Sometimes I think the whole question of civility and incivility (online or offline) boils down to the question of am I welcome in this space?
#scio10 preparation: Profiles in civility (or, do we agree on whether particular interactions are respectful?)
Coming up with a good definition is hard. And it’s not obvious that people are even really talking about the same thing when they identify an action or a situation as displaying civility or incivility.
So I’m wondering what kind of insight we can get by looking at some particular situations and deciding which side of the line it feels like they belong on.
Before I put the situations on the table, let me be transparent about how I’m making my calls: I’m going to be asking myself whether it feels like the people involved are showing each other respect, and I’m going to make a special effort to imagine myself on the receiving end of the action or behavior in question. (I’m also going to keep my calls to myself until other people have had a chance to weigh in. And I’m purposely choosing situations where it’s not totally clear to me what I think about the level of respect that’s coming across — so my judgments here are nothing like an official solution set!)
#scio10 preparation: What people might have in mind when they say they want online civility.
In preparation for our session at ScienceOnline2010, Dr. Isis asks:
I talked to my two lovely, delightful, and beloved comoderators last night, I couldn’t help but think that we were approaching this from different experiences and, potentially, with different goals. That made it hard for me to figure out what having me there might add to our discussion, other than to cross the line in some way. I realized that some of my discomfort might come from the fact that I’m not sure that we are all defining “civil” in the same way. …
[T]o get the discussion going here and help me in crafting my portion of the session, let me ask you to provide an answer,
What is the definition of “civility”?
And believe me when I say, I will disemvowel the first one of you to quote me the dictionary definition. How’s that for civil?
I’m not going to even try to give necessary and sufficient conditions for X to be civil. I’m still working out what I think. But I’m going to see if I can move this along just a little.
When, partway through a conversation, one participant says to another, “I don’t think you’re being very civil,” what’s happening?
#scio10 preparation: Things I like about having conversations online.
In the comments on my last post, a number of people made the suggestion that something about the nature of online interactions may encourage people to say things they would never say to someone’s face, or to be more impulsive in their responses, or surf on waves of free-floating anger, or what have you.
While this may sometimes be the case — for some people, in some circumstances — my initial reaction is that there are a lot of features of online conversations (on blogs or the comment threads following them, in online fora, etc.) that I find can make for better conversations than many that happen face to face.
#scio10 preparation: Is there a special problem of online civility?
Two weeks from today, at ScienceOnline ’10, Dr. Isis, Sheril Kirshenbaum, and I will be leading a session called “Online Civility and Its (Muppethugging) Discontents”. In preparation for this, the three of us had a Skype conference last night, during which it became clear to us that there are many, many interesting issues that we could take on in this session (and that we come to the subject of online civility from three quite different perspectives).
To try to get a feel for what issues other people (besides the three of us) might want to discuss in this session (or on blogs, of whatever), I’d like to bounce some questions off of the best commenters in the blogosphere (that’s you!). And where I want to start is thinking about what assumptions might be implicit is our session title:
– Is there some special problem of online civility (vs. offline civility)?
Friday Sprog Blogging: taking physics for a spin.
Dr. Free-Ride: So tell me about that device of yours? How did you make it and what does it do?
Elder offspring: There is a cut piece of a drinking straw. You also need two pieces of tin foil and a long string.
Dr. Free-Ride: That’s really aluminum foil, isn’t it?
Elder offspring: They call it tin foil.
New Year’s Eve gabfest.
If I were not involved in preparing food for Casa Free-Ride’s New Year’s Eve celebration (after which, I will be joining my family members to celebrate and/or test our endurance in the face of fatigue — I’ll let you know afterward which of those it ends up being), I would totally be writing you a nice ethics-y and/or science-y post.
Since I’m not, and since you appear to have a moment to be reading this, let’s make it a party. Use the comments to share:
An appeal to help light the darkness.
In the last few days, I’ve gotten a bunch of emails reminding me that the window for tax-deductible charitable giving for the year is closing. So, as 2009 winds down, I want to make an appeal to those readers lucky enough to have a bit of money for discretionary spending. Last year I wrote:
[T]o the extent that we can, we can shake our tiny checkbooks and try to bring a bit more light to the darkness.
Especially since doing it before the last minute of 2008 (at least in the U.S.) may give you a tax-deduction on your 2008 taxes.
(Minor sidebar here: As the tax code stands in the U.S., rich people who make charitable donations effectively get more of a tax-deduction than do lower income people. I don’t know if this is supposed to encourage those with piles of money to be more charitable than they would otherwise; if it is, I don’t know if it works. In any case, given the current tax rules, this means that the people on the financial edge who find a few bucks to give to a charitable cause are the real heros. Also, that it may be worth reexamining the tax code.)
In the event that you have even a little money to spare and you want to see 2008 out doing something to help others, here are a few organizations near to my heart.
The same three organizations I recommended in 2008 are still on my list, but I’m adding some more this year.
Movie review: Avatar.
While the sprogs were hanging out at the aquarium with the Grandparents Who Lurk But Seldom Comment, my better half and I went to see a 3-D IMAX screening of Avatar. My big concerns going in were that all the 3-D IMAX goodness would make me motion-sick, and that if that didn’t get me, then the story by James Cameron might make me lose my lunch.
Back to posting soon.
… once my fingertips holler “Uncle!” and tell me to take a break from my new ukulele.
To help you pass the time, some uke players who are way better than the n00b that I am on day 2 of my musical odyssey: