Glen wrote:
> Nick and Doug are both being flippant because a mailing
> list is not a conducive forum to rigorous conversation. They seemingly
> enjoy their lack of empathy toward the other, at least here ... probably not
> face-to-face. So, the likelihood either will assume the other has completely
> thought through the context in which they made their assertions is low.
>
> I.e. neither Doug nor Nick will assume the context is (adequately) included.
> (Indeed none of us are likely to assume that. That's one of the problems with
> e-mail and other online fora.)
My experience with "mailing list"s, "e-mail and other online fora"
has not been as uniformly bad as yours appears to have been.
Specifically, I have participated (and continue to participate) in
several of each that *have been* (and are) "conducive...to rigorous
conversation". In the face of those good experiences, I am always
puzzled by people (you are not necessarily one; see below) who
generalize from their (presumably) bad experiences to the conclusion
that "e-mail and other online fora" are irremediably flawed, and who
further (I definitely don't think you're one of these) use that
conclusion as a basis for actively undercutting those such fora that
they are involved with. (Nick and I have been through just that
experience on one forum, at that time local to us, which was
eventually destroyed by one very malignant person in a position of
power. [Nick might disagree with my version of events.])
I said that you're not *necessarily* concluding that the FRIAM forum
(in particular) is *irremediably* flawed (you do, after all, continue
to participate non-trivially). But you might think it is, so I ask
you, do you? If not, how might it be remediated (practically or
impractically)?
One reason, by the way, that I think "mailing lists", "e-mail", and
newsgroups (e.g., Usenet--but not Google Groups, god forbid) actually
are *more* "conducive...to rigorous conversation" than many "face-to-
face" fora is their asynchronicity. ("Chat", by contrast, has all
the disadvantages of "face-to-face"ness without any of its
advantages, for me. There's nothing about the "online"ness that
makes them work--for me; an exchange of paper letters, if it could be
done at the speed that used to be normal in London, with two
deliveries a day, would be just as good. And phone calls are teh
sux0r.)
Lee Rudolph
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