ID:32241
 
Keywords: miscellaneous
A BYONDscape Classic! In which Deadron shares some important lessons, which could be useful to you, if you listened.


Deadron has been online since the days when "online" was spelled with a hyphen. Now he's going to share some secrets of having a conversation without losing your cool.

by Deadron

Some recent thrashes on the BYOND forums got me to reflect on the ebb and flow of my 17 years (!) of online interaction, and some of what has been beaten into my thick skull in that time.

I find a pattern for myself, in which I get actively involved in online discussion for a year or two, then I run screaming from it for a year or two or longer...I end up running because I so often see the same things happen to a community.

In the old days of The WELL, one of the oldest online conferencing systems created long before the Web existed, about every three months a raging monster of a fight would break out across the system, spilling into every forum and defining everyone's conversation for weeks until people were exhausted. Then things would settle down for a while, and three months later, it would all happen again.

Eventually I got really tired of that and retreated into programming for the system instead of interacting on it, which led to my current life and career and ability to make games, but that's another story...

What I have learned about myself and about online interaction in that time has given me some thoughts about how to have healthy debates without having them devolve into insult-fests.

I think these can be boiled down to:

Not all conversations must be a debate.

Sometimes a conversation is just people sitting around tossing out whatever comes into their head, with no need for challenging, or grammar-correcting, or whatever.

Not all debates must converge to agreement.

Perhaps this is the biggest key I've found...there is no need to get someone to agree with you. Be selfish about it: Only debate as long as there is something in it for you. If they know more than you about some aspect of the debate, see how much you can get from that before the debate is over. If you know more than them about some aspect, put the information out there and let them do with it what they will.

In the end, if you learned something and/or you communicated something, great. If they don't agree with what you communicated or don't get it and further debate isn't going to change that, no problem. Just disengage. Say something like "Okay it looks like we see this differently" or "Let's agree to disagree". You had a little exchange, some information got put out there for someone to come along and absorb, and it's time to move on.

It isn't a loss of face to disengage by the way. I have found myself feeling most gracious and respectful towards those who argued with me and probably were right about the whole thing, but ended with "This is something we just see differently" and then let me slowly let things seep in on my own end. They knew that I would get it eventually on my own, and if I didn't that nothing was served by pressing the point.

Be confident in what you know and don't worry about what they know.

It's okay for people to be wrong.

Really. They're wrong, you're right, no problem. Certainly in most online forums, anyway.

Have satisfaction in knowing you are right and move on. Pushing it any further is about you and not about the person you are theoretically attempting to correct.

Intelligence is not a constant.

Look, I'm stupid when it comes to math. Really embarrassingly stupid. Someday I hope to take the time to change that, but it will take a lot of persistence and work.

I also have no memory...and therefore practically no ability to remember historical details or character names or events.

Fortunately, I think I'm not so stupid in some other areas...like understanding and developing intricate systems.

Sometimes people Just Don't Get It in some area. And I think they are a raging idiot...then I see some beautiful piece of art they've done, or the care they've put into creating a game that matters to them, and I realize that their brain cells simply lie elsewhere.

People don't need to know what you think about them.

Really, they don't. Have the conversation, agree or disagree, move on...there is no particular need to give the person a run-down on how you see their mental/social/political stats.

At any point a conversation is either adding to the universe or subtracting from it.

You know that point. You can feel it. When you've reached it, just stop.
This is probably the biggest one for me in the last few months.

Finally:

You're going to break one or more of these rules once in a while.

Don't stress. Think a bit about why you got overly sucked into something, then move on.


Ha!! This would help a majority of BYOND's developers, including me. But still, *sends to the "know-it-alls"*
I generally agreed with all of that, but it can apply in the real world too, depending on how you engage (if at all) with the real world :p

The online world however does present oneself with an escape in which you can test out your opinions on other people, it is a great medium.
I think this should be the new guildline for wiz_chat '>_>
I disagree and you smell of elderberries!