>But it also sounds as if you are willing to take a stand and that is helpful
>too.
I have this really unfortunate ethical streak that manifests itself in two
ways. One is that I believe that any idea worth doing is worth doing
yourself (ideas are a dime a dozen. Ideas that start out with "I think you
should do..." are worth the time and energy put into it by the originator:
nothing. this has put me in conflict on usenet at times, since there's a
contingent out there that firmly believes it's a lot better for 37 people to
amke suggestions to the one silly coding-volunteer (and get mad if he
ignores them) than have 38 people coding), and the other is that if I'm
involved in something that's not working right, I find it very difficult to
simply sit back and let it continue not working right. I have to tinker;
it's clearly a neurosis. That's why I'm up to my knees in SFWA-related
volunteerism, and why I'm now running a usenet site again despite my screams
of anguish a few years ago last time I 'left' the scene. (it's also one of
the reasons running a site again scares me. The next step is 'helping' out
on the net in general, something I really don't want to do...).
I don't suffer fools and incompetents well, which is amusing considering my
chosen career is technical support. I've just gotten much better at hiding
my frustration until I hang up the phone....
>> In the Good Old Days (you KNEW I was gonna sneak that in somewhere, no?)
>I was hoping you would <grin>
Ah, you young whippersnapers. I remember the Good Old Days when reading
usenet meant walking five miles -- in the snow -- uphill -- both ways, just
to get to a CRT. And not one of these modern CRTs, either. It was really a
teletype, and we had to buy our own ribbons. And steal rolls of toilet paper
from the janitors to feed them. And since teletypes were so noisy, we had to
cushion the blows of the keys with our tongues.
Yes, back then, usenet was a real man's hobby, not something like today with
all those poofters and ucky girls and stuff. Ugh. Virtual cooties. yuck.
>But aren't there also thick skinned people who can stand the abuse and
>still stick around to find the good stuff?
I'm sure there are. Thick-skin (or skull, or both) is a primary hereditary
trait needed to be a successful net.twit. Omega Mosely in rec.arts.comics is
a classic example, as was Richard Sexton. They didn't care what anyone said
about them, so they were free of the restraints of peer pressure or social
feedback that keep most folks in line one way or another.
(I am, to this day, convinced that Sexton was either a clinical psychotic or
someone who pulled the greatest mind-f_ck ever devised on the net. You
ALWAYS get folks who think it's fun to poke the ant-hill to watch us poor
ants scurry about trying to make things right, but Sexton was poking the
damn ant-hill with a bazooka, and we all twitched together, much to his
amusement. Bastard.)
>Was any way found to prevent topic drift or the smashing of a tread?
Not really, I think topic drift is GOOD. Tangents are where the fun
discussions come from much of the time. But it needs to be controllable,
which implies improving the reader programs to have a better form of
sub-thread pruning, whihc is something that's really weak these days.
>But when you do happen to have a worthwhile conversation, it is something
>that is valuable.
True. But you have to ask yourself whether it's worth it. If I want to go
find out the maiden name of the mother of Czar Nicholas, I'll be happy when
I find out the answer. If it takes me four days of plowing through books in
the library looking for it, was it worth the hassle in the first place?
(answer: if I'm writing a story involving the Czar and I have to get the
detail right, yes. If I'm curious, I won't do the research. And that is a
classic analogy that explains why you read some groups on the net, and
unsubscribe to others even though they're both topics of interest. For me,
rec.arts.sf.written and rec.arts.comics.misc. While I like comics, I don't
like them enough to plow though the volume for the occasional tidbit I find
relevant. Law of diminishing returns).
>Is the frustration that there were Good Old Days and the current net
>doesn't measure up?
For a while I was bitter that, for all my work in trying to shape the net,
it went off in directions I considered negative. I still think the net went
in the wrong directions in some ways, but it was an inevitable evolution. It
would be easier to stand between an elephant and a box of peanuts and keep
them separate than attempt to make usenet change directions. Once you figure
that one out and start working at nudging it here and there, either to
encourage some behaviour or discourage some other instead of wholesale
sociological reform, life gets a lot less crazy. I probably slowed down the
inevitable decline somewhat. Probably. How much? No way to tell. Maybe zero.
But ultimately it was digging ditches around a sand castle. The tide will
come in.
That was pretty much when I decided to get out of the net.god business. I
couldn't fix it, attempting to fix it seemed to be making it worse (and me
crazy in the head, not to mention a target for every hot-shot net.twit
looking for a Big Name to virtually shoot down), and I didn't feel doing
stepwise-refinment procedure type stuff on hurricane would be particularly
satisfying or successful.
When a person (or group) stoppped being able to manipulate the net is when
we stopped having Cabals or net.gods or whatever you want to call them.
Since then, you have individuals who take a little chunk that means
something to them and they do what they can to reduce the chaos. Tale's
stuff with newgroups is a great example: he's really doing little more than
what Greg Woods did, or the Cabal, or Elliot for a while. But it works
because he overtly doesn't set any policy. He's a filter, not an
adminstrator. (and THAT is b_llsh!t, of course. He does set policy, and
guide the net in various ways, but his public persona is that of an
invisible bureaucrat, which allows him a fair amount of power as long as he
doesn't get caught using it -- in other words, doesn't screw up. It's a fun
game. Convince them it was their idea in the first place. Old saying:
diplomacy is the act of saying "nice doggy" while looking for a rock. Do it
badly and you get bit....)
>Do you ever still find something wonderful that happens?
Yeah. track down a thread in misc.fitness on exercise and losing weight/fat.
I made a posting there a few days back, and I've gotten at least ten mail
messages from folks who were looking the inspiration that the message gave
them. It helped a few over a mental or physical hump. That sort of thing,
especially the unexpected egoboo letters, leaves you glowing for days.
>So maybe I should ask What were (or are) the delights and the difficulties
>that you have experienced with Usenet?
Jeez. What a question. Delights: I met my wife through usenet (strictly
speaking: my current and final wife). It more or less kept me sane during
the Dark Years surrounding the termination of said first and previous wife.
Or maybe less unsane is better. It was a way of learning socialization
skills, of meeting neat people, of learning. Of wasting immense amounts of
time that otherwise would have been wasted on television or rogue, maybe
maybe being the world's best rogue player would have been time better spent,
but I probably never would have found my way out of the computer caverns to
where I am. Spaf and the crew. If there was one thing (other than the wife,
and without usenet that simply would never have happened) that made -- and
makes -- usenet worthwhile, it's the people.
Difficulties: usenet is an amplified mirror, but with flaws. You tend to get
out of it what you put in, but slightly twisted and at higher volume. So
when you're nice to folks, you get nice back. When you're snarky, or
depressed, or angry, or whatever, it returns that as well. So when things
are not going well, usenet tends to make them seem worse. Honestly, though,
a solid 80% of the problems I've had with/on usenet are self-generated,
where I tried to immolate myself in the amplified feedback of my own
creation. The other 20% were individuals that conflicted with me -- the
Sexton's, Omega's and Maroney's of the world. Which isnt' to say I'm right
or wrong with them, but simply that wherever we went, we fought. Strong
personalities, differing worldviews. Guaranteed conflicts. Not fun.
Especially when you wake up at 3AM and realize "I'm wrong". Or worse, "you
know, all I have to do is SHUT UP and it'll go away". Flamewars do not long
survive the black hole of silence, except in Omega's case, and that was
rather amusing. He carried it on something like three years single-handed,
when I wasn't even reading the group. Talk about pitiful.
>Why were emotions heated during "The Great Renaming"?
>Was it that some of newsgroups would be dropped from general distribution?
>(for example the talk hierarchy?)
Change. Not everyone agreed that it was necessary, and it was a
technological and sociological upheaval. We were obsoleting entire machines
with old software (there are STILL remnants of support for Anews hanging
around, like the 14 character groupnames and lack of uppercase groupnames.
But they're slowly dying), and we were guaranteeing that everyone would have
to start from scratch and rebuild their virtual reality and the paradigms
they used to view the net. If you got home and found out that the post
office had decided to not only change your zip-code, but your street address
and city name for you, you'd probably be a bit stressed and upset, too.
The talk hierarchy was a good idea poorly implemented, since while we could
fairly easily move the obvious 'noise' groups there, anyone after that who
wanted to create a group generally fought like hell to keep it out of talk,
since it had worse distribution. There are oodles of groups that ought to be
in talk but aren't, like sci.skeptic. Ultimately, creating talk solved the
wrong problem and started a chain of events and precedents that led up to
the creation of sci.acquaria. We would have been much better off merging
them in with the mainstream groups and not setting up a "here are the groups
you can jettison first" mentality. It was set up to make it easy for lazy
sysadmins, so the first thing that started happening was circumvention. It
was the easy answer, not the right one. (mea culpa).
>> I call it benevolent dictatorship, or more closely, the ability (and
>Why do you call it dictatorship if it involved an open discussion?
Because the whole purpose is to convince them to creat a consensus around
what I always intended to do anyway. Rather than force it down their throat,
convince them they always wanted to swallow it.
The initial re-organization of comp.sys.mac is a classic example. It was the
first time someone had tried to spread out a sub-hierarchy, so there were no
precedents. There was strong disagreement with the format, and some folks
felt it ought to be done with a bunch of individual votes. Until then, it
was one group, one vote.
Once we were able to get a consensus that it was silly to create separate
CVF's for each sub-topic, we finally ended up with what is essentially what
we're doing now. My original position was that it would be a take it or
leave it single vote on the hierarchy, but that was a negotiating point. I
let the next convince me to compromise with a single CFV, but individually
counted votes for each group name within it (hmm. maybe I shouldn't say
this. It might piss someone off, or at least mkae it harder next time, but
there won't be a next time).
I then opened up the re-org discussion for open debate and straw polls and
the like, and did so with my own proposed reorganization setup. That setup
included two groups I firmly expected to get killed and a third I expected
to be renamed (all of which happened). The proposal ended up being abot 90%
what I expected it to be when I started, with the other 10% legitimate
improvements on stuff I proposed but hadn't completely thought through the
implications (hence the reason why I LIKE open discussion. that 10% may well
have meant the difference between the c.s.m stuff that works quite well
today and total mishmash). Suggestions I wasn't particularly happy with
generally got sent off onto a tangental discussion, which effectively killed
most of them. The rest were taken under consideration and thrown out.
This is fairly blatant and overt manipulation of the process, but the end
result was that I got it where I always expected it to be when we were done,
plus a few improvements I was glad to have, and the users got what I knew
they needed while feeling that they were actively contributing to the
creation process (which they were. They just weren't contributing in the way
most of them thought), and we ended up getting there with relatively little
fighting. If I'd just stood up iwth my final proposal and said "This is it
and I say so" we'd STILL be having flamewars and none of the re-orgs in any
of the newsgroups would have ever happened. So while I'm overtly
manipulating and playing mind-games, I don't apologize for them a bit. It
works.
But it works for two reasons: when something good comes along you adopt it
and make what you had better, because if you don't, they figure out that
you're toying with them. You don't toy -- you manage. Also, most users
really want to let someone else do all the work, and you can use that to
advantage -- as long as they feel their input is being listened to. There's
a big difference between disagreeing with input and ignoring it. You can get
people to agree to disagree as long as you're honest and open. But simply
because someone suggests it doesn't mean you have to accept it.
It's a negotiation process. I can't tell the net what to do, but I can
convince the net to do what I want them to do if I couch it in the proper
terms, so effectively we end up with the same result, but through different
processes. (I've probably put far too much time into studying how the net
reacts to things on a psychological and sociological level than is good for
anyone. I'm rarely suprised by the net any more, and I rarely open my mouth
unless I already know the ultimate outcome before diving in to net.politics.
Even if it's a consciously created loss of the argument. Sometimes you have
to bring up an idea and have it beaten down, just so people cna think about
it and make it more likely to be accepted when you really need it. Like the
Great Renaming).
>Do you say this because participates actively in the process?
Not just that, but are being listened to. Being ignored is a great excuse
for getting angry or frustrated, which causes people to get stubborn and
lash out.
>> But there are! The key is finding them. One problem with USENET in the
>There are what? models? From where?
Before I got involved with usenet, I ran bbs software on other systems.
usnet was a much larger version of what we had there, and went through
almost exactly the same kinds of growing pains at the same relative growth
points. So I'd been there, and I knew what was going to happen --
proliferation of newsgroups, authority revolts, dictatorial leaderships,
signal/noise ratios. One of the things that really depressed me was I'd
already lived through much of the rise and fall of usenet in microcosm and
couldn't do a thing to stop those same problems happening again.
But more generally, you can take individual aspects of usenet and find
analogous models in real life. Ticket lines for a hot concert: 99% of the
people will be reasonable, and the other 1% will make them all miserable.
I'm a big fan of analogies, which are a form of modelling. They let you
build in a connection to a thing you better understand, and by learning
where the analogy fits (and more especially, where it fails) you learn more
about the thing you're studying.
And now I realize the alarm goes off in about six hours, so until some other
time...
(yawn)
This page last updated on: Jul 1 09:16