(LONG) Notes on self-discipline proposal by Dr. Meyer
Igor Chudov @ home
Below are some critical notes on the self-discipline proposal by Dr. Meyer.
Feel free to disagree. You can find his proposal in
http://www.eiffel.com:80/discipline/
In a nutshell, Dr. Meyer proposes some system of rules that posters
should adhere in order to achieve a better quality of usenet news.
First of all, Usenet is a unique formation. In the endless contradiction
between freedom and responsibility for well-being of others, it is
definitely inclined towards individual freedom. Everyone is free to post
anything, and everyone is free to ignore anyone else or themselves
(there are some people who keep themselves in killfiles). There is no
"authority" on Usenet - there are some people with reputations, but they
have no right to enforce their judgement.
Below are quotations from the document and my comments.
* We cannot expect that every posting be of top quality. But we can try to
* stop the diarrhea that so often characterizes exchanges. SELF-DISCIPLINE
* particularly focuses on those endless, and endlessly boring, sequences
* of answers and counter-answers on a single topic, which run for weeks or
* months, defying all "ENOUGH NOW, PLEASE GO AWAY!" pleas by concerned
* bystanders.
Usenet does not exist for My Own Pleasure. Different people enjoy
different things. A discussion that is "endlessly boring" to someone,
may be of a great interest to someone else. There is no reason why
someone's standard on what is boring and what is not, even expressed in
quantitative form, should be imposed on anyone else. Still, everyone is
free to not see anything they deem not to be interesting - they can get
rid of anything in a couple of seconds. The answer is not a generic set
of rules, but KILLFILE. You don't like it - you don't read it. You can
killfile a particular subject that is of no nterest to you. If your
newsreader does not support it, dump your newsreader.
* SELF-DISCIPLINE is not an attempt to regulate Usenet. That would be
* foolish and meaningless; and no one, and certainly not the author, has
* the authority to contemplate such a thing, let alone undertake it.
* SELF-DISCIPLINE is a voluntary program for people who share a taste for
* a certain style of exchanges (the SCIPLI style: Serious, Civilized,
* Informed, Productive, and Literate) with the understanding that this
* style will only affect a subset of Internet exchanges.
This is indeed realistic; however, the proposal for voluntary
participations lacks the balances and inducements that will make it
work. Particularly, participants of this program will not have any
advantage over those who do not participate - putting cryptic lapels in
front of Subject does not make anyone look cool. It does not give any
advantage in discussions. As it will be shown below, it will not make
usenet more useful as well, and will not reduce the amount of noise.
* The presence of such a lapel pin after Re: bears no indication as to the
* nature of the follow-up message. If the responder is also a
* SELF-DISCIPLINE member, he should add his own mark, for example
*
* [++] Re: [++] I have demonstrated that the earth is flat
*
* or
*
* [..]Re: [++] I have demonstrated that the earth is flat
*
* where "..", as explained below, denotes an "information post".
*
* Note that this causes a small nuisance, as some News software does not
* deal very well with responses in which the Re: line has been edited. The
* problem, however, should not be too bad. SELF-DISCIPLINE members should
* remove any lapel pin appearing after the Re: to avoid accumulating codes
* and confusing News readers. This is not a formal rule (since in some
* cases you might want to remind your readers of the original's
* classification, for example if the response's one is different) but a
* strongly recommended convention.
This does not cause a small nuisanse. It causes a BIG nuisanse. In
usenet, the unit of enthropy (variety) is not a post, but a subject. If
the participants change subjects according to some [good or bad] rules,
they will just fool the readers into the idea that the topic of
discussion has somehow changed. Also, since many of us have something
they DO NOT LIKE to read, they use killfiles to get rid of uninteresting
subjects. Changing subjects will escape killfiles unreasonably, causing
negative perception of participants of this self-discipline program.
Moreover, if someone posts a query, and then someone else followups with
an opinion on a subject, then the query and the answer will be very far
apart - not the most convenient thing.
A subject is a subject. If someone cannot express the nature of his post
in a subject, he is not likely to be a participant of the program. And a
participant should be able to use subjects appropriately. Therefore,
there is little use and big harm that those lapels can do to the quality
of discussions.
* RULE:
* No opinion post shall be posted on more than three newsgroups.
This is not exactly correct, although does make sense. A more correct
wording would be "don't post an opinion to hostile newsgroups". As an
example, a post that follows your rule but is posted to comp.lang.c++,
comp.lang.eiffel and comp.lang.ada is bound to create a month-long
flamewar with participation of Jim Fleming and Dr. Martin.
* RULE:
*
* No one shall post an opinion message (original or follow-up) who is
* not a professional of the underlying domain, with at least two years'
* experience on the topic discussed.
*
* Rationale: it is absolutely unacceptable to see people posting opinions
* on technical topics about which they have no qualification to inflict
* such an opinion on thousands of innocent readers. This is like Joe
* Sixpack telling Don Knuth on CNN that bubble sort is better than
* Quicksort.
We are standing on a dangerous ground here. First of all, let us note that
Usenet is not an educational institution. Reading usenet will never
replace regular education. Everyone in the sane mind can tell a
reasonable opinion from bullshit very easily. However, inexperienced or
unknowing posters can have their wrong opinions corrected, if they post
them. The positive effect of this correction far exceeds the negative
effect of noise that they create. Moreover, a public correction of wrong
[and probably amateur] opinion is useful to many readers who somehow
share it but do not post. This rule will first and foremost hurt those
who adhere to self-discipline rules, because they wrong opinions will
never be corrected.
Also, years of experience is never a good indicator of a person's
proficiency in a subject.
* RULE:
*
* A SELF-DISCIPLINE member may post a copy of this message to a
* technical newsgroup if he feels that it will help improve the quality
* of the exchanges on that group, but only if he has serious reason to
* think that no such post has been made on the chosen newsgroup during
* the preceding twelve months. No SELF-DISCIPLINE member may ever post
* comments on this message on a technical newsgroup.
Note: "this message" is 35 kilobytes long. It has no relation whatsoever
to the topic of technical newsgroups [but can be posted to news.*
newsgroups]. Multiple posting of unrelated messages constitutes a spam.
It is against real, not imaginary USENET rules, and should be treated as
such. However, posting of a pointer to that message would be
appropriate. (http://www.eiffel.com:80/discipline/)
* As for comments on this message, they should under no circumstance be
* posted outside of news.discipline and other groups devoted to discussion
* of News. To post comments on a technical newsgroup, and hence add noise,
* would be a mockery of this whole effort -- and an insult to its author,
* who is trying to limit netnoise, not be responsible for increasing it.
It ain't fair. If someone is posting a clearly controversial message,
s/he should not ban the discussions regarding this message in the
same audience it was posted to. Everyone is of course free to follow
his own discussion principles and still discuss thhe message in the
newsgroups it was posted to, despite the unfair request not to do so.
* WILL IT WORK?
No.
Note: feel free to comment on it in personal mail or followups. Note
that this message was posted to comp.edu and comp.lang.eiffel because
the original message was posted there. If you feel like your comments do
not pertain to these newsgroups, remove them from Newsgroups: header
field, leaving only news.admin.misc.
- --
- Igor. (My opinions only) http://www.galstar.com/~ichudov/index.html
For public PGP key, finger me or send email with Subject "send pgp key"
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Peter da Silva
Igor Chudov @ home <ich...@galstar.com> wrote:
> Moreover, if someone posts a query, and then someone else followups with
> an opinion on a subject, then the query and the answer will be very far
> apart - not the most convenient thing.
Only if you use a broken newsreader that doesn't support threading on the
references line.
--
Peter da Silva (NIC: PJD2) `-_-'
Network Management Technology Incorporated 'U`
1601 Industrial Blvd. Sugar Land, TX 77478 USA
+1 713 274 5180 "Har du kramat din varg idag?"
Jim Fleming
says...
I belive that this should be discussed in...
alt.culture.usenet
It would be good if Dr. Betrand Meyer posted his original message
in that forum. Many people there would probably benefit from the
content and read that newsgroup because they are interested in the
ever shifting culture of the Usenet service of the Internet...
...there is also a alt.culture.internet newsgroup that is similar...
BTW...I agree with many of the points Igor has made...I would also like
to point out that many "big names" in technical fields do not have a
clue about the history or culture of Usenet and the Internet...it is
fascinating to see them enter the picture and assume that their egos
will be able to be absorbed by the net...in some cases, people ask
others to break the law on their behalf and the world sits on the
side-line quietly endorsing their actions...
BTW...I am not referring to Dr. Betrand in this case...I applaud
Betrand's efforts to introduce some techniques which will allow Usenet
to continue to thrive...personally, I wish that Betrand was focusing
on the more serious problems of censorship on Usenet...also, in
reference to "Joe Beer-Can"...we have to be very careful...I have noticed
that a common technique on the net is for new people to be attacked
with a questioning of their credentials...this seems to be the "Code
of the West" for academics in the computer field...it has been interesting
for me to see people trying to question my technical background when
they do not know me...and then when they find out some of the things
I have invented...they quietly go "net-dead"...what we need is a system
which better tracks this sort of pushing and shoving...it has been
surprising to me that many of the supposed "first class citizens" of the
net have no problem watching this occur...
...I hope that Betrands' proposal does not end up with people pasting
a little [@@] on their messages (@ is the C++ meta symbol) and then
ignoring the fact that their colleagues are asking people to break the
law...I don't care how big a name some one has in the field...if they
are instrumental in getting people to break the law, then they should
be prosecuted...for some reason, Usenet and the Internet seems to try to
give "big names" a license to do what they please...I see people saying
things like, "don't upset someone important"...
...in my opinion, everyone is important...
...all postings are important...and should not be deleted...
...spell checking and format do not matter...
...the message is what is important...
--
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