[pct-l] Facebook advantages

[Anthony Biegen]

Brick gave a history of electronic mailing lists but he left out a few
things. Yes the list serve was invented before the world wide web existed.
Yes, there was no www at the front of addresses. The WWW added a lot of
features that didn't exist before then such as browsers and oh my goodness,
pictures! Yes there were no pictures on the internet in fact there were no
jpegs since the format didn't exist. The only limited form of communication
was the printed word. That was an improvement over nothing but only
slightly. Psychologist will tell you that we get a great deal of
information about the intent of someones words from the inflections in
their voice, cues in their faces and body language. All of those are
missing on list serves.

That lack of visual and auditory cues means that often intent and mood has
to be guessed at sometimes inaccurately. This creates a psychological
separation between the speaker and their audience. The separation sometimes
causes a breakdown in social norms and courtesies. Just as there is a
social separation between you and the person who cuts you off in their car
on your way to work. You are more likely to make judgements, use
inappropriate symbols and use words you might not to the person's face.

On List serve the separation is even greater and thus the birth of the
Troll. Trolls are people who thrive on that separation. It gives them
imaginary power over others. They can say what they want with no
consequences and feed their deprived egos by insulting and tormenting
people that they will never have to meet.

Facebook has many issues but one of the best things about it is how they
deal with Trolls. If someone says something you don't like, there is a
little x on the upper right hand corner of the post where you can block
that post. Poof, it is gone from your view. You don't have to see it again.
But they take ti a couple of steps further. If you feel that this person is
a Troll and is adding no value you can block that person. By blocking that
person, not only does that post disappear, everything that that person has
ever written and posted is wiped from your personal universe. In fact they
will no longer see any of your posts (so they can't get back at you) and
they won't know that you blocked them. You just voted them off the island
and out of your universe. Now you can go back to conversing civilly with
your friends. Since you don't post with your email address, the person you
blocked can't hunt you down and harass you through email.

With a list serve, it's not that easy. If the list has a moderator you can
appeal to the moderator to remove that person from the list and hope that
the moderator agrees. This depends on the moderator being a neutral and
unbiased person. Of course, there is no King Solomon out there; we all have
our biases. At least you can make the request.

>>Matt Signore <mpsignore at gmail.com> wrote:

>>I'm not kidding even a little bit. Diane will often precede her posts
with.  " I have never done <insertrandomanything>. However, I >>would do
this".  That it is a case of the blind misleading the blind? on about 15%
of her posts which make up about 90% of the >>word count on the list.  She
has some valid points but sifting through a senior thesis to find out her
opinion on hitch hiking as a >>man is BOOOOORING and useless.  Because
unless I am wrong she is a woman.  Meet her in person and she is a wall
flower >>and doesn't say a word.  Put her behind the keyboard, and she is
the end all be all of sage hiking advice.  Whether it is conjecture >>or
experience it isn't worth sifting through the word count.

>>There is a true value in the art world regarding "white space".  The same
applies to writing.  There is such a thing as a bullet list.


I took exception to this post for several reasons:
1. Diane is my SO and I know that she is a good person who spends a lot of
time and effort trying to help other hikers with their questions.
2. The post was in a thread that had nothing to do with what he was
complaining about - trimming your posts.
3. Matt has never met Diane so any conjecture as to her personality is
conjecture and dishonest.
4. He attempts to demean her experience without knowing anything about it
(blind leading the blind).
5. He makes some vague sexist remark about her being a woman.
6. It is just downright mean-spirited and cold.

I appealed to Brick, the moderator of this list serve. Brick listened to my
complaint but since Brick is a 'letter of the law' type of person, he
couldn't see any formal rules that were broken. He is correct of course.
There are no rules on this forum to block this type of behavior.

Unfortunately this is not the first time this has happened on PCT-L and it
will continue to happen since the nature of the list serve sets up a
perfect place for Trolls to flourish. Fortunately there are other places to
interact with PCT hikers and I see participation on the Facebook pages
growing quickly. There you can see people actually hiking the trail, asking
for help and getting it from other hikers with more experience, pictures -
up to the minute pictures - of current hikers and their experiences on the
trail. It's a viable option.

Hope to see most of you on the trail this year,

TrailHacker