*****  To join INSNA, visit http://www.sfu.ca/~insna/  *****

I can't resist this tangential observation: Sara Kiesler has been
researching email "flaming" behavior for years.  One of her key
observations, in my opinion, is an interesting combination of two features
of emails:

1) People tend to flame more on email than they would in person
communicating about the same issues/content.

2) People tend to read more flaming into an email message than was intended
by the sender.

These two characteristics of emails, of course, combine to increase the
probability of a positive feedback loop that results in a cycle of flames
reaching higher and higher.

Just a thought...

-David



--On Friday, April 30, 2004 4:33 PM -0400 David Carpe
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> *****  To join INSNA, visit http://www.sfu.ca/~insna/  *****
>
> my apologies to barry and others, as that post was not meant to be a
> flame, nor accusatory in any such manner. i'm just trying to make a point
> that there are experts and non-experts alike communicating via this
> group. if this list is open to a wide community, then such openness
> invites immense risk in areas like spam, bothersome questions (but not
> bothersome to the inquirers!) and anything else that begets free
> electronic resources (which includes not just message listservs, but also
> boards and other tools like im, or your conferences - open to anybody
> williing to pay and travel)
>
> as for rules versus prescribing behavior, i was referring specifically to
> a comment about the 'types of questions' or 'researching before asking'
> comment - that's a tough one - and it assumes a level of knowledge with
> the asking party (or to be more precise, these folks might not even know
> how to find such information or answers, hence the post to the list!). a
> rule might be "try to research your question before you ask it" versus
> "do not ask your question if you have not already conducted research on
> the question" - i see the latter as a bit alienating...
>
> and no, the rules are not overly rigid. and yes, even in my short time i
> have received immensely valuable insight and response from individuals on
> this list regarding numerous questions and topics, and am greatly
> appreciative of their time.
>
> valdis' point about nascent behavior and prescribed is a great point - as
> 'social networking' software and websites (regardless of whether or not
> folks on this list see it as real SNA or not) grow in commercial
> popularity, i can only imagine that many new folks will discover this
> list, including developers, consultants, money people (analysts,
> investors and spectators) and so on - all of whom will have a (hopefully)
> normal behavior profile, but all of whom might be asking oddball
> questions, promoting gatherings, services, or generally behaving
> differently given their needs or goals...
>
> from the outside, as a very new member of this list, i'm unclear about the
> size of this group though suspect that one resolve might be the formation
> (formal or informal) of lists for special interests (e.g. one for
> commercial/consulting and one for only academic and so on)...if this
> constituency is large enough to support such vehicles, than any individual
> might join one, some or all such lists and opt-in for exposure to all of
> the behavior. in this regard, one very easy solution is a closed list
> (which might leave me out, i have no idea) for academics only, those are
> easy and free with tools from sites like yahoogroups, easy to moderate
> entry, to moderate first postings (versus content, just the first posts to
> weed out machine subscriptions) - or the list program that is already
> being used, no idea how it's set up for administration (it should just be
> easy, that's the point) - of course that brings up the greatest issue for
> argument in any such structure - appointing the influencer(s) responsible
> for safeguarding the interests of members, knowing who to let in and who
> to keep out...
>
> now i'm just rambling. again barry, that post was not meant to offend.
> -dave
>
> At 03:23 PM 4/30/2004, Valdis wrote:
>> *****  To join INSNA, visit http://www.sfu.ca/~insna/  *****
>>
>> I agree with Barry. The rules he offers make sense me -- they are not
>> overly rigid -- just guidelines.
>>
>> The larger we become, the less free-form we can be.  The trick is
>> finding the right balance between emergent  and prescribed behavior.
>>
>> Valdis
>
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------------------------------
David Krackhardt, Professor of Organizations, Editor of JoSS
The Heinz School of Public Policy, and
    The Tepper School of Business
Carnegie Mellon University
website: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~krack
JoSS web: http://www2.heinz.cmu.edu/project/INSNA/joss/
           (Erdos# = 2)

_____________________________________________________________________
SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social
network researchers (http://www.sfu.ca/~insna/). To unsubscribe, send
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