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Plus c’est ne pas la même chose

12 o'clock, August 11, 2003

Ken “Caesar” Fisher of ArsTechnica (one of the more venerable and respected blog-like sites from the days before blogs were called blogs) notices an interesting dynamic:

There seems to be a growing disparity over just what the point of an online discussion is. . . . Sometimes I think we forget that the kinds of discussions we have online are totally different from most real-life conversations. There’s the obvious stuff: we're not discussing things in person, and we may not know who we’re talking with. There’s a bigger issue, however, and that’s the illusion that the discussion’s partners are limited to only people participating in the thread by posting in it.

I think the purpose of online discussions is in part about informing that third party, all those people who read, but don’t reply. That’s why I’m not typically bothered by topics that seem to end up in stalemates. A good online discussion should inform people as to multiple sides of an argument.

One of those things that we all ought to know, but often forget anyway.

Comments

Interesting -- it's like a discussion in a room as big as the world, but only 3-4 people are talking. The rest are listening and following along, as I'm doing with your and Derek's discussion about the war, but not throwing in their 2 cents' worth.

And in real life, the discussions would never go on for so long. A good and bad thing, of course...

—— Mike Jasper, 6:34 AM, Tuesday, August 12, 2003

Yeah, it is an interesting dynamic for discussions. I was part of a pilot electronic/classroom class at UT Austin back in the early 90's, and we held some of our classes live and had other discussions on-line. The result, I think, was better all-around discussion. Some people that hogged in-person time, couldn't do so on-line. And some people that were quiet all the time in person were downright verbose on-line. Plus, it gave everybody the chance to "talk all at once". I do like the temporal aspect of on-line discussion, but I think it's a good augmentation to live discussion, not a replacement.

As for stalemates, like Fisher, I'm not bothered too much by them, but for a different reason. Christopher Hitchens, in Letters to a Young Contrarian, says that conversational stalemates are never a waste of time, except for all but the most bullheaded and entrenched. Most thinking people, even at the end of a discussion which on the surface seems to have produced no results, will have had to defend their views against all manner of challenges. Most people will come away at least with new points to think about. They'll be more mindful of the weakness in their own arguments, and will either learn to shore them up or think about abandoning them. The key in on-line discussions is to try to keep them at a relatively high level, rather than descending into name-calling or sniping (or occasional sarcasm...which I realize I'm guilty of myself).

—— Derek James, 8:39 AM, Tuesday, August 12, 2003