Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Lost art form or evolution?


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Posted by Rick Denney on August 14, 2000 at 15:04:41:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Lost art form or evolution? posted by Tim Murphy on August 14, 2000 at 13:41:29:

Rick's Rules of Internet Discourse (learned the hard way on numerous forums over many years):

1. Always wear your thick skin. If someone seems brusque, maybe they just have a curmudgeonly personality. You might enjoy it if it's someone else's ox being gored.

2. Do not depend on emoticons. Don't see a smiley? ASSUME IT'S THERE. Laugh. Electrons are not fatal, no matter how cutting they may feel.

3. Don't respond immediately if you think you are under attack.

4. Don't even respond now. "Revenge is a soup best served cold." Cool off completely.

5. When you do respond, go through your response and intentionally weed out any personal attack when responding to perceived flames. You may feel justified in returning flames with flames, but the more you let the other guy light up his flamethrower, the wronger he looks. And the more you try to return flames a bit hotter than his, the righter he looks.

6. Keep your side of the street clean and don't worry about the other side.

7. Always bring the subject back to the topic at hand, though, of course, that may not be the same topic that started the thread (after all, the first poster does not own the conversation). Don't talk about style; talk about substance. The corollary to this is to *listen* for substance. Ignore perceived heat, and focus on and respond to the content. When divorced from heat, the comments just might be useful.

8. Do not look for a public discourse to be easy or nice. Polite, yes, but not necessarily nice. Truth is more important than being nice. And making excuses for poorly thought-through comments with phrases like "I'm probably wrong, but..." doesn't a.) make the thinking behind the comment any better, and b.) doesn't earn you absolution for not thinking. As C. S. Lewis said, "Experience is hard, but YOU LEARN."

Come to think of it, these rules work pretty well for all discourse, not just the cyber kind.

Now, with these rules in mind, and completely disconnecting from the emotion of the exchange, go back and look at the thread and see what you think.

Rick "Scarred from not following my own rules" Denney


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