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

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/11/8 William Pietri <william at scissor.com>:
> Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> 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.

If someone gave a reason for it being difficult, then they might
convince me. So far, no-one has tried. I think the burden of proof is
on those say it is hard since, on the face of it, not doing something
(in this case, reading an email) seems like an easy thing to do.

>> 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?

I support the project and want to improve it. That's what motivates
pretty much everything I do with respect to Wikimedia. (There is a
secondary motivation - I enjoy doing it.)

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

I'm not going to guess. It is up to them to tell me.

>>> 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.

I'm not asking anyone to change their behaviour. I'm asking them to
either put up with things as they are, or change their behaviour. It
is their choice.

>>> 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.

"Argument" and "discussion" are largely synonymous. A lot of people
have got it into their heads that arguments have to involve people
shouting at each other - that isn't the case. Perhaps I should say
"debate" 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've gone through those thought processes too, but in my experience
the alternative isn't more effective. The alternative involves never
actually putting across your point of view so you'll never convince
anyone. There is a compromise position - you argue about things that
really matter to you and shut up the rest of the time (the "pick your
battles" approach). That is my choice, the challenge comes in working
out where to draw the line.