"The nasty comment thread polarized the opinion of readers, leading them to misunderstand the original article."
"Instead of silent participation leading gradually to more active participation as one becomes more comfortable with the site, it seems the opposite is happening: mildly active users are now becoming silent users as it is easier to click 'Share on Facebook' than to post a brief comment."
The linked http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/a-blog-around-the-clock/... was also great.
It's funny considering that one premise of Hubski is that discussion can bring value to the article. I wonder if there is data to support this. Somehow I doubt that this is the case. One thing that I often think upon is the context in which we have these conversations. IMO many of these approaches are akin to gardening without considering the quality of the soil. If the soil is not fertile, then weeds will grow best. Quality conversations happen under certain conditions, and most commenting systems are not built with a mind towards the experience of the quality commentor.The nasty comment thread polarized the opinion of readers, leading them to misunderstand the original article.
Instead of silent participation leading gradually to more active participation as one becomes more comfortable with the site, it seems the opposite is happening: mildly active users are now becoming silent users as it is easier to click 'Share on Facebook' than to post a brief comment.
It intuitively makes sense to me that: a) Low-quality comments in blogs are a turn off.
b) I often will privately post something on G+ or facebook. Or even twitter (not private, but hard to aggregate). These options didn't exist back in 2005, which may have been the peak of comments. The article also links to more anecdotes that Techcrunch and somebody else saw a drop-off in comments recently. None of this is saying comments are doomed. In many ways hubski is yet another disaggregated, semi-private place to chat about stories, and that is swell. It's just that comments require care to get right.
This much is true. I think what G+, etc., bring is unity, and that didn't previously exist. That is, the comments have moved elsewhere. I was pretty interested in Disqus at first, but many blogs that were using it (including TechCrunch) switched to FB comments, and I just can't submit my aunts and cousins to comments that I make at TechCrunch. It remains my opinion that a good number of people want to meaningfully engage with others around topics of interest, and the it can be done better than what anyone (including us) are currently doing. IMO that is our most important challenge. How do we make the conversation experience even better?b) I often will privately post something on G+ or facebook. Or even twitter (not private, but hard to aggregate). These options didn't exist back in 2005, which may be the peak of comments.
Most of the discussion in here is over validity of commenting to scientific journalism, but I have something to say about it in regards to creative work. Particularly, what the Viheart video made me think of. When she talked about being confident in your work and sharing it because you made something, reminded me of something my childhood mentor told me around the time I made the leap to adulthood. It was about love. She told us (my class, with me drawing somewhere off in the second row...) about true love. She said that when you're young you often find someone who makes you comfortable, or maybe excites you, and you want to shout to the high heavens "You complete me!" But that's mostly... well, hormones. To truly know true love, you must first complete yourself. Once you know who you are, really know who you are, and gain an appreciation and love for yourself and all the confidence and humility that comes with it, then you're ready to love someone else. She said it wasn't fair to put the pressure on someone else to 'complete' you. You just met! You just started dating! You've known one another for like three months! That's three month compared to the 16 years we had all known ourselves. It wasn't fair, and it wasn't true. I took that to heart, and stopped looking for outward approval, and began looking for it within myself. The happy result there is regardless to my point. My point, is to apply this to both posting and commenting. When a creator feels complete, comments don't make or break them. Obviously Viheart is there. When you don't feel valid, probably because no one told you that you could validate yourself (or maybe you did and something horrible happened that you now must confront), you'll look for ways to feel valid, such as creating and being loved, tearing apart something someone else has created, or finding someone (or something) to 'complete' you. But once you do the work to find out who you are, those compulsions dissipate. Am I saying to stop creating or posting until you've validated yourself? No. Just do it in the context that you know you need to be a little easier on yourself and a little more self-loving. Am I saying you need to take yourself out for a romantic, candle-lit dinner, just you and your beloved self? It seriously couldn't hurt. And as a preemptive strike to those who have someone who completes you while knowing you yourself are complete, I say: When you say they complete you, what you really mean is you are complete, and they are complete and together the two of you kick so much ass that you never want to be without them again because seriously, you and this person rock all kinds of awesome. It's okay to say it. Cuz you (and I) know what you mean.
I--aww * Blush * The confidence is actually a misconception that has tagged along with me my entire life. So, thanks for saying so, lil. It makes me feel really good.
There's a fundamental misunderstanding here of what blogs are. Back in the good old days, you published. You sent your writing out into the world and you didn't interact with the people who read it unless they came to readings, book signings, or public speaking events. There was no control over the discourse. If someone wanted to say something about your writing, they either had to write a letter to the editor or they had to bring it up at a party. In which case the people they were bringing it up to were people they knew face-to-face. With social media boards, the statement starts as a conversation. You are inviting people to participate in what you have to say - what you're saying is part of that party conversation, not part of the publishing. People regard it entirely differently than if they read it in the paper. With blogs, you have a choice - are you going to engage your audience as if you're bringing it up at a cocktail party or are you going to divorce yourself from it as if you're the publisher? Because the audience will roll with it either way. You're either in the room or you're not. You're either part of the conversation or you're not. It's either the start of a live document or it's the end of a Sermon from the Mount. If you fail to choose one you're FUCKED. This is something I think most people don't understand: you can either make it clear that anything said to you or about you is going to be answered by you or you can make it clear that anything said to you or about you is not going to be addressed. Whenever you choose the middle ground you force your audience to re-evaluate the social arrangement between you. This is why news aggregators, Facebook, G+ and all the rest have risen to prominence - they offer a useful and convenient "middle ground" where a social construct that gives both parties what they want can exist. Spectators can drag your writing back to where it can be discussed without having to address you... and you can "mill about the crowd" and engage or not as you see fit. Most clever people with survivability choose "not" because, after all, they have the podium. If they wish to highlight certain comments or answer criticisms, they have the stable platform - it's their audience that floats on a sea of commentary. It's also why I don't blog - there's nothing I have to say that shouldn't be said in a crowd, for the most part. I have no sermons from the mount. I do not wish to issue proclamations for others to discuss elsewhere - if I have something to say, I want to hear your response (unless I've determined you aren't listening to ahead of time - yay "mute"). And, for every reason outlined in the article, blogs are exactly the wrong place to do that.
This is pretty important stuff when it comes to scientific journals. You often see people talk about how these journals ought to be open-access and free to the public. That's good and I agree... but scientific papers aren't written for the general public, and people need to understand that. Publications are made with particular expectations about their audience: their training, experience, knowledge, and that they'll approach the topic with the appropriate amount of skepticism. Throwing just plain-anybody into the mix would not be constructive. Are the threads in r/science very constructive at all? More often than not, no.The nasty comment thread polarized the opinion of readers, leading them to misunderstand the original article.
That's a novel direction to take it, but I think you can make arguments both ways. On the one hand academics need some slack to go off and come up with their own arcane lingo and practice at pace, because otherwise they'd never get anywhere. But on the other hand, detaching from the rest of the world feels unhealthy. Especially since much academic research is publicly funded, surely it behooves them to eventually show the public what they've done and how it improves the world? If you don't eventually make advances accessible to lay people there's no way to be sure you're in fact doing something of value. You use the word constructive; can you elaborate on what you mean by it? I think people talking on forums is constructive even if they get things wrong -- as long as how confident people are that they're right isn't too far from reality. That's really where this study shows up a flaw; people exposed to nasty comments seem to turn dogmatic, which is far worse than being wrong. I'm not very certain of any of these sentiments. I'm not sure how much slack we should give areas of academia. I'm not sure how much delta to tolerate between people's confidence and reality.
It's like you say, basically. While "constructive" may be vague, it's certainly not constructive for people to be picking sides without actual understanding of a topic. The article kind of dances around with this idea: what if there were public comment threads on the actual journals? What if the actual literature was actually married to these ugly discussions? Papers would be permanently colored by these perceptions, and it would change how they are treated. I don't disagree, but the counterpoint is that actual research is a lot more nuanced than that. Few problems are as simple as: X will solve Y, from which everyone will benefit. Our scientific understanding in so many areas is very deep and specialized and even understanding these things on a basic level may necessitate years of training. Indeed many people are working on problems which are several steps removed from anything that's applicable, but nonetheless necessary. Making sure that research is of value is definitely important, but when you're trying to convince the public of value it becomes very easy to mislead or oversell your work. How frequently is cancer cured in scientific journalism? While the public should know about scientific advances, I don't have as much certainty that they can appropriately appreciate and understand their significance, let alone make judgements about it. The article does a very nice job of highlighting how groupthink actively disrupts this.You use the word constructive; can you elaborate on what you mean by it?
If you don't eventually make advances accessible to lay people there's no way to be sure you're in fact doing something of value.
On the contrary, I find it extremely constructive to pick sides. The world is complex, and if we wait for 'all the facts' to roll in, we'll basically never form an opinion on anything. Instead, I think we should constantly form opinions based on what we know and understand, but try to also form opinions about how sure we ought to be of ourselves. Sport is more fun to watch if you pick a side to root for. Similarly, picking a side is a neat way to make yourself care temporarily about a subject. I think my phrasing of 'making advances accessible' is flexible enough to admit abstract research. Indeed, I claim it will happily support art and literary criticism. Making things accessible doesn't imply convincing others that it's concretely useful; that is too subjective a metric. Instead, it means being able to explain what you did, and to set it in context so that the average educated person can put on a belief system as a frame of reference. "If I care about art, what X has worked on is..," etc. The true goal of expertise is to transcend complexities to arrive at simplicity -- and to describe the voyage as a story. Often the expert requires data to back up his hypothesis, and understanding the intricacies of a proof, or the body of evidence -- that may be something only an expert can do. But once the work has been vetted the conclusions should be understandable by outsiders. Few people have read Darwin's Origin of Species. I am told much of it is evidence of various species adaptations. But it is a great work because the conclusions have spread far beyond its direct readership. Robert Sapolsky is one of my favorite examples of this, for his ability to explain arcane theories of biology without requiring any biological background whatsoever. Similarly, I picked up Morse Peckham at some point and got a sense that I learned something...it's certainly not constructive for people to be picking sides without actual understanding of a topic.
..many people are working on problems which are several steps removed from anything that's applicable..
..even understanding things on a basic level may necessitate years of training.