Dear all,
I think Don's recent posting about list conversations is an ideal account of how best to take advantage of the useful disruptions on the list.
Much of the benefit of the list, for me, happens off-list. It's not that I have large numbers of private chats - in fact, the ratio of on-list to off-list for me would be about 200 (on) to 1 (off).
Most of the best friends I have in the world are people who very strongly disagree with me about lots of things except we agree with each other about how to disagree. If these people did not stand their ground and have things out with me, I would be a very diminished person. How we go about such confrontations with ideas as individuals and groups is of course personal and cultural. I happen to come from a very disagreeable family - we argue about everything but it never comes to blows and no-one is allowed to huff off.
Several of my research papers have taken major advantage of confrontations on the list. Don, for example, has had his responses to our list conversations quoted in papers of mine. I thank Don for his generosity in standing his ground and the way he stands his ground.
If you follow the list in terms of how people use the list, you can see major design authors come and go as they tweak ideas and concepts by opening up a topic on the list which then helps firm up their ideas. They then publish the mature version of their ideas in their books. This is one of the most important uses I see for the list. I would name this use as the Post Grad Seminar use. When you have a collective of PhD candidates, this is how senior researchers are able to use the collective.
Sounds unethical? We all want to be used - none of us want to be abused. I spend lots of time with Post Grads helping them understand how they can use me as a voice in their discourse. They own the discourse, I m a friendly visitor. Any and all ideas that emerge in this discourse belong to them.
cheers
keith
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