Thread Mode Falsely Blamed

LowQualityPagesOnWiki? are usually blamed on ThreadMode, but the idea deserves further critical examination, because it may be something growing in ThreadMode, and not ThreadMode itself, that is at fault. We should not discard the loam in order to rid the garden of weeds. But to surgically remove weeds, we have to be able to positively identify them.

Thread mode going on and on

Some threads make for good reading, so going on and on is a plus, not a minus, for the same reason that the best books disappoint so vexingly by ending when they do. Of course, no Wiki page is infinite, so this problem is not that the end is unreachable. If by going on and on, a thread continues to surface interesting facts and relationships, it's doing well. If it fails to do this, yet also fails to summarize itself, and still cranks on redundantly, it's doing badly. The problem is not that it continues, but that it's stuck in a rut. It's like a tire spinning in one place. There are two choices - increase traction and move on, or accept where we are as the resting place for this thread. If by patient jiggling, we can't get the car moving again, it's wise to adopt the second choice. So, in mini-summary, succession of thread activity is not the problem.

Polarized opinion

"I disagree that polarized opinion is the problem." But I'm not going to stick on that point, I'm going to change levels to see if I can get beyond it in order to unpolarize it. Unproved Theorem: All instances of polarized opinion resolve to irreconcilably different personal preferences. The goal should be to discover those, leaving newly discovered areas of general agreement in the wake. Polarization accounts for motivation, so removing it from our garden is like removing sunshine. By different analogy, you can't see yourself unless you stand opposing the mirror. Don't get hung up on the reflective surface. Look beyond that for the interesting clues. Back to the discussion metaphor, escaping the imprisonment of polarized opinion means splitting the critical hairs of contention. This is the very process through which insights are generated.

Proselytism

When emotion (emphasis) rises without an increase in discussion content, you have a stuck discussion (see above). Some people will respond in this fashion, as if imperatives were truly causal activities in a free world. In fact, most will respond this way to a degree when their core faiths seem to be challenged. This is a signal to try looking at the discussion differently, but need not spell the death of the discussion. All proselytizers, myself included, have an opportunity (through loving, constructive feedback by our peers) to learn to recognize this pattern in ourselves, and to manage it to greater effectiveness. Avoiding the topics that push our buttons is turning away from life.

Discouraging constructive debate

As in poor forms of interaction discouraging those who expect better. This is a matter of perspective, as alluded above. Motivational overload and underload both lead to a sort of destruction. Discouragement is an individual response with its own energy encapsulated. If a thread is indeed discouraging to a participant, and purely discouraging, that participant will probably just leave. However, the real pain is felt when discouragement is incomplete, in which case the turmoil is internalized inside the participant. Realize that this is a healthy dynamic. If frustration persists, recognize that as the sign that you've decided to stick around, then make the best of it. You may use, but are not limited to, the techniques below.

Key techniques

The key techniques emerging from the above discussion can be concisely and abstractly stated as changing levels. One variant is to burrow down first, to see if meaning can be found in deeper detail. Going up to reframe may be a final step, leading to the decision to "agree to disagree", or it may be a way of finding new ground into which to sink.

Not resolvable by rational discourse

"Rational" is the product of your individual faith system. There is no complete and universal rationality, but there are other levels than the one on which you are spinning your wheels, in which greater commonality may be found. Two people locked in unresolvable, irrational discourse should be self-aware enough to recognize that and maybe invite an outsider to help reframe the problem at hand. Things that are truly not resolvable should be simply personal preferences. When there are no differences left besides personal preferences, that signals that the discussion has almost lived out its lifetime, and may signal that gears can be shifted.

"Rational" is the product of your individual faith system.

Sorry, I have to disagree. I happen to have faith in rationality, but rationality also happens to be a universal. No meaningful discourse is possible unless we agree that it should be rational discourse. I concede that my own particular manner of reasoning might not always be correct, that I might sometimes (and indeed often) let my emotions override the rational part of me, and that my knowledge is too imperfect for perfect "rationality" to be anything but an unattainable dream. But everything, including personal preferences and issues, is subject to rational scrutiny.

By the way, is irrationality the problem, or is it rationality that's the problem? Somehow I think things would work more smoothly if we were just exchanging poems in counterpoint than trying to justify all these logical cases.

Possibly. I don't think I can answer the "big" philosophical questions, or give a considered argument as to where GoedelsTheorem fits in. When I say (here and elsewhere) that we must be rational, I intend this to have a very specific and restricted meaning. I mean that whenever we are "debating" something (as opposed to e.g. exchanging poems, or just having a laugh) we must agree to do this as if we were scientists defending theories. We must present hard data (or admit that we are speculating in the absence of hard data), we must make our inferences clear (I think this, therefore I also think that), we may not resort to AdHominem or StrawMan arguments, and we may use techniques of scientific or philosophical writing (reductio ad absurdum, etc.). This is what I mean by "rational discourse", and it's all I mean by it.

Summary

When a writer working alone gets WritersBlock, s/he usually produces nothing, and punishes him/herself over the whole dynamic. The ThreadMode problems introduced in the quote are DistributedWritersBlock? problems, where silence is replaced by the chatter of the internal battle (none of which is deemed fit to print), and the punishment is bounced back and forth like a tennis ball. Clearly, these problems are not intrinsic in ThreadMode, but they can certainly find expression there.

The real problems are stuckness, in which participants may not even realize they are stuck, and the tendency to blame and punish other human beings for the frustrations that are inherent in trying to deeply understand the complex things in which we are interested. Both, in limited quantities, are signs of a vital system, and both are also signs for the need for gentle intervention. If we focus our attention on learning to get unstuck, then we will also prevent some of the frustrations that lead to destructive ad hominem diversion. But those diversions will still occur, and so a SenseOfHumor is the ultimate fallback technique.

Epilogue

Meanwhile, DeleteThesePages has been updated to reflect the well-intended and well-thought-out criticism that it was an instance of ThreadModeFalselyBlamed.

WaldenMathews -&- LaurentBossavit

No taboo on ThreadMode on this page, huh?

Well, it kinda goes along with the notion that ThreadMode in and of itself isn't bad, and makes for an entertaining presentation of apparently contradictory opinions converging toward amicable disagreement, a.k.a. synthesis.

I particularly like the way a nonaggressive dialogue segued into a constructive critique then morphed into a WikiPairing of sorts.

Brilliant. Well done.

I want to pick up on Laurent's earlier

: My (admittedly heavy-handed) summary of DeleteThesePages ...

On the contrary, I thought you did a great initial job with DeleteThesePages. The difficult job. The one where we all need to trust the editor the most, because this was the BigReduction? on which all further improvement would be based. I looked at the previous ThreadMess immediately afterwards, in EditCopy. I thought you'd given a great summary, but not surprisingly a slightly lop-sided one. It was dead easy for me, much easier than for you, to edit the last section to modify what I thought was too negative or final a tone there. I appreciate your humility in calling your part heavy-handed. But I have come to hate spectators, many of whom don't seem able to refactor a single paragraph in a balanced way, criticizing the "heavy-handedness" of others. We need much more of these radical reductions. Nobody will ever get the balance totally "right". What's important is to take risks that help others vastly ImproveSignalAndReadability. You achieved that here. Well done indeed.

I wanted to be lucid about the way I went about editing that page. I proceeded in the same manner with JesusAndProgrammers and got flamed for it; I'm adjusting my strategy to be milder as a result, and will keep on adjusting until I find the happy medium. If there is no happy medium, I'll keep on adjusting my behavior dynamically to suit current and/or local conditions.

... the best books disappoint so vexingly by ending when they do.

I don't believe I've ever felt this way. I have said "Wow, that short book was great, I can't wait to find another book by this author," but I haven't ever felt that a book was too short. I have read way too many books that were too long, though I don't often finish them.

Oddly enough, I have heard pop songs that were way too short. I can't quite put my finger on what would make the difference.