[Air-l] life cycle of online discussions: references? (was: SW to store webpages)

[M.B.Gaved]

hi all

I'm wondering if anybody can help me with a reference, this current
discussion has got me thinking about the 'lifecycle' that mailing list
debates generally seem to go through.

After a particularly fiery college mailing list debate, a colleague
mentioned he'd come across a paper somebody had written on the lifecycle
of mailing list discussions - it might have been specifically flamewars,
or perhaps just mailing list debates in general. It might have come from
IBM research labs?

Can anybody point me at this or any other papers on the subject?

all the best

Mark

--------------------------------------------
Mark Gaved
KMi, Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA
+44 (0) 1908 6 54513
m.b.gaved at open.ac.uk
http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/mark/
--------------------------------------------



-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-aoir.org-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-aoir.org-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Thomas
Koenig
Sent: Monday, June 06, 2005 4:34 AM
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-l] SW to store webpages


Jeremy Hunsinger wrote:

> you might doubt it, but it is a fact of the interface and its
> limitations. you could disagree there, but then you would be sorely 
> pressed when faced with the full powers of the unix command-line.

1) Are you aware that HTTrack also offers a command line interface for
Unix?
2) I am a social scientist, as I (maybe wrongly) thought were most of 
the people on this list. I am familiar with UNIX, which already seems to

be kind of a rarity among social scientists. Most of us aren't and, I 
might add, shouldn't. For most purposes WebCopier seems an entirely 
sufficient tool. Why shouldn't it? Give me examples, where its 
limitations pose a problem.

> which is also one of the reasons a unix user can do more with wget
> than httrack can do, but there is plenty of evidence in that arena 
> already.


If there is, why don't you refer to that evidence? I gave already 
several sources, including the article by Kellogg, which concludes:

"With little coding, HTTrack can be extended to meet immediate mirroring

needs."

> as for the explanation marks, it was turning very clearly into a troll

> war.

Now, who's the other troll besides myself? I really don't appreciate 
this "dissent" equals "trolling" allegations. And I do think that the 
metaphor of a troll has become overused in CMC.

> little escalations such as the exclamation mark will be interpreted in

> many ways, and i don't know your intent, but I do know that at least 
> one person saw it as a slight.

Well: If an exclamation mark is considered to be "an escalation", what's

next? Banning of question marks?

An exclamation mark might be ambiguous, although, I think, I clarified 
now at length what I wanted to say. In contrast:

"kindly leave your exclamation marks at home."

is much less ambiguous in my view. It is clearly an imperative, which I 
happen to disagree with.

> let's not go there.

Why not? Obviously, there is disagreement on this list about it, so the 
only way to solve this disagreement seems to me to voice one's opinions.

I, for one, think, that the approach to try not to offend anyone no 
matter what, is a bad one, because it stifles discussions. That does not

mean that one should not try to be courteous, one clearly should, but 
academic deliberations live from dissent, which is bound to offend 
those, whose primary goal is harmony. I personally am not willing to 
phrase my postings in a way, so that I make sure that nobody gets 
offended. I try to follow the rules offered by Joshua Cohen:

> 1. Deliberations take place in an argumentative fashion, through the 
> ordered exchange of reasons
> and information among counterparts that make proposals and submitt 
> them to criticism.
> 2. Deliberations are inclusive and public, and all the potentially 
> affected by their decisions must
> have equal oppportunities to paticipate and to decide in them.
> 3. Deliberations are free of inner coercions able to undermine the 
> equal position of participants, and
> everyone must have the opportunity to be heard, to introduce new 
> issues, to make proposals and to criticize
> them. The coercion without coercions of the best argument is the only 
> rule for accepting or refusing an
> argument.
> 4. Deliberations are generally oriented to reach a rationally grounded

> agreement, and can in
> principle be continued or resumed in any given moment, yet the need 
> for decision demands them to have an
> agreed final point.
> 5. Political deliberations reaches all those issues that can be 
> regulated on behalf of the public
> interest, but that is not to say that issues traditionally judged as 
> 'private' must forcefuly remain out of
> discussion.
> 6. Political deliberations are also extended to the interpretation of 
> needs and to changes in prepolitical
> attitudes and preferences.

(Cohen, Joshua (1996), "Procedure and Substance in Deliberative 
Democracy", in S. Benhabib (ed.), Democracy and
Difference. Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, Princeton: 
Princeton University Press, pp. 95-119.) Habermas, in "Between Facts and

Norms" (Faktizitaet und Geltung), quotes BTW the same rules.

These rules were initially intended for political decision making, but 
also seem appropriate for academic deliberations.. I don't see, that I 
violated any of theses rules.

Frankly, I even guess you and I would agree on most of these points and 
on many other points. So, it's even more interesting to see, where we 
disagree.

Thomas, preffering Unix over Windows, but acknowledging that the latter 
is the the OS of this decade.

(BTW: I also switched from HighCom to Dolby for the same reasons)

-- 
thomas koenig, ph.d.
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/mmethods/staff/thomas/

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