> terms of social skills (and hey, I just love learning). I also find
> https://workplace.stackexchange.com/ quite useful.
> 
>> p.s. Will we be seeing you at the pub this evening..? :)
> 
> I would have liked to have joined the gathering, but I live on Koh
> Phangan, Thailand. This email is redeemable for a coconut by any anybody
> who comes visit.
> 
> Tom "Ravi" Hale
> 
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