People know the transformation of a human that once was a pedestrian and becomes, once seated in a car, a truly different person. Its like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide.
The same seems to happen to people once they sit behind a desk and spend their hour/days on a computer.
My latest example was in a newsgroup the other day. I posted a question and, god forbid, i misspelled a word. So what happened next was that someone said politely to use a spellchecker and hit enter. But after that message instead of getting an answer to my original message it was only about the misspell. Typically troll situation.
Now i now my skills are not that high and i make mistakes. So what. Everyone does that. What gets on my nerves is, that some people feel obligated to be a teacher and correcting everyone.
Would you tell in person another person, hey you misspelled that word. Let me help you. In a sense this is actually rude to say, but on the internet there are no rules anymore so it seems.
There is nothing wrong in helping someone to correct mistakes, but i think nowadays its just really bad.
Sadly there are no net rules anymore. Anyone can call someone else whatever he likes, or troll about someone or bully.
I really narrowed my circles down to which forums i post or what blog i may post a thought. Years ago i was in a newsgroup active and even though it was in my native language, no one really cared if a word was misspelled. I wonder why some people care about it anyway.
Anyway, my point is that people behave very different in a virtual environment than in real life. Most people would not talk the way they write to each other. We are afterall a very social species and depend on communication.
Not sure if i am the only one that experienced such behaviors. Well, at least i did not get bullied so far. Hurray.
p.s. no its not in this forum. No worries, because i always got treated well here.
Dear Joerg. Sorry to hear that. It is common.
What could we recall? Once where warriors. Once there were netiquettes. I major organizations there are courses in communication with email. The written word is a very dangerous beast. As the reader cannot see the facial expression of the writer, nor the intonation and as people do not accept smilies in the context of irony, there is growing intolerance an mobbing.
When a thing like this happens the easiest way out is to kindly recall that you are the thread owner and that your politely ask people to answer only the original question (as long as they do not have too much time on their hands). If still this goes on, you post thread closed and…open another one. Eventually, if you post the exactly same question this time without typo, if they go to bully, they will probably be moderated. If not change forum, anyway one does frequent a forum for solutions, not to be bothered.
Remember, following the science of communication, a conflict cannot be sustained if one of the two parties does not agree on having it. Therefor it is possible by moving correctly to interrupt such a dynamic.
I dedicate to you the citation of Aesop on my profile. After this experience you may well agree.
Have a good time, just do not care.
Well, first i ignored it, but over time it grow in me. Normally one should just really disregard any of these insults. On the other hand it is of course legitimate to tell some one that there is an error, but then again why would some bother if one ask a question.
Now if the sentence is build that it does not make sense, this needs some clarification. I know i build sometimes sentences that make no sense. Normally this is due the fact that not even me is taking its time to re-read a text before sending.
Right now i had to spellcheck two words (thanks firefox), but more to the point. I think that people, at least some, found their new purpose not to enrich peoples life but instead to ruin their day.
I think i may speak better than i am writing but well…
Anyway, there are also other behaviors i am seeing on the internet that turns me really off. If you read blog and you read the comments, it shows sometimes how people want to present themselves in public.
Oh, yes i remember the time when there were netiquettes in place. Quite a long time ago i suppose. Nttp died for me a long time ago. I just checked last time to see what german groups are active. Not a lot anymore. Fido is essentially gone so is Z-Net. Its now more organization groups like this one or binaries. The rest is filled with spam anyway.
Last time, that has actually nothing to do with internet, i have seen a guy paying stuff at a checkout with his iPhone on the ears. Maybe i am old school, but i think that is rude too. There is no call so important that you can not make eye to eye contact where it is needed. But i think i am just old school.
Anyway, thanks for the response and hope other can tell their stories. It may be worth sharing.
Look at this way, and maybe it will help: That person doesn’t have anything better to do and maybe needs a life. On the other hand, you are wise enough to let the trivial things go and have a life.
> Anyway, there are also other behaviors i am seeing on the internet that
> turns me really off. If you read blog and you read the comments, it
> shows sometimes how people want to present themselves in public.
Because it is public, but it is also anonymous. Or it feels like that. The
worst that can happen is that they ban you, but you can not be called to
duel at first light
> Oh, yes i remember the time when there were netiquettes in place. Quite
> a long time ago i suppose. Nttp died for me a long time ago. I just
> checked last time to see what german groups are active. Not a lot
> anymore. Fido is essentially gone so is Z-Net. Its now more organization
> groups like this one or binaries. The rest is filled with spam anyway.
Fidonet! I still use it. There is where I learnt “good manners”. It is
dying, of course, but we are still there.
> Last time, that has actually nothing to do with internet, i have seen a
> guy paying stuff at a checkout with his iPhone on the ears. Maybe i am
> old school, but i think that is rude too. There is no call so important
> that you can not make eye to eye contact where it is needed. But i think
> i am just old school.
I stop talking at that minute. The call might be important, but I can’t do
both things at the same time, and it is not very polite, as you say. More
often I hang the call if I can.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
It turns out that creatures of species **** sapiens are wild beasts with a thin veneer of civilization. When they sense that they are anonymous, they often lose that thin veneer and the wild beast emerges.
Addendum: This is absurd. I post the species name for humans, and find the first word of that replaced by asterisks. Are biological technical terms censored here? (Yes, I realize the word also has a slang use, and presumably the over-reaching censors were concerned about that use. But it is still absurd).
On Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:26:02 +0000, JoergJaeger wrote:
> Sadly there are no net rules anymore.
Someone posited a theory about the perceived rudeness to me years ago -
that people have a ‘tact’ filter. Some people filter inbound, and some
people filter outbound. (There are rare types who filter both ways or
not at all as well)
Think of it like a firewall that does both ingress and egress filtering.
Some people normally think and decide not to say something because it
might offend. That’s an outbound filter at work.
Some people take what’s coming inbound to them and don’t assign any
malice to it. That’s inbound filtering.
Things can get dicey when people who filter outbound and people who
filter inbound start talking. The outbound filtering person doesn’t want
to offend the inbound filtering person, and the inbound filtering person
assumes the other person is doing the same.
Fireworks ensue.
The post count in alt.flame goes up another order of magnitude.
All because people perceive the world through their own set of filters
and don’t (often enough) consider that the other side of the conversation
has a different perspective on the world.
Sometimes other users just get up on the wrong side of bed, and one can observe with time that they meant nothing by it. Sometimes they even apologize afterward (I think I have to have the forum record for apologies for being grumpy ) …
Don’t forget, as a webased user on some forums (such as ours), you also often have an ignore list in your preferences that YOU control, and those who only have time to comment on one’s spelling can easily be put on such a list. Outside this virtual internet world, in real life social circles, we often gravitate to those with whom our personality meshes with better … its only in professional work (where we are paid) that we often do not have that ‘ignore’ luxury. But in that case we are ‘paid’ to put up with the roughness.
I use the ‘ignore list’ extensively to help me maintain my temperament.
Critical or Abusive remarks by some can simply betray their lack of education.
It’s a diverse environment here at openSUSE too and the English forum is frequented by users from many different languages.
Some do better than others.
I just remind myself that it’s way better than any pathetic attempt I could make in their language.
@hendersj: I see you enjoy the theory of communication as much as I do. @oldcpu: I try not to use the ignore list, because, even when tough, we should be able to handle critiques (even mean one). And sometimes the person that posts something today deserving and screaming to be put on the ignore list, tomorrow might be author of a valuable contribution.
@Joerg: what I have noticed over the years is that there exists a “conflict of cultures” which BTW IMO is not a war, and it comes rightly from the filters. In some society it is perfectly normal to quote certain things, use certain ways of saying or use pictures that in others are reason for - to say the minor - causing a major stabbing at a bar and a riot in the street. This is an aspect, a stressing one, of the globalization. As the argument goes, if you begin to filter with this in mind, outbound, you may well be victim of auto-censorship. In this cases I prefer who is offending PROVIDED the person is intelligent enough to see a bad dynamic. Often explaining the misunderstanding makes you then learn something about the others view, makes you aware of using a better wording and also gives you opportunity to have a better mastery of wording in the future. By maintaining the content you are willing to stand for. An ignore list does not offer several of these benefits.
It is a pain though
I don’t see how it could be misunderstood. Ah, possibly irony in humour isn’t understood by all nations e.g. thinking of one very large nation in particular, and at least another smaller one.
It’s called bullying! There is no good explanation for that. Consider it
an aggressive behavior to mark one’s territory and mates, like dogs
pissing at poles and trees.
–
@~@ You have the right to remain silence.
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stakanov, good on ya ! … not all of us have your patience.
But I don’t put people on the ignore list to avoid criticism. I want to be clear there.
Some people are just plain rude, they contribute nothing, and they know the technique to stay right on the edge of our forum rules, balanced right on the edge of being banned … and they do so by borderline abusive but very subtle insulting behavour …not critical … no … very subtle insulting that they know their target will ‘feel’ and no one else. IMHO the best way to deal with that is to ignore such behaviour as it is not designed to critic, it is designed to insult while staying within the forum rules … and and EASY way to insure one can ignore them is to put them on the ‘ignore list’. I recommend that approach to anyone who is being ‘targetted’ or ‘stalked’ and YES we do have forum members who enjoy ‘stalking’ each other in a subtle manner.
First off, i thank everyone for speaking up. There are a lot of good ideas around and some i was not even aware off.
I noticed that younger people have a different perspective on how to interact with each other than older folks. But in the dark rooms of the internet like in bulks of people, rules don’t apply anymore or so it seems.
Critique is fine with me. I can handle that, but if a unknown person writes (in my case) that he may or may not be the grammar police than this turns me off. It is no help and just humiliates a person in public.
Sadly, i am not good at it to just forget things so i have to train that.
@canislycan this was a really good video. It really shows that ones problems are sometimes minor or silly in comparison. He seems to be very happy. Such a good story.
@robin_listas i knew that. i wanted to reply a ‘doh’ but the forum was offline yesterday. I could not reach it. Btw. did you check the english fido groups? Not sure about them, but the german ones do not seem to have a lot of traffic. If there is little traffic i usually don’t bother.
@oldcpu i have not seen it as an option for myself to blacklist people. But it is an idea that certainly helps. Especially in newsgroups it seems a good option.
@hendersj I need to re-read that post. It sounds interesting but it did not sink in right now. Brain is tired at the moment so i will read it later again.
In conclusion to myself i think i need to learn to stay above things like that. The internet will not change, but i am more selective what forum i join or follow.
) …