Philosophical Banter

[MrC]

It feels like a number of posts in various forums are digressing towards philosophical banter. I think they are very interesting, yet it seems the noise level has gone up a fair amount.

Would folks be ok with creating new threads in General (eg. the kitchen sink) for such topics? Or perhaps a new Philosophical Banter forum?

[sgm]

....digressing towards philosophical banter....

Talk about loaded words!

First, "Digressing"??.....an immediate value judgment.

Second, "philosophical"?.....so if a conversation digresses it becomes useless which is a synonym for philosophical, right? I can't wait to tell a couple of professors I know in the University of Washington Philosophy department.

Third, "banter"??....my dictionary defines that word as meaning "Light teasing repartee". IOW, light party talk more appropriate to a Victorian parlor than here I take it.

[radish]

First, "Digressing"??.....an immediate value judgment.

Not at all. Digress means to move away from the subject at hand - it does not suggest that the topic moved to is unimportant, simply that it is not topical. The subject at hand in this forum is the Squeezebox and associated technologies. Not philosophy.

Second, "philosophical"?.....so if a conversation digresses it becomes useless which is a synonym for philosophical, right?

I think you're reading way too much into this.

I can't wait to tell a couple of professors I know in the University of Washington Philosophy department.

I can't believe you just name-dropped a university department


But I digress (sorry). To get back to the point on hand, I would support MrC's suggestion. It seems that once any forum reaches a certain size there needs to be a general topic area not related to the actual subject matter, a sign of maturity!

[MrC]

No loaded words meant in a harmful way. I was being playful when I chose the word banter as meaning good-humored, playful conversation.

My thoughts were that if we could try to keep a little separatation between the generally interesting discussions from the requests for help, or architectural issues, that folks would be better served. Its ok if you feel otherwise.

[pfarrell]

On Tue, 2005-11-08 at 20:30 -0800, MrC wrote:
> No loaded words meant in a harmful way. I was being playful when I
> chose the word banter as meaning good-humored, playful conversation.
>
> My thoughts were that if we could try to keep a little separation
> between the generally interesting discussions from the requests for
> help, or architectural issues, that folks would be better served. Its
> ok if you feel otherwise.

The traffic volume on this list/forum is what I'd call heavy,
well over 100 messages a day. I remember when Sean
claimed that the list was low volume.

I'm of two views, self conflicting as it were. On one hand,
the volume will lower naturally over time, we just had the SB3
product release/announcement, and there is always a huge spike
when a new version comes along. I think the volume will
decrease to an acceptable level pretty quickly, especially
if we don't have meta postings like this one.

And while I love to snark about iPods or the stupidity of the RIAA,
and these topics really are off topic for a SqueezeBox/SlimServer
mailing list, so they should be banished to a "coffeehouse" type
subforum, I'm not sure that creating a "banter" forum/list
is a good idea. Such lists tend to degrade into noise and
politics, soon to be followed by a descent described in
Goodwin's Law. I think the internet has a sufficient number
of blogs, forums and newsgroups dedicated to nothing, already.

--
Pat
http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimse...msoftware.html

[Bruce Hartley]

I'm not so sure.

I agree that if you have an "intermission" type forum (name stolen from Remote Central) then it will degrade to lots of political and nosense posting. However, you don't have to go there.

On the upside, I think it increases the felling of community when people can just chat.
It's not really my thing, but I can see why it would be popular, and if you don't like it, don't go into that forum.

As long as slimdevices can spare the disc and bandwidth, what's the harm ?

[kdf]

On 8-Nov-05, at 11:47 PM, Bruce Hartley wrote:

>
> As long as slimdevices can spare the disc and bandwidth, what's the
> harm ?
>
strictly as devil's advocate...
if some were to start the chatting on a forum other than the one slated
for 'useless chat', you then face the arguments between those who want
to enforce the 'use this forum for that' vs the 'lighten up' crowd.

the decision is always complex.

-k

[Fifer]

I tend towards the view that, where a forum brings together a group of people with a shared interest (as here), it's almost inevitable that through time, some form of community will evolve and many of the members will want to expand the scope of discussion within the community. I think it's wise to separate those discussions from the core topics so people can avoid them if they wish to. The upside is that the sense of community can be reinforced. The downside is that more (and more robust) moderating resource might be required.

The decision does belong with the site owners ultimately.

[MrC]

I was actually trying to suggest that we each take responsibility for trying to recognize when we're tending to migrate from the posters main point/question, and volunteer a move to a new appropriately titled thread (perhaps in General). There are a number of lists which embrace this ideal.

I posted this in the General list/forum, but it was actually intended for diverging discussions mostly in the other lists (didn't want to cross / multiple post).

[sgm]

I suspect most posters already attempt to take on the responsibility you are seeking; however, you can't legislate morality. Some will fall off the wagon -- even you might once or twice .

I doubt too many folks need reminding of this etiquette; so such requests really come down to requiring a policing function -- never very tasteful.

My personal objection to requests such as yours is that in the final analysis they come down to a form of censorship. I am against censorship in all of its forms. Who is going to be the judge of how far one goes before it becomes "digression"? Who decides what is "banter" vs concrete?