Conversational Labor

When it comes to sharing information, a good collegial discussion is hard to beat. Over the years I’ve been asked several times to serve as a moderator on forums and email lists. The people who managed those virtual meeting places felt that I had a good grasp of how to stay on track, or so they said.

After awhile, I began to see patterns for which I had to issue warnings or bans. I’m not prepared to lay out a laundry list, but there were three things that always seemed to be the biggest recurring problems.

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1. Some people are trolls, if not by nature or intent, then trolls in effect. Their comments on the list/forum have the effect of calling into question issues that had already been settled by the majority, and should not be raised again. Some people just cannot let things lie once the conversation has moved on to other things. The most popular tactic was subtle ad hominem attacks. Trying to make the discussion about the people involved in any way was a violation. As long as the comments were about the discussion itself, or about the positions people had taken, that was okay. But stuff that got personal in any way was out of bounds. Sometimes it was just a judgement call.

When I encounter that nonsense these days, it’s not that I’m offended that much. It’s okay that some people hate me; that’s normal. I keep saying that I don’t take myself seriously, and I maintain that. But when I see something in the vein of ad hominem, my reaction is: Oh, crap. I have to wade through this again? Sometimes it’s just not worth it if the people running the show can’t be bothered to stop it from ruining the conversation.

2. Some people are lost in their own world. They tend to see everything through a very personal frame of reference and can’t step outside it. They simply cannot bring themselves to see another person’s point of view. Thus, they tend to inject into the conversation all kinds of stuff that misses the point. If you answer any of it, the whole thing quickly bogs down in trying to get them to see that they are off track. If you don’t answer, they take it as some kind of vindication that you didn’t challenge them.

People who do this all the time are socially crippled. It’s not a question of moral failure, but they don’t belong in the same room with everyone else. Most of the time these folks could come to terms with where everyone else is, but they slip back into their own world often enough that you never know when you’ll have to deal with it again. And then it goes around and around again, wasting time and energy on trying to get them to see they aren’t on the same track. As a side note, they also tend to come across as didactic and slightly arrogant, as if trying to lecture others about something.

3. Some folks are just too long winded; they love to hear themselves talk. You get walls of text from them in forums and lists. I’ve had a few walls of text in comments on this blog in the past, and had to ban folks who simply don’t understand that they aren’t entitled to ramble on and on. You don’t have an inherent right to be heard. We might try to give everyone an equal access to means of expression, but only in shared territory, not on someone else’s turf.

There’s nothing wrong with a long presentation that is well organized and engages the whole idea behind a presentation in the first place. Someone with a lot of pertinent data can save a lot of wandering around if they know how to present that data.

There were times I had to confer with the list/forum manager about their level of tolerance for blather, because as I got older, I became somewhat less patient with that kind of thing for myself. It really depends on whether teaching and learning about communication itself was part of the purpose in having a place to discuss things. I had to learn for myself to start responding in bite-sized pieces when I felt I had a lot to say in response to really complex ideas.

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I have yet to see or enter into a discussion where I didn’t run into at least one, and usually all three of these problems. As someone who is just a part of the herd, I often walk away after a while. There are people with whom I simply don’t belong in the same space. They aren’t bad, but the whole process starts grating on my nerves because people can’t let each other be themselves. It’s not a question of giving offense; what I gain from the discussion is often completely outweighed by the level of hassle in the process, having to read a bunch of nonsense to see if there’s anything pertinent.

I have a mission, and I cannot solve the world’s problems. It’s not my job to change people, but if I can help them with something they want to change, I’ll try. Sometimes I’m privileged to contribute some useful input, and frequently I learn something new, if only from really good questions. But it can get downright expensive in terms of the sheer work of having a conversation.