"Unbelievably friendly people, even service people who don’t speak English and are dealing with an idiot (me) who doesn’t speak Japanese."
Before I went to Japan (I've only been twice, so I don't want to make it sound like I'm an expert on the culture or anything), I never understood the difference between "polite" and "friendly." Growing up in the southern US, acting friendly is ingrained in the culture when it's not genuine. And then in the SF Bay Area, people are as a generalization unfriendly, but only because when they do put the effort into being polite, it's a genuine sign of friendship.
In Japan, I was continually struck with how people were overwhelmingly polite and gracious, but would be happy for me just to conduct my business and go away as soon as possible. I was very impressed with the people there, but it seemed like a culture that I'd have a very hard time adjusting to.
As for the "more awesome" level: the first time I went, everything seemed somehow cooler because it was so completely foreign. Not in the intimidating or the insulting "look at the strange people!" way, but in the exciting sense that despite all the familiar aspects of being in a city, the people here had a completely different way of doing things.
My most recent trip was disappointing in that just over the span of two years, Tokyo already seemed more western and Americanized. There are entire blocks of Shibuya where all the signage is in English (GAP and Apple stores), and there are areas of San Francisco that seem even more foreign and authentic.
Josh@155 "I suppose I could try and be more of an acceptable person in this crowd and not point it out, but I'd really rather not. [...]
I can be a bit of a firebrand when it comes to calling people on what I see as racist, nationalist, or homophobic behavior."
As far as I've seen, the requirements for being "an acceptable person in this crowd" are little more than "not being a total jerk." Part of that is reading other people's responses and engaging those responses, instead of immediately dismissing them ("Next question."), playing the victim card, painting yourself to be the embattled champion of truth against a closed-minded society, or making ridiculous accusations of homophobia on a forum such as this.
I realize this is more caustic and belligerent than the tone of the rest of this thread, but I get incensed whenever I see people so transparently attempting to manipulate others' sympathies and tolerance. It was tiresome enough in John Scalzi's blog linked at the top of this post. It became downright insulting when you accused him (John Scalzi!) of not being sympathetic enough to gay men.
Jon H summed it up best back in #88:
"Josh seems to think anonymous public sex in toilets is inherently part and parcel of being gay, as opposed to being a kink favored by a subset. I don't think he's doing gay people any favors on that score."
There are plenty of people, gay and straight alike, who are perfectly able to have fulfilling sexual lives without soliciting sex in public bathrooms and invading other people's privacy. Lewd conduct in public is not an inherent part of being homosexual, and it's insulting to imply in any way that it is.
You claim in #119:
"I'm not saying hitting on people this way, or any way is acceptable. It's only the discrepancy in response that gets me angry."
If that's true, then the argument is as petty and pointless as complaining about police setting up a speed trap on one highway on-ramp instead of another.
I'm surprised and disappointed that all the side-tracking didn't end with James Macdonald's comment in #79:
"Look, I'll make you a deal: I won't take a dump on the bar if you won't hit on me in the toilet. Fair enough?"
Mary Dell @ #71
I think it means to stop editing it/contributing to it/trying to fix it.
Ah. Hence all the comments about the futility of making edits that I seem to have completely overlooked. Well.
Comment 70 is under dispute because it does not meet Making Light's standards for relevance.
I must be confused as to what it means to "give up on Wikipedia," whether it means not use the site at all, or just not treat it as an authoritative encyclopedia. Because it sounds like Greg London perfectly summed it up way back in comment 3:
"It's maddening because I still go to wikipedia whenever I need to read up on some unfamiliar topic, but I do so with the filter in the back of my head that says 'This may, at most, only give me a list of places to start reading about the topic. This should not be read for learning about the topic itself, at least not without some external checks.'"
Which is good advice for any general reference work, right? I don't know how things are in academia today, but at least when I was in high school over 15 years ago, we were forbidden from citing encyclopedias as a research source.
So what are people expecting from an online version, that casts the net even wider and takes pride in the fact that anybody can edit it? Is anyone other than lazy high school students really expecting it to be an authoritative compendium of all human knowledge? If so, they should be put in charge of the entry on unfounded optimism.
Once I stopped getting frustrated at the sloppy writing and the depressingly exhaustive entries on completely non-notable topics, I was able to appreciate wikipedia for what it is: Google + context. So when Russell Letson in #67 mentions Gresham's Law, I can look it up and then nod as if I understood what he's talking about. And if I needed more, authoritative information, I'd go back to Google, but now with enough context to be able to interpret the sites that Google is giving me.
If you're expecting more than that, you're going to be disappointed. But just having that context is pretty useful.
There's one bit from the "panel discussion"/forum guidelines that didn't seem that important to me when I first read it, but now I'm wondering if it's crucial: the idea of rewarding commenters.
I was just reading a different weblog -- The Comics Curmudgeon -- and noticed that like "Making Light" it also has an active community with dozens if not hundreds of replies to each post. And the conversation is entertaining more often than not, and civil always. It's a pretty different audience than this blog's, but one thing they do have in common is that the commenters are acknowledged as being crucial to the site, and they're rewarded for "good" comments. Each week there's a "comment of the week" the site maintainer chooses and posts at the top of the main page.
I just thought it was worth pointing out that there are now two data points proving that positive reinforcement actually increases the civility and intelligence of a forum. It wasn't obvious to me, anyway -- I always assumed that as a moderator, you just let people's comments stand on their own, only replying if you disagree or have something new to add. And just saying "good comment!" or "thanks for replying" always sounded patronizing. But now I see it's crucial for building a community and keeping readers involved.
Extremely well said. You could condense the whole post down to this one insightful paragraph:
Anonymous nastiness is easy to write, and will always find an appreciative audience. I don’t care. It’s not a manifestation of the free and open discourse of the internet; it’s a thing that destroys that discourse. To be specific, it’s the same old trashmouthed bullying we all know from junior high and high school. Putting it on the net doesn’t cause it to develop any novel complexities or interesting emergent behaviors. It’s just the same old sh*t.
I don't and probably never will understand why people are so insistent on defending anonymous, cowardly, bottom-feeding garbage. And often not just defending it, but elevating it to the status of the most cherished thing on the internet.
I wonder if Norman Rockwell tried painting the "Four Freedoms" today, he'd have to add another one with some guy hunched over a computer keyboard spewing profanity.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2007 | 7 |
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