D3U@PSUVM.BITNET (03/08/85)
With all the discussion on crowding and signal to noise ratio (SNR), I
guess I'll add a little to this from the view of someone relatively new to the
net.
1. There are a number of discussion groups for issues (e.g. political,
religious as opposed to purely technical matters). Politics and religion in-
volve personal beliefs, which are often near and dear. These beliefs generally
are opinions that are easily disputed, no matter how convinced participants
may be of their own positions. Sometimes I am amazed that there is not a great
tendency for all out war in net.abortion, for example, as abortion is an
ethical issue with dedicated converts on opposing sides. I am not a follower
of net.abortion, but I did enjoy the mixture of emotion and logic (including
that the participants are not for the most part seasoned philosophers and that
participants challenge each other's points). Even though I am sure that sea-
soned philosophers are not the norm (it isn't the norm anywhere except in phil
departments, serious art circles, ethics committees, etc.), a lot of good
points are made and many articles are interesting and thought provoking.
Technical problems are not as likely to get such heated debate as a
disagreement over belief is, and I've noticed little flame on e.g. net.math,
.ai, .physics, .med. There is a dispute over what constitutes medical proof,
but that comes back to the problem of knowledge and belief.
Controversy over Stargate, moderated news, net overcrowding, and SNR
refer to personal perception, belief, and expectation and interest (biases and
wants). Some net participants appear to like a lot more order than others.
Some expect everyone to know the difference between editorialized and purely
factual writing (which isn't always obvious. This sentence with or without the
parentheses would be seen as editorial by some and as factual or as truistic
by others). Some are self described anarchists and others represent much more
conservative views. Of course even with all that differentiation, one would
expect civility. I will not give a judgement of net civility other than to say
that I am satisfied with it. I certaintly do not expect there to be no bigots,
egotists, or whatever, and very opiniated people tend to express opinions,
like it or not.
((I have to admit I enjoy informative, well thought out articles, and
also that I enjoy some amount of anarchy, too. Sometimes the way in which the
heat in some discussions presents itself is entertaining, and sometimes even
justified. Frank Adrian received a lot of flame for a recent infamous posting
that was sent to many news groups, a rather extreme action, but apparently he
was sure he was doing everyone a favor by warning everyone that net freedom is
in danger. If it weren't for his article I might not be posting this, as I
never followed net.news or .stargate before. His posting prompted posting of
explanations of Stargate and problems associated with it. Those articles told
me what Stargate is; before that I looked at the articles a couple times and
didn't know what sense to make of them as a group. Adrian's article evoked
heated responses and exasperation, and it may have been an over-reaction (I am
not taking sides by saying this), yet it also created a lot of curiosity. ))
2. A study was made by psychologists on computer vs. personal commun-
ication. It was found that people had a greater tendency to roughness in tal-
king over the computer than in personal confrontation. Many subjects acted on
the computer in ways they did not inperson or when talking with someone they
met in person. There was a much greater tendency for agressive language and
epithets. I don't remember where I saw this anymore, maybe in Psychology or
the Science Times in the New York Times. I think it was published some time
since August.
3. Someone commented that he watched the net grow from one small
discussion group into larger and larger bodies becoming increasingly
disorganized. There is probably some mathematica sociobiological model that
would predict this. It seems that with more and more users and with those
users becoming more representative of the random population at large, there
has to be more (forgive my using an over worked cliche) social entropy. This
is not a justification necessarily, just a call for tolerance, or "mellow-
ness".
--------------------------------Ray