[Foundation-l] The state of Foundation-l (again) was: Recent firing?

[William Pietri]

Thomas Dalton wrote:
> 2009/11/7 William Pietri <william at scissor.com>:
>   
>> Well, you perceive the burden as negligible for them. Have you asked
>> them? My impression was that you imagined it would be easy for them
>> because it would be easy for you. Personally, I'd imagine otherwise,
>> based partly on how easy it would be for me, and partly on a lot of time
>> spent observing people using software.
>>     
>
> Ignoring emails *is* easy. Anyone that says otherwise is wrong. I do
> not subscribe to this "everyone's opinion is equally valid" nonsense -
> sometimes people are just plain wrong.
>   

I am definitely not suggesting that all opinions are equally valid. But 
personally I decline to accept as proof your assertion that your view is 
correct. In my line of work, we prove these things with data.

If you wanted to demonstrate that ignoring emails is indeed easy for all 
people, using all email readers, and for all purposes with which people 
approach their email reading, you would have a lot of research ahead of 
you. You might start with Kuniavsky's book "Observing the User 
Experience". My guess is that you'd find that it is easy for a 
relatively small percentage of people.

Until you want to do that, though, if you'd like the discussion to 
proceed, you'll have to accept that there are differing opinions on the 
topic. Not that you have to like them or agree with them, but I expect 
you'd benefit by demonstrating respect for their holders.


> Of course not sending emails is easy. There is more to something being
> burdensome than it being difficult. Not sending an email is
> sacrificing your freedom of expression for someone else - that is a
> definite burden. It is burden that is it sometimes appropriate to take
> on, but this isn't such a time.
>   

It's not clear to me that freedom of expression is a useful term here, 
in that I see no government involvement. Could we instead look at is as 
your desire, and perhaps the desire of others, to say something to this 
group? If so, what do you think motivates that desire?

And obviously, other people have different desires for the use of this 
list. What do you think their motivations are?


>> Part of the problem may be that people often don't like other people
>> imposing burdens on them. It's often read as an attempt of social
>> dominance, or as rude or contemptuous. So your unilateral placing of
>> burden may be interfering with your desire to move the conversation forward.
>>     
>
> People telling me not to send the emails I want to is them
> unilaterally imposing a burden on me. How is that different?
>   

Yes, that was my point. You and a few others don't like others asking 
for a change in behavior, so I was hoping you'd have some sympathy for 
them. But as far as I know, they aren't actually imposing anything, in 
that nobody is actually stopping the posts in question. So if there's 
actual imposing going on, it's on the part of the posters.


>> If you wanted to know, you could start by asking them.
>
> When I make a point during an argument I am always implicitly asking
> people that disagree to make a counter-point. That is how arguments
> work.
>   

Well, that's how you want them to work. That used to be how I approached 
them, too. But that's now how they work for a lot of people. And some 
people would rather not have arguments at all, favoring discussions instead.

I tried to change my approach because I got feedback from friends that I 
was coming across as "an annoying, argumentative jerk", lacking in 
consideration for my conversational partners. That wasn't what was going 
on in my head, but that was what plenty of people were perceiving. 
Eventually I decided I was more interested in being effective than in 
keeping my old behaviors.

I think of it as a cultural thing; different people have different 
customs, and what's ok in one place is rude in another. Or one time and 
another; I've been working my way through the Sherlock Holmes novels 
recently, and I've been enjoying the Victorian approach to politeness 
immensely.

William