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Dear All

I came across this today,

http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandsci...ecial_prob.php

Given the 'nature' of some of the participants of this group, I
thought that there may be an opportunity for them to make a
contribution.

Kind regards

Bill Ramsay



Here's the text [there are links in there that you can see on the page
at the above URL]

#scio10 preparation: Is there a special problem of online civility?

Category: Blogospheric science • Communication • Politics • Reader
participation • Science Blogging Conference • Social issues
Posted on: January 3, 2010 5:50 PM, by Janet D. Stemwedel

Two weeks from today, at ScienceOnline '10, Dr. Isis, Sheril
Kirshenbaum, and I will be leading a session called "Online Civility
and Its (Muppethugging) Discontents". In preparation for this, the
three of us had a Skype conference last night, during which it became
clear to us that there are many, many interesting issues that we could
take on in this session (and that we come to the subject of online
civility from three quite different perspectives).

To try to get a feel for what issues other people (besides the three
of us) might want to discuss in this session (or on blogs, of
whatever), I'd like to bounce some questions off of the best
commenters in the blogosphere (that's you!). And where I want to start
is thinking about what assumptions might be implicit is our session
title:

- Is there some special problem of online civility (vs. offline
civility)?

* Is being civil online essentially the same as being civil in
offline engagements (whether dialogues, debates, street fights, more
unidirectional communications, or interactions not primarily aimed at
communication)?
* Is being civil online fundamentally different than being civil
in offline engagements? (If so, why? How?)
* Is being civil online different from being civil online, but
only in degree? (Again, if so, why? How?)

- To the extent that online communities and venues for interaction
reproduce the norms* off offline communities and venues for
interaction in terms of expectations for civility and politeness
(including agreed upon definitions of "civility" and "politeness"), is
this a good thing or a bad thing? (For whom?)

*Here "norms" means "what people in the community recognize they ought
to do, or not to do" rather than "whatever most people actually do".
(This is a distinction we've discussed before.)

That last question, of course, opens up the tempting and
possibly-related subject of online spaces as an opportunity to remake
the offline world. In such a project of making a new world, different
people are bound to have different desiderata, at least some of them
related to their different experiences of the offline world.

Which is to say, asking a question about what we think counts as civil
or uncivil online is bound to prompt a response along the lines of
"What do you mean we, Kemosabe?" (I first heard this question on a
Bill Cosby comedy LP, but at the moment the Google-fu required to nail
down which one to give a proper attribution is failing me.)

- What do we mean by "we" in these discussion of online civility?

- What does it mean to be "on the same team," or members of the same
"community," at least from the point of view of feeling like we're
entitled to expect a certain level of regard or kind of treatment from
each other?

- What are the prospects for successful coalition building across
fairly significant differences (which might include differences in
preferred level of "politeness" or "civility")?

- What are the prospects for successful coalition building when the
differences include not respecting other people's feelings and/or
prioritizing one's own insulation against feeling bad above everything
else?

- Are calls to be civil, discussions of tone, etc., primarily about
hurt feelings? Is casting them this way dismissive, marginalizing,
and/or factually incorrect?

- Are there particular issues for which you have no realistic
expectation that it's possible to discuss them civilly (either online,
offline, or both)? What are they, and why do you think discussing them
civilly is so frackin' hard?


Thanks in advance for your input!