Thread:Alzrius/@comment-16774229-20131031212846/@comment-11687-20131101232616

ImposterParrotGrass wrote: Yes, that was over dramatic, but I'm an actor. Everything I do is over dramatic by law. But the point I'm making is that the last time there was somebody that had such a different take on how the community operated, it lead to the worst flame war on the forums(to the best of my knowledge). I don’t want it to happen again, and I don’t want you to be the epicenter... My apologies for overdramatizing.

Strictly speaking, it's not by law, it's by habit. That said, I don't know the details of how that last flame war began, but you seem to be operating under the assumption that if you pressure people into a state of conformity, that will somehow make things better.

To put it lightly, I disagree with that line of reasoning. To date, all it's accomplished is creating an atmosphere of intolerance, as epitomized by the fact that no one has objected to the manner in which I write as much as you do. The very people you claim to be trying to protect don't seem to be taking the matter very seriously - not seriously enough to mention it to the degree you have (and most don't seem to care enough to mention it at all) - which undercuts the very thing you claim to be trying to carry out.

Likewise, you claim to be concerned for me. Rest assured, I've received your message in that regard, and have elected to disregard your advice. To that end, I question the merit of further attempts to explain your position, as I understand it fully, and have concluded that I disagree entirely.

ImposterParrotGrass wrote: Now I think I understand the point you're making more clearly.(please note that the following statement is made under the assumption that the way wright in your posts is more or less the same as the way you talk causley) I think that one of the biggest problems with any discussion on the internet is that you don't know anyone personally, and thus can have a hard time judging the people you're taking to. The thing is, everyone’s idea of “casual” is different, and what you find casual, I find long winded and overly complicated. I understand that you feel that talking to them in less than your usual manner as “insulting their intelligence”, don’t see how it is. As I said before, while everyone can understand lowbrow talk, not everyone gets the highbrow. But as we’ve run this argument in circles, I don’t think either of us will convince the other at this point. At least not on this particular topic.

Knowing your audience is exceptionally difficult when the only metric you have for knowing them is that they've self-selected to participate in a particular series' wiki. I can anticipate that you'd say that you can know the people here better by reading their posts - particularly on a given topic - but I think that approach is incomplete at best; after all, not everyone who reads a given topic posts on it. This is without getting into the fact that I look dubiously on the idea that how a person writes necessarily corresponds to how well their reading comprehension is (though I can see how it would be easy to make such an assumption).

With regards to it being insulting to assume that other people are less intelligent than I am, I would think that's self-explanatory. Simply put, while there may be "lowbrow" people in the world in no small abundance, I'm going to assume that those I'm communicating with are not among them as a matter of course - if I have to make an assumption with regards to others, I'm going to assume the best, rather than the worst, about them.

ImposterParrotGrass wrote: And with the whole “burden of comprehension” thing, I feel much the same. I think it’s your job as the speaker to know your audience, and try and communicate in a way that fits the tone of discussion up to that point.

As I noted previously, I think that this is true for certain aspects of communication (e.g. eschewing ambiguity). For others, however, the burden rests with the audience; vocabulary, which seems to be your sticking point, is one such area.

ImposterParrotGrass wrote: Also, I should bring up about the blog post you made. I think that makes sense, and was the reasonable thing to do. Kudos.

My thanks.

ImposterParrotGrass wrote: And about your closing statement, I didn’t quite understand it. Either you meant that you don’t care about how we do things here at all, or you think that it’s hypocritical of me to post on your wall if I thought your post was intrusive. I’m assuming the latter, so hear me out. Posting to someones wall, as I said, is the most direct method of communication we have with one another. When Argen posted there, he meant to talk directly to Maki. If he could have sent a private message, I think he would have. To post to a thread on someone elses wall that you did not start is like butting into a conversation two people are having in the corner. They can’t really get total privacy, but that doesn't mean that they would welcome anyone into the conversation.

My closing statement was a rebuttal of the premise with regards to your statement on the nature of message walls. Simply put, while I think that's how you - and certainly some others - think of them, I do not hold them in the same regard.

The reason for this is that, while they may be the most private aspect of the wiki, the wiki itself is still a public resource; as such, at the risk of straying too much into legalism, I don't believe that there's any real expectation of privacy with regards to message walls. I'd like to point out that I also question the degree to which you've universalized that sentiment - it's not about the way that "we" do things here; it's that that's the way that some people choose to look at that particular issue. Other ways of viewing it have no less legitimacy.

Now, I'll admit that the question of trying to hold a private conversation in an intrinsically public sphere is a tricky one. You can clearly direct your message towards another person, but does that necessarily mean that a third party has no particular right to interject into the conversation when it's carried out on a platform that, by its very nature, makes the substance of what you're saying available to all? I don't have any hard-and-fast answers here, but at the very least I do acknowledge that the people who call the assumption of privacy, under those circumstances, into question have merit in the points they raise.

There's also the issue of my having been involved with the topic that was raised. Saying that the quality of things here had gone down, and then directly referencing the thread that I was posting in as evidence of that, could reasonably be taken as indirectly impugning me. Hence why I felt (and continue to feel no) hesitancy in replying in the same venue, and as such I admit to no breach of etiquette in that regard.

All of this underlines the main point here, which is that you and I have very different personal guidelines on the proper method of conducting ourselves here. I hear and understand your points, and respectfully disagree with them, and as such will not endeavor to make any particular modifications to my behavior (something which, you'll note, I have not asked you to do).

There seems to be little more to say on the subject.