Posts by siderea@universeodon.com
(DIR) Post #AcEEp1wphNcpg5yPJI by siderea@universeodon.com
2023-11-27T09:48:46Z
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I'd like to encourage you to use your voice to ask questions, like "Are we using the same definition of 'unacceptable behavior'?" and "What problem do you see your suggestion fixing?" and "What are the examples you are imagining or remembering when you make that suggestion?"And I'd also like to encourage you *not* to use your voice – to remember to listen, to observe, to contemplate. You may have heard that old saying about communication being a two-way street: that is in fact false. Communication is a narrow one-way bridge that traffic has to take turns crossing. If you're sending, you're not receiving. If the teacup of your comprehension seems too full of your prior understandings too preciously savored, nobody else is going to pour you a serving from their own teapot.Like I said, nobody's going to come and force clues down your throat. If you seem not to want them, you won't be given them.🧵
(DIR) Post #AcEEp3qWdnlhZ72Oky by siderea@universeodon.com
2023-11-27T09:53:30Z
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The most interesting thing we can do with our voices is to open up spaces of discourse. And that's what I would most like to enlist you in.I would love to see emerge on Mastodon, finally at long last, a discourse about social media platforms that centers social engineering as an actual thing. That is based on the ideas that we should be curious how things actually work and check our hypotheses against reality, that we should take responsibility for how our virtual built environment shapes the society that flows through it and the society in which it reposes, that there are things worth knowing here, things worth finding out, and interesting people to talk to.Fundamentally I am hoping to *interest you* in the entire topic of social engineering, in this new sense that I mean it. Because if you are interested in it and if you talk about it with other people who are interested in it, and interest in it grows, then it will feed on itself and it will grow as a field.🧵
(DIR) Post #AcEIs9ohIaXUlfulHs by siderea@universeodon.com
2023-11-27T10:14:48Z
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And if it grows as an idea, if it grows as a topic of interest, it will connect up people, it will enlist more people, it will drive curiosity, and discovery, and experimentation, and design.And it will change the culture in which the people who do make the decisions make them. It will make it a culture in which it is normal to consider questions like "How will we know if we succeed at solving this problem?" and "What prior art is there in this problem space?" and "What sorts of challenges are outstanding problems in the field right now?" and "What is the effect of our platform on the larger society its members belong to?"It seems likely to me such a social environment will have beneficial effects on the social media platforms that emerge from it.But, I confess, I haven't operationalized that yet.(Fin)
(DIR) Post #AcHpfjbMosZjwyF8jo by siderea@universeodon.com
2023-11-27T20:47:51Z
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@Crell That is the plan! Maybe it'll be up by tomorrow? I'll try to get back to you with a link when I do.
(DIR) Post #AcHpfmIgmmPwJuWlXc by siderea@universeodon.com
2023-11-29T03:35:57Z
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@mapto @Crell Here you are! It's now a blog post athttps://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1829989.html
(DIR) Post #AcMF9jvpQqMv9D3elc by siderea@universeodon.com
2023-12-01T06:55:54Z
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@ParadeGrotesqueHold my beer.I changed my major from material sci to civil engineering, dropped out of college and worked in IT for a decade while by night being a very actively gigging amateur performing music historian, then I went to graduate school to become a psychotherapist, and also became a professional writer.And I've had a bunch of other jobs and training, too. @stevegis_ssg @RickiTarr
(DIR) Post #Adb63hRg7JbKTWc4cC by siderea@universeodon.com
2024-01-07T03:53:42Z
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I want to start off by saying I agree completely – nay, ardently – with this observation that conversation on the Fediverse is largely pathological because there is no sense of people having spaces that are theirs. There's two important parts of this.There's the "flatness", as you've put it, @irenes: the user experience here simply doesn't communicate that there are different spaces one is moving between. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say there *aren't* spaces.🧵@glyph @danilo
(DIR) Post #Adb63iXO3ZlHrWI99U by siderea@universeodon.com
2024-01-07T03:58:17Z
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@irenes @glyph @danilo In any event, users haven't got a prayer of having any sense that they are in somebody else's space – much less realized they should moderate their conduct accordingly – unless they come from some other online world, such as blogs, and carry over that paradigm.Another way of putting this is that there are no visible *boundaries*. Good fences, the poet wrote, make good neighbors. Boundaries aren't just for keeping people in or out, they're lintels and doorways.🧵
(DIR) Post #Adb63jROhKZ4fEUsSG by siderea@universeodon.com
2024-01-07T04:00:17Z
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@irenes @glyph @danilo Boundaries let us know when we're supposed to toggle our behavior from one mode into another. When you enter the library, you lower your voice. When you enter the house party, you go to greet the host. Visible boundaries let us know when we're free to treat a place like our own, and when we are to conduct ourselves as guests in somebody else's space.We don't have those here.🧵
(DIR) Post #Adb63kDxmlPf5rDf9c by siderea@universeodon.com
2024-01-07T04:02:39Z
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@irenes @glyph @danilo And the thing is, there are plenty of people out there in the face-to-face who even when they have all the signposts and fences in the world are still a little confused by the idea that different spaces, different contexts, actually have different norms and require different conduct.So my theory as to how and why this happened here is a little different. I think it was something of an accident, but it was glommed onto by users who LIKE this.🧵
(DIR) Post #Adb63l1EpYpPYgH0xU by siderea@universeodon.com
2024-01-07T04:04:34Z
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@irenes @glyph @danilo I mean, this problem here is directly inherited from Twitter. The people who built this thing built it to be like Twitter in this particular way.I think that this flatness of Twitter and now of Mastodon is actually regarded as a feature by a certain population of users.I think that out there are users who *like* the idea of not having to be a guest in other people's spaces to interact with them, who *like* the absence of boundaries. 🧵
(DIR) Post #Adb63muvlyyHRhL0PA by siderea@universeodon.com
2024-01-07T04:07:54Z
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@irenes @glyph @danilo Personally, I loathe it. But that's just me.I said above there were two parts to the pathological nature of conversation here caused by the lack of boundaries, one being that people can't *tell* when they've moved into somebody else's space because there is no boundary in the UX to tell them that they have. The other one is that users have zero authority over their own space. They have no moderator tools, so it's a real question whether it's THEIR space.🧵
(DIR) Post #Adb63onCnfypGJjrdo by siderea@universeodon.com
2024-01-07T04:10:28Z
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@irenes @glyph @danilo This means people who would like to keep order in their own space have no way of doing so. Users have no defense against anything they think of as bad behavior. Well, nothing except verbal assertion and aggression.
(DIR) Post #Adb63pVW8vQRTkTFi4 by siderea@universeodon.com
2024-01-07T04:30:23Z
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@glyph @irenes @danilo Ooh, if we're making shopping lists, I have some items to add.Over on DW, which has probably the best boundaries model ever implemented (still missing some things I would like), I have the option of setting users to pre-moderation. I can set the default for my entire space to pre-moderation, I can set the replies to a single OP to pre-moderation, I can set certain groups of users to pre-moderation, & I can set individuals to pre-moderation.
(DIR) Post #Adb63qNktGoKBxqZFY by siderea@universeodon.com
2024-01-07T04:32:37Z
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@glyph @irenes @danilo The thing about moderation tools is they're not just about moderating an individual's interaction with me, and this is an example of that.My number one use of pre-moderation is to deal with commenters who are well meaning but hijack my threads.I don't just do this because I don't want to interact with them. I do it bc I don't want them to turn my conversation to some other topic.
(DIR) Post #Adb63sJDj6N6ATjySW by siderea@universeodon.com
2024-01-07T04:34:45Z
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@glyph @irenes @danilo Like, there are people I know that if I ask a question "how do I do this in PHP" will start a flame war about PHP in the comments, thereby all but guaranteeing I will not get any answers to my question.I can put those people on pre-moderation, and then they can make their comment about PHP being a fractal of badness – which it is! – and I can prevent it from consuming all the oxygen in my room.
(DIR) Post #Adb63uLm8ZbUUyx2ie by siderea@universeodon.com
2024-01-07T04:36:06Z
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@glyph @irenes @danilo By these means I don't have to exclude these people from conversation. I just vet their comment first. And it means as they get the hang of doing this conversation thing, and I have to worry less and less about their conduct, I can take the pre-moderation off their account.It allows them room to grow.
(DIR) Post #Adb63wIet8IaXtVa8e by siderea@universeodon.com
2024-01-07T04:40:59Z
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@glyph @irenes @danilo But relatedly there's something else I want which I don't have over there.One of the fundamental problems, oh, pretty much everywhere is a specific enduring confusion about boundaries and privacy: that THE way to have boundaries is to "make things private", i.e secret or invisible.Like here on Mastodon (as on Twitter) you can restrict who follows you and then restrict the visibility of your toots to only your followers.🧵
(DIR) Post #Adb63yDPlbICUD4QF6 by siderea@universeodon.com
2024-01-07T04:46:26Z
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@glyph @irenes @danilo Allow me to point out this confuses READ operations and WRITE operations!If what one wants to do is regulate people commenting in one's space, one wants to regulate who can WRITE in one's space (and how they do it), not who can READ it.What we really need are tools to allow Write control, as much as Read control. One shouldn't have to make one's content private to have some say in how people interact with you in your space.🧵
(DIR) Post #Adb6402qxq26A2913g by siderea@universeodon.com
2024-01-07T04:49:19Z
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@glyph @irenes @danilo DW allows me to say "pre-moderate everyone I don't follow" (a W perm). DW allows me to say "only show this to logged in users on this arbitrary ACL list." (a R perm). DW DOESN'T allow me to say, "allow anyone to see this, but pre-moderate everyone except logged in users on this arbitrary ACL list." (a W perm).So I can't set up a public conversation among known knowledgeable commenters.