Why I discuss things on Twitter rather than LJ

[ciphergoth]

Because on LJ, you have to work on comments for hours in order to anticipate comment snark, a painful and largely pointless process. On Twitter, any comment snark can be answered with "I only had 140 chars!".

Unfortunately, long Twitter discussions drive people crazy.

Is there a solution?

(written as rapidly as I would a tweet, a standard I intend to stick to here as an experiment)

Comments

[booklectica]

Facebook? :)

[yoyoangel.livejournal.com]

A separate Twitter for that sort of thing?

Another problem with Twitter, though, is difficulty in following threads, seeing what's being replied to and even seeing the whole discussion if it involves people one isn't following.
I honestly think here's the best place, although I do get your point about taking longer over answers.

[andrewducker]

Yeah - Twitter lacks a "see replies to this Tweet" function, which makes conversations impossible to follow.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

I've recently started a filter for less-heavily-edited and not ironclad-argued writing, precisely to combat this problem (and for a specific project). I'll let you know how it goes.

A strongly-worded moderation policy in general might be one way to deal with the problem - something along the lines of "If I think you're being a dick, I'll delete your comment, no appeals.". Charlie Stross has something similar on his site, and whilst I initially thought it was a bit excessive, it seems to work well.

[zotz]

Most news papers could do with a policy like that. The Scotsman, in particular.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised the Grauniad wasn't the first to come to mind.

(Maybe it's time for a return to "letters to the editor" etiquette - your comment appears if it's interesting, and otherwise not.)

[zotz]

I've never been quite as appalled by the comments on the Guardian's stories. Maybe that's just me. The etiquette suggestion sounds like a move the right way - or at least "it'll appear if it's not actively moronic", perhaps.

[ex-pipistre.livejournal.com]

This was a big problem at the Argus, the local paper in Brighton. They had no policy on screening/deleting offensive comments- with entirely predictable results.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

For a happy moment I thought you were suggesting this should apply to actual copy. Which wouldn't be a bad idea.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, a lot of people seemed to abandon LJ when the snark/drama got too high.

It then dropped a lot, (for me, anyway), back to reasonable levels again. In fact, people have been pretty polite most of the time for the last few months.

I think there was some kind of memetic purge, and then the pressure dropped again :->

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

Use LJ and have standard disclaimer. People who snark for the sake of it can fuck off.

[booklectica]

Compose all your posts in length of 140 characters, *and* impose the same constraint on all comments. :)

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

Seems like an obvious case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Don't like snarky comments, so avoid having any (usable) comments at all.

[take this with a pinch of salt; it's from an increasingly bitter Twitter-hater, annoyed at all the potentially-interesting discussions crippled by taking place on Twitter]

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

Hell: I use twitter and I agree with you [laughs]

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I've had some pretty good discussions on Twitter.

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

Well, OK. I've never figured out how to follow discussions on twitter without endless clicking back-and-forth, but that might be simply my ignorance.

Even so, it seems hopeless for discussions involving more than 2 people. I want threads that can be separated from everything else going on, that can be referred back to later, that I can join in with without already knowing all the participants. And, of course, where I have enough characters to say something beyond the phatic and the banal.

I do realize I'm fighting a losing battle here, and possibly just demonstrating that I've reached the point of old-fogeyhood. But I think for now I'll keep (mostly) away from twitter, spend my online time elsewhere, and hope the mainstream returns to continuous prose in a year or two :)

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Me too, including quite complex theological/philosophical/political ones. I know I sometimes say "can't do this in 140 chars", but usually the real issue is "can't do this in 140 chars in the time available", or occasionally "can't do this in 140 chars with this specific person because there's too much context." And if time's the issue, I really shouldn't be doing it on LJ either.

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

Must confess: I loathe discussing things on twitter. I am far too loquacious for 140 characters. Especially if I don't know exactly what I'm trying to say.

I miss LJ. I'm still here, still reading, still posting, still commenting. I wish everyone would come back. It's incredibly sad.

Also, do you really take time and effort and work over LJ posts? I don't think most people do [laughs] I only do if they're about something; serious posts is different. Most of the time, though, I just bang it out...

(I need a suitably word-loving sesquipedalian icon.)

[lolliepopp.livejournal.com]

I see your problem, but for those of us who follow our mates on twitter and these mates are fond of discussions, it's difficult to filter them out.

On LJ I can see (for example) "Oh look, Ciphergoth is having a discussion about religion/politics/Dawkins/geek stuff/voting etc etc, I won't read that" and scroll on through. On twitter I don't have that luxury. Trying to skimread Twitter is impossible as you miss updates from people as they are hidden between the discussion of others. And trying to put it all in a proper order is very hard.

I don't want to unfollow these people as I do read their more personal updates and would miss those ones, but the political discussions that rage on for hours and hours, filling your screen with 140ch sections of the discussion I can't understand or follow anyway, is making it difficult.

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

Would you be happier blogging in a system with comment karma, so we could all vote down snarky comments and relieve some of the (imagined) pressure to deal with them? I've found the system on hacker news (http://news.ycombinator.com), where negatively-voted comments are displayed in progressively fainter text, is pretty effective in damping down nastiness.

Or maybe some way for readers to note that they like a post, without having to dream up some excuse to post an approving comment?

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Yes, I want all these things! And I want a client, like how we used to have clients in the USENET days, so that there's competition to provide a better experience that's not tainted by network effects.

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

There are about a zillion LJ clients!

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

But do they help you follow discussion threads?

[calum]

There are even Twitter clients that support threaded discussions, I believe. I havent tried them (as I hate Twitter..)

[andrewducker]

Not for reading, there aren't. They're all for posting, friending, etc. aren't they?

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's time for a return to usenet? That and irc, between them, seem to provide many of the features we spend our time grumbling about the lack of on the web.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Spam killed USENET. At this stage building a successor would be a better bet I think.

[josington.livejournal.com]

I once heard of a thing called Usenet II, but I don't think it ever got off the ground.

[cyberinsekt.livejournal.com]

I can't believe that if we want constructive rather than confrontational discussion then Usenet could be the answer. 10 years in the alt.* hierarchy will give you that sort of impression.

[calum]

Sure - its your journal, you can moderate comments if you want.. Genuine observations/corrections are fine, snark for the sake of snark can be hidden, deleted, threads closed..

You have much more control over the response than you do on Twitter. Question is, do you want to use it?

[palmer1984.livejournal.com]

OMG it's been so nice not to have to deal with comment snark! I hadn't realised how annoying it was!

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

Delete all rude comments just like you'd escort a rude guest to the door at a party.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

The problem isn't "you suck" comments. The problematic comments aren't from arseholes - they're from good friends, who nonetheless can sometimes assume that any omission indicates something I haven't thought about or don't care about.

[calum]

You can also reply to the comment, then screen it - along the lines of

"Taking this private because... "

May not solve your problem though

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

But on Twitter, I don't have to fight with bad comments - the assumption just doesn't get made in the first place.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Another issue is, I prefer brief replies, but on LJ they're perceived as hostile, and I avoid that on Twitter too...

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

I rarely find what you say rude, you could teach classes on Netiquette.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Hmm, do you read the threads where I discuss, for example, religion? I'm not sure that's how everyone sees me!

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

Naw, usually those conversations aren't so interesting for me, so I stop reading.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Not everyone who reads what I write in those threads considers me a perfect exemplar of good etiquette!

[lilithmagna.livejournal.com]

Twitter wrong. Haiku right. Lets' hear it for Van Rumpuy!

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

That's not a haiku! It has too few syllables, and names no seasons :-)

[adelenedawner.livejournal.com]

A few of the blogs that I follow end each post with a section saying what kinds of comments they do or don't want to receive. Eg:

Comment zen for today …
This stuff is from my notes and unedited for coherency. :)
I’m not sharing this stuff because I’d like advice because I don’t actually. I’m sharing it because I think the process is useful.
And I think some of these questions are useful. So even if you haven’t done any Shiva Nata today or ever, you can play with these too if you like.
(From The Fluent Self (http://www.fluentself.com/), which I follow because the author occasionally has useful wordings of concepts.)

That appears to be useful, but none of the blogs I've seen it used on are ones that I would expect to have many snarky comments anyway. It might be worth a try, anyway.