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electricitylikesme
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Everyone wants the internet to solve all our problems and usher in a new age of distance based stuff. The current theme of the moment seems to be online communities, social networking etc. and oh hey look I'm posting on an internet forum.
Now, this topic idea actually started when I was wondering about the merits of a forum-based system as opposed to direct conferencing, be it by IRC or face-to-face IRL interaction. The specific context was government - is parliament really particularly useful (it's basically a forum anyway), but I realized that the problems I was thinking of were generally true of any system and amplified greatly when we lose a bunch of normal cues we draw from people person-to-person over the internet.
The merits of a forum based system are of course that people have to make whole posts, and can't be interrupted while typing. This has the advantage of allowing concise arguments to be put forward without interruption, but the disadvantage that a whole post can go to waste because you disagree with the pretext in paragraph 1.
Contrasting that to IRC and other real-time communications, and the problem is of course, noise and interruptions - people feel compelled to butt in.
However, with all these text based methods of communication, there's a secondary issue at work as well: perception. The current problem with the internet is that the perception one has of their opposite is entirely generated by imagination, and subtly influenced by nuances of language use, avatars, names, your mood at the time.
So, my question to D&D is, what do you think would be improvements on the current forum system to produce a more cohesive model for, well, debate and discourse?
My personal opinion (formed at 3am oh god I need sleep) at the moment is that in an ideal, we would try to add additional normal cues as to what and how someone is presenting something. Posts could be accompanied by audio narration, we could use accelerometers to provide animated avatars so people have a virtual body to give their narration. Maybe steal some Valve ideas and let us convey facial expressions in a general sense and get the audio auto-synced to the lip movements.
Essentially, how much mileage can we get from introducing even the simplest of body language or other subtleties of communications to this format, in terms of having better discourse with less misconceptions thanks to the personal nature of how we interpret someone elses posting.
Apologies in advance for the slightly scatterbrained nature of this one.
Now, this topic idea actually started when I was wondering about the merits of a forum-based system as opposed to direct conferencing, be it by IRC or face-to-face IRL interaction. The specific context was government - is parliament really particularly useful (it's basically a forum anyway), but I realized that the problems I was thinking of were generally true of any system and amplified greatly when we lose a bunch of normal cues we draw from people person-to-person over the internet.
The merits of a forum based system are of course that people have to make whole posts, and can't be interrupted while typing. This has the advantage of allowing concise arguments to be put forward without interruption, but the disadvantage that a whole post can go to waste because you disagree with the pretext in paragraph 1.
Contrasting that to IRC and other real-time communications, and the problem is of course, noise and interruptions - people feel compelled to butt in.
However, with all these text based methods of communication, there's a secondary issue at work as well: perception. The current problem with the internet is that the perception one has of their opposite is entirely generated by imagination, and subtly influenced by nuances of language use, avatars, names, your mood at the time.
So, my question to D&D is, what do you think would be improvements on the current forum system to produce a more cohesive model for, well, debate and discourse?
My personal opinion (formed at 3am oh god I need sleep) at the moment is that in an ideal, we would try to add additional normal cues as to what and how someone is presenting something. Posts could be accompanied by audio narration, we could use accelerometers to provide animated avatars so people have a virtual body to give their narration. Maybe steal some Valve ideas and let us convey facial expressions in a general sense and get the audio auto-synced to the lip movements.
Essentially, how much mileage can we get from introducing even the simplest of body language or other subtleties of communications to this format, in terms of having better discourse with less misconceptions thanks to the personal nature of how we interpret someone elses posting.
Apologies in advance for the slightly scatterbrained nature of this one.
electricitylikesme on
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(You mean, like... I could accompany/replace my posts with an image of a sort of doubtful grimace, instead of spending 8 paragraphs to express my feelings? Are you proposing replacing text-based forums with video chat log style forums?)
It's called RolePlaying. :P
Eventually, I do expect they'll have webcam software that picks up where your face and body are and animates your avatar accordingly, but I'm not sure how much physical emoting people actually DO when they're typing and they aren't like trying to flirt or entertain through the camera or something.
For politics, I actually think the process would be better on an online forum. Why should body language and verbal, rhetorical skill influence policy arguments? In a way, text-only discussions cut through a lot of bullshit inherent in person-to-person communication, and help us evaluate the pure logical-ness of an argument. Maybe.
I honestly feel that the closer you get to human contact/communication, the closer you get to having a real connection, and real conversation. That's what I abhor texting so much. Not by it's nature, but as a form of actual conversation. It combines the bastardization of the English language that beepers of the 80's created, along with the bastardization of human communication that the e-mail spawned.
Moving forward, I think features like meta moderation, and reputation would be useful. If you expand them to categories, you could eventually get a pretty good picture of a person's ability to argue about different topics. For instance, you might be able to see at a glance that X is well respected when talking about science, but is a troll in religious threads. It would help people new coming in have a better idea of what to believe and who to ignore.
Rhetorical skill is applicable to all language-dependant communication as well I'm afriad, so we will still have issues with politicians bending the truth around.
I'll be fine, just give me a minute, a man's got a limit, I can't get a life if my heart's not in it.
Think about all the great religions and dictatorships that got started by some dude on a hill speaking eloquently about bullshit. I can't think of a single book that spawned a cult or a dictatorship.
Well, there's Marx. And arguably, Peter Singer's Animal Liberation has succeeded in convincing a large number of people to change their lifestyle and become vegetarians. Though I feel these books' influence has more to do with the strength of their arguments more than their rhetoric.
Invent the new type of forum, and people will use it for what it is good for. They will still use the old type of forum when that type is more suitable.
Does any of that sound like it'd be a good idea in practice? The main concern would be moderation, but I think a system of flagging would work (flagged items such as blog posts, vids etc. will be marked as potentially NSFW, etc)