Timeline for Toward a philosophy of Chat
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
48 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 5, 2017 at 16:31 | history | edited | sbi | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 6 characters in body
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| Mar 27, 2017 at 13:53 | history | edited | sbi | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
fixed some grammar and formatting
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| Dec 13, 2015 at 23:00 | comment | added | sbi | @Tyler: I must have misread "for the rest of his answer" as "until the rest of his answer". This is why I asked "What would be 'the rest of my answer'?". Sorry, mea culpa, I apologize for misreading you. Nevertheless, I stick to my finding that you don't understand the enormity of differences between what you consider "normal", and what others do. | |
| Dec 11, 2015 at 20:01 | comment | added | TylerH | @sbi I literally started my previous comment with pointing out what part I was referring to with my "the rest of your answer" comment. I'm concerned my comments are not getting across successfully due to a language barrier. | |
| Dec 11, 2015 at 13:07 | comment | added | sbi | Well, @Tyler, if all you see in this is philosophical wankery (and this is not about words, I assure you), then in a way you are not only underlining that some people just do not understand the enormous differences, but also demonstrating that some do not even want to. (And did I mention I like logic? Because you still failed to point out what would be "the rest of my answer", which this "preaching" allegedly leads to. Sigh.) | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 23:26 | comment | added | TylerH | @sbi starting with the paragraph "because let's not kid ourselves" your answer switches to complaining about individual words in some cases and how it's social persecution to not allow them on the site and it is foolish for us to even try to do that because global society is complex and varied etc. etc. and you go on like that for 8 paragraphs... the only problem is, Shog's question isn't about whether such words like "sex" should be allowed. It's about how to handle situations where chatrooms start generating flags and attracting moderator attention. As Shog said, the answer is myopic at best | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 22:40 | comment | added | sbi | @Tyler: I am honestly confused by your statement. What would be "the rest of my answer" which my "preaching" leads to? | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 22:19 | comment | added | TylerH | @JoshCaswell There's a difference in determining what's simply acceptable based on the local, online culture the site wants to establish and getting to the root geographical and sociocultural causes of everyone's possible feelings on words that are offensive and which ones are included, etc.. Shog and others have already essentially said we're never going to find an "offensive words list" that people agree upon. It's true; the beginning of sbi's answer is relevant, but then a few paragraphs in he devolves to preaching about real-world sociocultural persecution for the rest of his answer. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 21:48 | comment | added | sbi | @Travis: I said "some users (not a few of them Americans)". Is that what you're referring to? If so, then my take on it is that Americans seems to be a strong majority when it comes to governing the site, and that IME many of them know very little about other cultures. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 21:46 | comment | added | sbi | @Travis: Actually, most of my posting is for the "no" answer to that first question. If you limit the chat rooms to be on topic of their main site, the situation is very clearcut. I dealt with it that in one short paragraph. Except for the two tiny problems that the chat is then mostly useless, and that it cannot be enforced, its simplicity makes this answer actually the more appealing. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 21:42 | comment | added | Travis J | Also, why is this an American problem? I find that a large problem of both zealotry and bashing is bigotry which is clearly draped throughout this answer. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 21:41 | comment | added | Travis J | I respect the outlook that you have @sbi but I think that the devils advocate is played a little too strongly here. I believe that the answer to your proposed question as the top "is chat only for on topic" is no, and so most of your self answer to "yes" is not as constructive as it could be. Perhaps you could expand a section of "if no" that included what striking that balance would look like because I think that is the goal here: how can we both jest and have constructive discourse while at the same time not to allowing jest to turn into bashing nor constructive discourse into zealotry. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 20:50 | comment | added | jscs | It seems clear to me, @TylerH, that the answer to the bold question at the top of this post -- or, more to the point, the implicitly assumed answer that every chat participant has for him- or herself -- is the root cause for the first two of the problems that Shog identified. The rest does a good job supporting that. The point is that "determining acceptable behavior" is not even remotely a straightforward problem, and depends very much on "different world cultures". | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 20:40 | comment | added | sbi | No, you're wrong, @Tyler. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 20:38 | comment | added | TylerH | @sbi If you want to be constructive, focus on the question, rather than ranting about your own perceived ailments. This situation has nothing to do with words that some people find offensive and everything to do with users being rude and non-responsive to moderators when addressed, most recently in the C++ Lounge. The topic is about determining acceptable behavior, not an anthropological discussion on different world cultures. Continuing to act like it's the latter is just wasting peoples' time here. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 20:30 | comment | added | sbi | @Tyler: Ah, so it is not meant to be constructive. No wonder I couldn't understand what you were trying to say. Sorry for misinterpreting your intention there. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 20:06 | comment | added | Kit Z. Fox | @Mysticial My bad. I misinterpreted what you said. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 20:04 | comment | added | Mysticial | @KitZ.Fox Please do not put words into my mouth. I did not say to nuke a room that gets off-topic. (for whatever your definition of "off-topic" is) | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 20:01 | comment | added | TylerH | @sbi No, actually my comment just says this answer is nothing but misdirection. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 19:41 | comment | added | sbi | @Kit: Now you have me confused. What are you agreeing with? (FYI, I have not said "do this" or "do that", I have just thought both decisions to their logical end.) | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 19:39 | comment | added | Kit Z. Fox | @sbi Yes, I was agreeing with you. Digress all you want, but when someone objects, bring it back to the topic. I also agree with Mysticial: if you can't bring it back to the topic, namely because there isn't one, then shut the room down because it doesn't belong here. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 19:37 | comment | added | sbi | @Kit: So I think your argument boils down to "the chat should stay on topic", doesn't it? If so, please see at the top of my answer what would be the logical way to go about it. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 19:04 | comment | added | TylerH | I'm all for people talking about what they want among friends, but this answer is frankly just a big pile of false premises. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 18:47 | comment | added | Kit Z. Fox | @Lalaland I'm pretty sure that there isn't any Stack site that has "anything and everything" as its topic. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 18:45 | comment | added | Lalaland | @KitZ.Fox "The Lounge is a room where we talk about almost anything and everything. If you don't want to talk about stuff like that, then you should find a different chat room." | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 18:41 | comment | added | Kit Z. Fox | @Lalaland No, of course not. Then the users say "This is the room where we talk about PHP. If you don't want to talk about it, then you should find a different chat room." | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 18:40 | comment | added | Lalaland | @KitZ.Fox Wait, so if I go in the PHP room and say "I don't think we should talk about PHP here", they have to stop talking about PHP? | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 18:27 | comment | added | Kit Z. Fox | I disagree about how the fuss got kicked up. The flags may be raised by people who aren't involved in the discussion, but the response to having a flag raised should not be "fuck off, you have no right!" especially when the discussion is not topical. If you're in my chat and you're talking about sex, whatever, fine, but if a user says "I don't think we should talk about sex here" then I expect that the topic of conversation will change, at least for the period of time while that user is present. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 18:27 | comment | added | Shog9 StaffMod | You joke, @Mysticial, but... Chat has traditionally consumed an awful lot of resources relative to its size, and that's... not getting better. I'm really hoping to avoid having to face that decision. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 18:26 | comment | added | sbi | @Shog: I tried to not to say the Lounge caused it by saying it triggered it. There's a subtle but important difference between the two in my native language which I might have failed to translate properly. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 18:25 | comment | added | Mysticial | @Shog9 Sounds like the solution is to just shutdown the entire network. No chat, no site, no problems. :):):) | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 18:24 | comment | added | Shog9 StaffMod | By the way, blaming this discussion on The Lounge is kinda myopic; honestly, if this was a Lounge problem, the solution would be simple: shut down The Lounge. However, this sort of thing has been cropping up more and more frequently across the network... The good folk in The Lounge were just more willing to ask for new guidelines instead of simply asserting that none were needed. Which is a good attitude. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 18:22 | comment | added | sbi | @Shog: No, people are using "professional" as a a synonym for "not including anything I take offense to". | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 18:21 | comment | added | sbi | @Kit: This is not, however, MSO's modus operandi. They keep complaining about what users do in rooms they aren't interested in. And given that the moderators to a large extend com from the meta folks, they back up their dislike with policing power. One of these complaints triggered this posting by Shog. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 18:20 | comment | added | Jerry Coffin | @KitZ.Fox: in that case, your position seems utterly irrelevant to the questions at hand--none of the fuss in question was kicked up by the people to whom the messages were directed. It was entirely a matter of third parties taking offense at discussions in which they weren't participating at all. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 18:20 | comment | added | Shog9 StaffMod | Because people use "professionalism" as a euphemism for "respectful discourse", @sbi. A relic of another time, perhaps. It's a red herring; awful lot of folks on Stack Overflow precisely because they can't stand to talk to their co-workers. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 18:13 | comment | added | Kit Z. Fox | @Jerry No, of course not. But you have every right to ask people to not discuss PHP with you, and expect that boundary to be respected. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 18:11 | comment | added | Jerry Coffin | @KitZ.Fox: Personally, I find the very existence of PHP offensive (no, not just hypothetically either). Does that fact mean I should be allowed to basically shut down the PHP chat room (I assume there must be one) simply by "walking in" and pointing out that I find the entire topic of the room offensive? At least IMO, this is a completely untenable position. People who wish to discuss PHP have a perfect right to do so, regardless of my finding it horrendous and offensive. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 18:00 | comment | added | sbi | @Kit: Nobody attempted to discuss sex with the folks at meta who make a big problem out of it. Yet they were outraged over the fact that others had done so, in consensus, at some other place on the site. And this keeps happening. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 17:59 | comment | added | Kit Z. Fox | @Mysticial If two people don't like the fact that the other exists, then it is easy as pie to drop it. They just don't talk to each other. Or better yet, they can use the ignore function. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 17:58 | comment | added | sbi | @Shog: If "professionalism" isn't an issue, how come then that I have heard so much "arguments" about it on MSO over the last weekend? Heck, people were telling me you can chat "professionally" about sex at the company's water cooler. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 17:58 | comment | added | Kit Z. Fox | @sbi I will make a point not to discuss equidae with you, or pork with the gentleman in the rear, should he raise his objection to me. My apologies if I've offered you offense. I hope you feel comfortable and encouraged to remind me about your specific objections if I forget and mention it again. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 17:55 | comment | added | Mysticial | @KitZ.Fox That can't possibly work when two (or more) people have incompatible, "I don't like that". If two people "don't like" the fact that the other exists, it's pretty hard to just "drop it and move on" - hence the on-going wars involving religion. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 17:47 | history | edited | sbi | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
edited body
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| Dec 10, 2015 at 17:45 | comment | added | Catija | @Shog9 Will isn't the only professional... surely, Rex Parker would be acceptable, too... and then they can argue with each other about the demise of the NYT Crossword. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 17:38 | comment | added | Shog9 StaffMod | We have a site and chatroom dedicated to those annoying "brain-teaser" puzzles; we're long past the point where "professional" is a useful metric (unless we literally expect everyone participating there to be Will Shortz). I've observed that the topicality of a room has little to do with the presence or absence of drama... However, the willingness of the regulars to drop their side discussions when someone shows up with an on-topic discussion does appear to make a significant difference. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 17:37 | comment | added | Kit Z. Fox | And all this leads up to: when someone says "I don't like that" then you drop it and move on. It's basic respect for individual boundaries. | |
| Dec 10, 2015 at 17:28 | history | answered | sbi | CC BY-SA 3.0 |