Being public is not a decision to be taken lightly…. tweeting, keeping a blog – all these things expose us to a wider public, a more critical public and – more importantly – a more documented public than we’re likely to find at a conference, in a journal article or in a chapter in a book. There’s more immediate feedback, and a feedback which will probably outlast us in purely mortal terms. There’s a come back…. a payload – and it doesn’t go away simply because you want it to.
I used to use newsgroups back in the old days – when Google acquired the rights to all those newsgroups, suddenly everything I’d written online since 1996 was searchable… In those circumstances you have to be ready to accept your public fate, and back up (or renounce) everything you’ve ever said online…
So, how to go about this? Well, I’d say that endlessly tweeting about how good we are, how prolific, how successful our last ‘oeuvre’ was is not the way to do it. Tweet once about your latest blog post – if it’s actually interesting enough people will visit it and pass the message on… You don’t want to be seen as a self-publicist after all, right? It dilutes the message… Similarly, constantly thanking people for retweeting your latest tweet about your latest blog posting smacks of desperation. How needy are you? If you have something to say, people will find it.
And, while we’re on the subject, bigging yourself up is not really the done thing. What Twitter and other tools have done is levelled the playing field. Telling everyone how successful your last album was is a little desperate, a little too much ‘me’. If it was that good, then the punters will decide for you, and pass the message on. It’s probably what I like most about things like Twitter – anyone can be a star, it levels the playing field.
If you’ve only been blogging for a few months, show some deference and respect to those who’ve been blogging for years – you may be famous in your own field, and a multi-award-winning published musician, but you’re playing on a different court now. Be courteous, respectful. This may not be your stage… Show some deference to the people who acknowledged these media when you were writing them off as a fad. And don’t use the media to write the media off…
Understand the culture…
It’s like walking into a party and saying something along the lines of “I’m Joanna Smith, variously published, sold shedloads of my book, admire me”. It might work, sure – but how many noses will you put out of joint by doing that, and how important are they in the culture of the new country you’ve just moved to”? If you’re great, they’ll know, and they’ll tell you so.
And, of course, be consistent. In the old days you could get away with one message in Moscow, and another in Manchester – because those worlds were unlikely to collide. These days we’re all connected and we know what you’ve been saying in Moscow and Manchester. If you have an opinion, you’ll need to stick to it, because sooner or later your wider online world will catch up with you and point out the contradictions in your various messages… And that will devalue your beliefs and the work you do, and the message people take from it…
It sometimes seems to me like some people simply don’t understand the culture they’re moving in to… and they end up annoying the people who’ve lived there all their lives…
Be a responsible global citizen – listen to the people in your PLN. It’s not all about you. it’s not all about selling ‘brand you’ – it’s as much about what you can bring to them, as it is about what they can do for you… In fact, if you think it’s all about you, then you’re in the wrong place…
Honestly, no, I don’t think it’s an overreaction.
[Reply]
Andy,
If I could read, I’d be a lot more cleverer. I’ve deleted my comment now, because it obviously makes no sense once one has read properly. My apologies…
So, ‘colonialism’…. I’m with you on this one. I have an opinion (albeit a strong one) that a lot of ‘social networking’ is being hijacked by advertising, ‘look at me’, irritating spam games, etc., and that makes me an oppressive jackboot of a colonial regime? Hey ho – I was a white supremacist around breakfast time, so I’m improving. By dinner time I’ll probably be Gandhi..
Karenne’s probably right – I think there is less self-interested use of social media ‘down the ranks’ – but in saying that she’s simply agreeing with my original post to an extent. If everyone (at whatever ‘level’ of their career path they’re on) shared the same and had more balanced output in terms of tweeting, sharing, retweeting and all the rest, we probably wouldn’t be here having this conversation right now.
I’m off to invade the Basque country and make them drink tea.
Gavin
[ someone's epistles ]
[Reply]
Actually, I am of the “twitter school” that there are no correct-use tips or guidelines .. that twitter is whatever it needs to be for each and every user. We all have the power to follow as we choose and to block those that we don’t want to tweet to. I don’t want to homogenize my networks, on the contrary .. I seek and promote divergence first and convergence much later.
I also enjoy fresh voices from the outer fringe from from the inner-circle echo chambers of my networks (whether edtech, EFL, virtual worlds, etc). These are the voices that actually stimulate change and new perspectives and take time to work into the mainstream culture (ie seasoned bloggers that have built a solid rep). I don’t necessarily want them to behave ore even think as the “established” set do. I cherish the difference on all levels. I take what I want and leave what I don’t want. There’s always a diamond to find in the rough … and great abundance in the most unlikely of places.
Frank, Divergent Learner
[Reply]
Frank,
Thanks for dropping by and for your comment – my network is also quite wide, featuring tech people, teachers, trainers, artists, writers, musicians, etc. In fact – as you rightly suggest, it’s the ‘boundary members’ of groups and interests who take things from one small world to another one and keep the information flowing, which is a complex and stimulating thing.
Gavin
[ Miss milner ]
[Reply]
Ok, I think I’m the guilty party of thanking the RTs. But I can’t decide, reading this, whether I should continue to do so or not. I only started doing it because people thanked me when I retweeted so I thought it was the “done” thing. Guess that’s what trying to fit in to the new culture is about. I shall have to rethink this now.
I did get a bit of the cybercop sense from this post though, which is why it is prompting so much response.
As for corporations “moving in” on twitter, I think that has been happening across all disciplines, many probably a lot more so than in ELT.
Thanks for the post though Gavin, good to see you’re busy here as well!
[Reply]
Lindsay,
Always good to have you along in any discussion – welcome!
No, it’s not so much the thanking of the retweeting (perhaps I’m just a bah humbug person – maybe it’s great to have Twitter half filled with commercial rubbish and half with people being lovely to each other – maybe it balances out) but the incessant persona-tweeting of ‘buy me, buy my blog, buy my record / tv show / book’ that I thought was more annoying. But again, perhaps I’m just Mr Bah Humbug, perhaps Twitter is simply the electronic version of a sixties love-in…
Like I say – I choose to follow companies, I just wish they’d tell me what they were doing sometimes, rather than what they are selling (always). Surely there has to be some cultural understanding in these corporations?
Have a good weekend (you all)…
Gavin
[ Baltimore welland ]
[Reply]
Oh.My. God. The recaptcha things MUST be personalised. I am Slalomed Victoryless.
Personally, I hate RTs, thanks, an all other tweets that don’t mention Me or which aren’t directed (lovingly) at Me.
Where I sit, it really is all about Me.
[Reply]
Diarmuid,
Good to have you back in the spirit we all know and love!
Gavin
[ sixweekold booker ]
[Reply]
Not “all”. I managed A Solitary Viewer of My fantastic blog that I made Scott Thornbury promote by stalking him. Have you seen My blog? It’s bloody great, it is. You can gain credibility by promoting it incessantly. No need to tell you the address. Just type in Diarmuid’s Blog. Google’ll know.
Star Material. That’s Me, that is; not recaptcha.Recaptcha is defined 020
[Reply]
Diarmuid,
There must be more than a solitary viewer – I visit it regularly and I can’t be the only one. we’re talking about this one, right:
http://taoteaching.wordpress.com/
Stalking will get you a long way, I discover… as will repeating one’s triumphs day after day on Twitter. You’re obviously not doing it right…
Gavin
[ geiger the ]
[Reply]
Gavin,
Like Lindsay I started thanking people privately but so many people thank me publicly I thought it was almost a censorious move to thank someone in a DM, especially if it was the same someone who had just thanked me publicly! What a palaver!
But your point is not lost on newbies like me – that we should respect the culture we entered.. only trouble is that when you are a newbie, you know, it’s not always easy to know who is “the establishement” …and anyways, the e-sta-blish-ment do not converse with the likes of me on twitter …even if I address them directly…they have a nice way of ignoring you…so….at some point you really have to stop addressing them – otherwise you feel like a right idiot. Not all of them, I hasten to add… but some do only talk to the higher echelon only or what they consider to be their “inner circle”.
It’s hard to interact with people when you try to strike up some conversation with them and they answer everyone else and their mother but not you… I guess some people really either don’t have time or not enough time to answer you if they don’t think you are answerworthy – and that’s OK too.
I can live with that all right, no big issue, but I do know of people who get very upset.
Sorry about this digression, but since we are talking about communicating on twitter, I thought I’d mention this one small point too and I hope you don’t mind.
[Reply]
When I read Gavin’s post last night I didn’t think much of it. Reading the comments I wasn’t so interested either, but throughout the day it kept popping into my head and started to irk me, so here I am, restless with the burning urge to rant
I have to say I agree with everything Nik said.
To some of you here I have to say, “Who do you think you are?” We are talking about social media sites and mostly about Twitter. These sites are defined by the users and give users control of the information. This means, as Jason pointed out, you define what you read.
Twitter started as an inane social microblog site I had no interest in until I was introduced to it’s value as a communication sharing tool for educators. Now we use it for that purpose as user generated content and user chosen friends allow us to do.
Who is anyone to tell another person how they can or can’t use the site? Because you got here first or because you are a “VIP” in the twittersphere? I don’t think so. If you don’t like someone’s tweets, don’t follow them. It’s that simple.
I think twitter is useful for sharing educational content. If you are sharing content I find valuable, I will continue to follow you. If you mainly tweet about your meals and have private chats in public with other twitterers I will probably unfollow you. But this choice is up to me.
Others think Twitter is more about relationships, others have different ideas. If your ideas align with mine and I like what you’re tweeting, I’ll continue to follow you. If I don’t like what you tweet I don’t need to get upset or make you aware of it. I simply click a button and problem solved. I think the personal chats and RT thanking are mostly clutter, but these same people also tweet stuff I like on a regular basis, so I keep them on. I can’t get mad at them because they use Twitter for purposes other than what I have in mind. My ideas also change. Sometimes it’s nice to see someone is having a good morning or having the same fail whale problems. Other times I thinks it’s annoying. Again though, I control this feed. It’s my choice what I see.
If someone only promotes themselves, what is it to you? I don’t like this either, but, out of the 80 some people I follow, I know no one who does this. Either some people are exaggerating here or you should stop following these people and stop complaining.
As for thanking RTs. Is this really necessary? Does this actually require effort? I didn’t realize the second n a half it takes me to type RT then copy/paste was somehow a burden on me and something you should thank me for. A few times I have asked people to get involved with a discussion and so by RTing people are really helping me out. But I asked them to do so and so they deserve thanks. Thanking for RTs might be considered polite these days but you shouldn’t expect it.
Like Marissa, many of us are new to this. I didn’t know what an RT was for for the first month or two I was on Twitter. I didn’t realize you could see who RTed you for another month. You shouldn’t expect others to be aware of etiquette that’s in your head.
It goes back to content for me. If what you tweet is good, it will be retweeted. If not, it won’t. This also depends on if I actually see it and if I think my PLN hasn’t seen it. I probably won’t retweet Gavin because I know everyone and their mom is already following him. I want to share good info with my PLN and that’s why I tweet most of my stuff. I don’t do it and expect someone to thank me for all the “effort” I put into RTing it. I also don’t expect others to use Twitter for the same reasons I do. The same goes for blogs. If you don’t like the content, don’t read it. It’s a non-issue as far as I’m concerned.
[Reply]
Marisa,
Lovely comments thanks – We should talk about it next time we meet in Second Life! I think like any culture one takes time to get into it. Looking back on my early days on Twitter I see I consumed much more than I produced. The same in Second Life – I spent weeks wandering around watching and listening before taking the plunge. I don’t know – I just think that’s human nature, but again, perhaps it’s just me.
During the really wild Second Life years many companies invaded it without taking the time to investigate the culture. They moved in, set up their shops, shouted about them and were then surprised to see that nobody was really interested.
I remember reading an article about the Nissan island in Sl where you could get cars out of a vending machine, and another space in Second Life where a human being lovingly crafted cars individually for people. The title of the aritcle was ‘would you buy a used car from this machine?’
I think as language educators (mostly) we’re acutely aware of the importance of culture, and or respecting cultures and I wonder why social media are different.
No more, no less…
See you in Sl soon,
Gavin
[ prays Charles ]
[Reply]
Feeling my-my-myself trapped between being told off culturally and my personal, cultural, need to thank yet feeling my fingers trapped behind this awfully real possibility that oh, I’m annoying people not of my culture…
conflicting with this.. the sinking feeling that now I’ll need to say my thank-you’s privately… how much time is that going to take – omg, so not at all – great, because that’s such a nice polite action worthy of communtiy…
Christ, I actually go out and teach people, how do I balance time and gratitude…and blogging and writing and teaching and now I have to do private DMing… maybe instead I should just quit twitter if my actions are going to be so offending people… who are unable to simply move me into a different column like I do them probably.
And then I reread all of a sudden I start to think… realize… hmm… oh, okey… is there perhaps, maybe just a thin thread of jealousy going on behind all his “not liking thank-yous” and they “clutter up” the stream… with all the gazillions of daily tweets, really… clogged streams…hmmmmm… this is all so beyond oddness.
Unfollow me -whomever you are- if you don’t like my tweets or my ReTweets of great links from other people who write worthy stuff… or especially my thank yous for the ReTweets.
I promise I won’t mind, honest… I probably won’t even notice.
[Reply]
Karen,
Welcome back…. Let’s not go back too far with the cultural thing, otherwise you’ll have to enagage with Andy again on the whole ‘colonial’ issue and he’ll want an answer and it will all get messy.
I’m going to start again, I think:
1) I like the details of people’s lives, I like to know about travels, where people are going this evening, what they’re eating and what they’re doing, who they’re listening to…
2) I like to hear about people who’ve done excellent work, who’ve won awards, or who are shortlisted for awards, who’ve just written an amazing song or a poem, or taught a fantastic class.
3) I like when that information is retweeted *by other people*, it’s a celebration of our lives and our work, our triumphs and disasters.
4) I like to hear about interesting websites, articles and research papers
I love all that – that’s part of what makes Twitter great for me. But there’s so much in there that I find time-consuming, obfuscating of the useful and entertaining – the ‘look at me’ stuff is wearying, the sixth tweet about one’s latest blog posting is wearying… at least to me.
Reading back over the comments, we seem like an evenly divided camp between the bah humbugs and the joie de vivres. That’s fine…
I still stand by my culture comment though. I was not saying it was my culture, never said that. I was not saying these were rules, never said that either. I was talking about what happens when we (all of us, no VIPs, all of us new and excited Twitter users) enter a new culture and work out how it works, as it were…
And I stand by the comparisons, too. How many people (or cultures) do you know of who stand up in f2f situations and say “No, but listen to my new song!” five or six times a day. It doesn’t happen, at least not anywhere I’ve been. How many people f2f say “Thanks for just repeating what I said!” – that doesn’t happen. Why does it happen online? I’m interested.
I once described SL as being akin to the Wild West. Is this kind of behaviour the online equivalent of the land rush? And does any of it really matter, as Nick suggests at the end his comment?
I suspect it’s a non issue for many people. I find – perhaps as a result of my advancing years – it increasingly difficult to filter out the chatter and get to the gems. It seems to me that in the old days when I were a lad, Twitter was more about the social and the adventure of Twitter than the people using it, and I guess I liked it that way.
So, apart from writing this and stirring up a veritable hornet’s nest (which was never really my intention), which I have found very interesting… what does a bah humbug like me do? Do I stop using Twitter? Do I block the overly-commercial and self-centred tweeters and companies who sell but don’t give, or those who spend their entire day retweeting instead of producing and sharing… or those who never retweet, because they don’t share?
What’s the next big thing?
I’ve had a grand day of self-reflection from this post. I still think there’s something in there worthy of a conversation, but once again it’s become a divided polemical issue, mainly around the ‘you can’t tell me what to do, it’s not your Twitter, you colonial arse’ argument – which is not relevant to my original posting at all. There’s a culture in there to discuss, there’s a quantity/quality question, there’s an issue of time – there’s a lot in there.
Twitter is a complicated medium. Taking my own advice, I’m going to turn off the telly for a while and think about what I want from the telly… and when I’ve decided, I promise not to moan anymore about how great it all was back in the good old days.
Have a good weekend,
Gavin
[ Denenberg bonham ]
[Reply]
Actually, look… here’s an example which might clarify my thinking on one aspect of the whole thing. I just ran a training session in Second Life. One of the participants tweeted positively about it afterwards. I did not feel the need to retweet that to show my PLN what a fantastic trainer I am…
Had someone else retweeted it, I would have been very proud and happy that the effort I put into the session had been recognised and that someone thought that was a good thing. There’s a subtle difference between the two events, though…
[ devoted corpus ]
[Reply]
Thanks for mentioning it here though, Gavin!
Just of to retweet my latest blog post, unless anyone wants to access it straight from here….
[Reply]
Darren,
To be fair, had I not mentioned it (and without actually quoting the actual content, I’d add) then it wouldn’t have been much of an example now, would it?
Gavin
[ York waivers ]
[Reply]
Thanks to @EHerrod for this link, which makes for interesting reading. Now, if you want to read rules, this appears to be the place:
http://www.noupe.com/how-tos/ten-commandments-of-social-media.html
Gavin
[ nuance administra- ]
[Reply]
It’s possibly time to retire this thread now. There’s much in there to ponder on, I think, but I’m not sure it has much more mileage amongst the small audience that have talked it through.
I’m not sure if anyone else has learnt anything out of the conversation, but here’s what I’m going to take away (and I do mean what I’m going to take away – and not a set of rules…):
People have different reasons for using Twitter
Our community is very supportive
Our community is very productive
Our community is very diverse
We’re still working out what Twitter is for
If you don’t like something, drop it instead of whingeing
And that’s what I think I’m going to do. Quit moaning about the narcissistic self-publicists and the takers, get rid of them from my (way too long and unmanageable) list of followers/following, prune my Twitsistence down to the people I enjoy following and who (for me, personally speaking, without wishing to put forward any rules) are ‘social’ in the social media.
I’d like to thank all of you for the time and effort you’ve put into this posting and for putting forward a variety of viewpoints which gave me pause to think and reflect.
I hope you all enjoy / are enjoying / have enjoyed your weekend.
Gavin
[ danger January ]
[Reply]
Actually, on mature reflection after a decent lunch, I think I capitulated way too early in this one…
Over my time on Twitter I’ve made some of the best professional and personal contacts of my entire working life, have shared and enjoyed sharing the work and successes (and failures) of my PLN.
To have people signing up to Twitter simply to promote themselves and anything about them (or their company) because they don’t want to get left out of a social medium strikes me as mercenary, sad, desperate and a little condescending.
So, bring it on – sure, everyone can have a look in with social media, nobody owns it, there are no rules – but there’s common human decency and respect for the work others have done, surely?
Gavin
[ Garboli besot ]
[Reply]
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Gavin Dudeney, Gavin Dudeney. Gavin Dudeney said: Sod it: http://bit.ly/6W6MiJ [...]
Alright, try this one. The whole debate is solipsistic and self-indulgent, as is the notion of the PLN. Twitter is populated by narcissists and time-wasters, and all the real teachers are too busy TEACHING to worry about what Gavin Dudeney thinks.
;-P
[Reply]
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by dudeneyge: Sod it: http://bit.ly/6W6MiJ...
Darren,
An excellent and well-thought-out argument. Thanks for contributing…
You don’t have a PLN, presumably, since it’s a self-indulgent notion? I wonder how the many people who’ve written about the value of their PLNs will feel about that.
Some of us do have one. I (personally) do not want it taken over by hawkers and narcissistic time-wasters.
It is, as you so rightly state, good that people are busy TEACHING… I suspect that it’s equally good that people are busy WRITING and TEACHER TRAINING and engaging in EVERY OTHER ASPECT of our profession. You can’t really have one without the other – they make up a rounded whole.
Surely if people are so busy TEACHING they’re not going to find this, and contribute… No, wait a minute, that can’t be right, because you did…
Gavin
[ snaps Sid ]
[Reply]
“snaps Sid”? snaps Gavin, more like….
The arrangement of punctuation and letters at the end of my comment was supposed to be a pictorial representation of ‘a tongue in a cheek’. I need to go back and check my emoticon dictionary….
[Reply]
Darren,
Man, it’s Saturday, long lunches have taken place… no way I was going to equate ;-P with the words you wrote and work it out as ‘tongue in cheek’….
Gavin
[ perlman Whitney ]
[Reply]
Sorry to arrive late for the party, but it took a while to digest the food for thought I was munching on the way here
I usually only tweet about blog updates once or twice, though if it’s been a quiet day on Twitter & nobody picks up on it, I might RT it again later. Personally, I don’t think that’s excessive, and it’s probably around average for my PLN.
I do make a point of I thanking people for RT’s (usually by DM unless I’m really busy, to cut down on the noise), but conversely I don’t mind when people don’t thank me back. I understand that people lead busy lives, and I’m also aware that Twitter is a global community that is still evolving. As Nick points out, people who are new to Twitter may also be ‘flying blind’, so to speak (it took me a couple of months to spot the @esolcourses function!).
It doesn’t bother me when other people RT their blog posts, although I have to admit that when people follow me, the extent to which they tweet about themselves can sometimes tip the scales as to whether I follow them back. I’m someone else who gets irritated by companies who tweet endlessly about their products but don’t share anything and if they try to follow me, more often than not, I bounce them.
Having said all that, I think people can sometimes take the self-promotional thing a bit too far at times, when it comes to re-tweeting stuff.
A couple of examples:
When I first joined Twitter, I used to follow a prolific blogger who shared a lot of very useful information. They never thanked me for RT’s, but I didn’t mind that, as I was learning a lot from them.
One week I decided to include them in my #followfriday recommendations, because they had tweeted some particularly interesting stuff. They didn’t thank me
for recommending them, and once again, I didn’t mind that either. What did cause me to raise an eyebrow, though, was that they then proceeded to re-tweet my
recommendation… and re-tweet it…. and re-tweet it… until the Saturday morning sun came up. That was my cue for an unfollow.
Another thing that I have to admit makes me pull a face is when people re-tweet other people’s #teachertuesday #followfriday recommendations that name-check them, when they aren’t following the other people mentioned in the tweet. I’ve never seen anybody in my PLN do this as I only notice it when people who aren’t following me do it, but for me it’s a real turn-off.
Apologies if I’m veering off topic a bit here, but the point I’m making is that perhaps it’s not so much how often something gets re-tweeted, but the degree of self-interest behind it, that determines how much repetition is too much?
[Reply]
Sue,
I don’t think you’re late – this discussion is still very much alive both here and on Twitter. You perhaps hit the nail on the head towards the end of your comment:
“perhaps it’s not so much how often something gets re-tweeted, but the degree of self-interest behind it, that determines how much repetition is too much?”
I think maybe that’s it exactly. My point was (is) that retweeting mentions of onesself is rather like standing at a party and saying something along the lines of “Did you hear what Susan said? She said I was great! Did everyone hear that? Did you?”
Glad to have you along to the party,
Gavin
[ excises Angola ]
[Reply]
[...] blog That’SLife, Gavin Dudeney touched off quite the sh*t-storm with a post which he entitled “On Going Public”, in which he made a very valid and cogent point about the sort of shameless self-promotion [...]
[...] Most influential blog post – On Going Public by Gavin Dudeney with 80 worthy comments in 80 hours http://slife.dudeney.com/?p=366 [...]
I’d like to echo Vale’s point about a culture that’s still evolving. I’m very new to Twitter, but I gather Twitter’s pretty new too, and we have people from all over the world (with different socio-pragmatic norms) communicating here.
It seems from this discussion that there might be competing politeness principles at work here. On the one hand we should be modest but at the same time we shouldn’t disagree with those who praise us. And we should deliver thanks and praise to others but also, our tweets shouldn’t overwhelm or impose. So it seems to be a pretty normal sort of human politeness dilemma at work.
I’m not sure how ‘balanced output’ could ever be achievable when individuals and cultures give different weightings to positive and negative face issues. How about a Jon Postel approach instead?
If I remember rightly, he was engaged in the task of trying to get very different computers to communicate with one another in the very early days of the internet, and he wrote a protocol document that advocated ‘being conservative in what you send and liberal in what you receive.’
How does that sound as a code for twitter and blogging? (Sounds like a pretty good code for life in general to me.)
[Reply]
Vicki,
Thanks for joining the discussion! It is indeed a new and evolving culture, but I think anyone using Net tools which involve people can see (very quickly) in the case of Twitter that people don’t primarily shout about how excellent they are, but rather talk about themselves occasionally whilst also talking about others, sharing resources, etc. There is a balance issue and I do think it’s worth exploring.
Chris Pirillo at LeWeb said “Community is the antithesis of ego” and I have to say I agree with him. A community thrives on the ‘complicity’ of everyone in it. If one or two members are constantly unbalancing the community by not contributing, then it stops working (at least for some).
In fact your Postel quote doesn’t work for me at all, because in social networking terms that translates as ‘do a lot of taking, but not much giving’, and it’s precisely that attitude which has (is) driven (driving) me mad in some cases.
Gavin
[Reply]
I’m not sure I understand your translation, Gavin and it might well be because I don’t know enough about web communities.
I’d have thought that ‘face’ and politeness issues are a pretty universal human phenomena and so likely to be evident on the web. In other international communities, finding a ‘balance’ between competing positive and negative face needs is tricky because different cultures accord them different weightings. Accommodation seems to be the name of the game instead. So if you take ELF as an example, the speech data indicates that ELF speakers will let a lot of things pass and ignore them and yet the communication is generally robust.
I think that’s what Postel was advocating in his protocol for computers. So his idea would be to be careful about the messages we send because they might be interpreted differently, and at the same time not to be finicky about accepting messages that don’t follow our rules.
But perhaps that’s what you meant with your point about ‘giving and taking’ – you feel folks aren’t being accommodating enough?
[Reply]
The twitter culture is a new evolving culture, and I’m new to it. So yes I realise I have to observe before joining in, and that’s what I try to do. Gavin you write that you are irked by people who only take and don’t give enough. I am sorry if I don’t give enough, I do my best. And what about not counting and not calculating? I thought twitter was about generosity, but maybe I am too much of an idealist! Twitter is a new culture but I am also from a different culture, so I apologize if I hurt some people’s feelings sometimes. Please DM me when I do so. In my culture we don’t say “thank you” as often as you seem to do. Talking too much about ourselves and how good we are is considered impolite, too. But I realise that on twitter many cultures co-exist and that’s the beauty of it. Of course I find it funny when I see people talking about their own work again and again but… hey, funniness never killed anyone.
…and I find twitter is a lot of fun!
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