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While I am one of the worst offenders in regards to reflex posting( I have given this topic much thought, hopefully, it will be enough), I do feel that from time to time, many other members does have this problem as well.

Times when we view things and make arguments for certain policy without looking into the context of the situation, such as DA's post about how nice it is for the newspaper industry to fall, arguments for combating piracy without understanding that the piracy issue might not be big enough to call for major military actions or our analysis of the H1N1 flu, when many of us end up in a panic mode without looking deeper into the whole issue.

Do you think we have a problem with making a quick judgement around here, that people failed to look deeper in the issue, or am I just making a stupid post as usual? ( I hope not.)

The key is if you make a reflective judgment you don't post for a day and then come back and see what cooler heads have to say. Also, never say something that you wouldn't say if you thought about it for a moment. The easiest way to stop this to browse while signed off so that if you want to respond, you have until the time you log on to think about whether or not what you are saying makes sense.

I'd also like to point out that this is more Off Topic than the House of Commons as it involves posting habits and not board business- although there has been several cases of people making posts that heavily out do you in a total lack of thought, like the "secret roofer conspiracy" and "all white people and cops are evil" so it could count as board business if anyone wants to cover all the members behavior, although honestly it would boil down to the pots calling the kettles black.

Humans in general have a problem with knee-jerk judgments. That's one of the reasons it's important to see what other people say, particularly those who may be closer to the problem under discussion or who are more aware of things in general, more experienced, etc.

While reflective judgment can be a very bad thing, I'd say that even worse is the inability to admit when you have done so. It is one thing to post something and then argue about it with others, but it is sometimes much, much harder to come out and say "I was wrong, it was just a stupid reflex, my bad". It takes a lot of courage and swallowing one's own pride.

Nobody is perfect and it would be foolish to expect so; that's why I'm willing to forgive and forget if someone posts a hasty judgment call on something but later corrects his (or her) error or even apologizes. That marks someone as willing to learn and move on. I take a much more dim view of the habit to defend one's quick judgment, no matter what. It's called arrogance and stupidity at worst.

It's "reflexive", not "reflective". Those two words have VERY different meanings.

I'm probably one of the more judgmental people around here and it annoys the fuck out of me when people simply jump to conclusions and post before they think. Done that myself a few times and gotten roasted for it, no big deal, but if and when it happens constantly, it gets really bloody annoying.

On many of the topics of discussion seen here, I make immediate snap judgments. Sometimes I end up changing my mind after reading, most times I don't. But unless I have something of substance related to the issue at hand to contribute, I normally don't post. Reason? It'd just be being a dittohead. Nobody needs more noise, but most of the time we need more signal. And I almost always think before I post, so that somebody may learn something useful. And if I do post something of substance, chances are that I may also get a substantive reply, allowing me to learn something.

The problem is not reflexive snap judgments per se. It's reflexive snap judgments combined with reflexive, no-thought, no-content, dittohead +1 posting.

With regard to ray245, he may be a reflex poster a lot of the time, but I'm seeing marked improvement over what he used to be like and he does try to put at least some thought to what he posts. Even if he is wrong often, or ignorant about something, often the attempt is there, especially compared to the past. With many others, can't give them as high marks for effort.

Edi wrote:It's "reflexive", not "reflective". Those two words have VERY different meanings.

Oh, sorry about that. I actually know the difference, but for some reason, this day has been full of those mistakes for me, in English, Swedish and German (happily not in Finnish...). Maybe because I've studied all three languages today and on top of that I've been reading a book about contextual legal history... Still, no excuses. Sorry about the mistake.

Edi wrote:It's "reflexive", not "reflective". Those two words have VERY different meanings.

I'm probably one of the more judgmental people around here and it annoys the fuck out of me when people simply jump to conclusions and post before they think. Done that myself a few times and gotten roasted for it, no big deal, but if and when it happens constantly, it gets really bloody annoying.

On many of the topics of discussion seen here, I make immediate snap judgments. Sometimes I end up changing my mind after reading, most times I don't. But unless I have something of substance related to the issue at hand to contribute, I normally don't post. Reason? It'd just be being a dittohead. Nobody needs more noise, but most of the time we need more signal. And I almost always think before I post, so that somebody may learn something useful. And if I do post something of substance, chances are that I may also get a substantive reply, allowing me to learn something.

The problem is not reflexive snap judgments per se. It's reflexive snap judgments combined with reflexive, no-thought, no-content, dittohead +1 posting.

With regard to ray245, he may be a reflex poster a lot of the time, but I'm seeing marked improvement over what he used to be like and he does try to put at least some thought to what he posts. Even if he is wrong often, or ignorant about something, often the attempt is there, especially compared to the past. With many others, can't give them as high marks for effort.

I am wondering if we are able to impose some sort of policy in regards to people making reflex judgement, given the fact that we did impose some rules in regards to +1 posting?

I would be better if more people can attempt to analyse the article which they posted, as opposed to using other people's articles to argue for your personal stance. ( That is something that I do have to work on as well.)

ray245 wrote:I am wondering if we are able to impose some sort of policy in regards to people making reflex judgement, given the fact that we did impose some rules in regards to +1 posting?

I would be better if more people can attempt to analyse the article which they posted, as opposed to using other people's articles to argue for your personal stance. ( That is something that I do have to work on as well.)

This point I would disagree with, as such a policy (that of blunt criticism in the form of direct mockery of one's points, or placeholders thereof) already exists.

The downside is that it does engender a viewpoint where it is perceived to be "safer" to offer criticisms rather than ways to improve, though this is mostly ameliorated by simple introspection of one's behavior here. The upside to this is that few rules to "encourage" proper posting behavior are required beyond those already stated.

I myself can be impulsive at times, and have posted as a knee-jerk reaction in the past; review of both the state of mind I posted in and the subject matter suggested temperance, lest similar events occur again. I, as always, am still striving to improve.

Got to second Edi, I do get annoyed by quick reactions.

On the other hand - the board often needs these kneejerk replies to start out meaningful discussions, or at least to sort out the bad weed and idiots who slip through the cracks and start spamming "witty" one-liner replies and the like.

I think the current moderator panel is anyway well policing such events, at least from a quick look at what's been HoSed recently.

Stas Bush wrote:Got to second Edi, I do get annoyed by quick reactions.

On the other hand - the board often needs these kneejerk replies to start out meaningful discussions, or at least to sort out the bad weed and idiots who slip through the cracks and start spamming "witty" one-liner replies and the like.

I think the current moderator panel is anyway well policing such events, at least from a quick look at what's been HoSed recently.

However, I find that the problem of a bad reflex judgement is most apparent when it comes to a geo-politics debate or discussion.

Most of the time, judgement are made before he or she has a clear understanding of underlying factors in a certain region.

Then it's a good thing that there's a discussion going on and that these judgments can be corrected through meaningful conversation, debate and argument?

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Then it's a good thing that there's a discussion going on and that these judgments can be corrected through meaningful conversation, debate and argument?

I think the improtant side caveat to that is: this is a community and any community will occasionally rush to judgement BUT what really matters in this regard is "official" action as it were. I think it safe to say that for all acusations of bias or ineffectualness that have been thrown at teh Senate during various points one can never say that we haven't at least let discussion air out. People may not agree with the content thereof but its been my sort of unoffical rule since gathering the reins that we give at least a few days discussion even to issues (like the Ryan Thunder title) that would seem to be automatic. It makes things grind a bit slower (as does the 7 day rule for votes) btu I think it adds a degree of deliberation to the process that makes for better informed "official" pronouncements.

Likewise there are few, if any, complaints about the actions of the Mod staff. They act on what needs to be split, HOS'd, locked, merged, etc as needed and they've generally kicked issues over to the Senate when there is a bit more doubt. For all the worries about not doing enough what is done has been very professional for a volunteer only staff.

Well, I think that sometimes people come to a conclusion about something or someone and make a judgment based on that. A quick conclusion, to be precise, because someone wants to be the first one to reach the answer and get the cheese be there first with the correct judgement.

They then have to convince everyone else that their conclusion is the "correct" one. Defending their conclusion becomes a point of necessity, because to have your conclusion invalidated means to lose credibility. Disagreement ensues.

This is why the scientific method wins, why SDNet is awesome, and it also explains why we've got the various often-made-fun-of bureaucracies like the Senate (Seriously Elephantine Nemoidians Acting Tough on Everyone) and, to a lesser extent, the HoC (RAR FUCK THE PLEBES THANAS). Cool.

Oh, and when I said "meaningful conversation, debate and argument" I kind of left out the "cursing, crude language, inventive name-calling, sarcasm, snark and spite, vendettofuckopathies and much gnashing of teeth".

Coyote wrote:Well, I think that sometimes people come to a conclusion about something or someone and make a judgment based on that. A quick conclusion, to be precise, because someone wants to be the first one to reach the answer and get the cheese be there first with the correct judgement.

They then have to convince everyone else that their conclusion is the "correct" one. Defending their conclusion becomes a point of necessity, because to have your conclusion invalidated means to lose credibility. Disagreement ensues.

Can't we consider a reflex judgement post as spam to some extend? A longer post backed up with arguments would require you think about the issue before posting something that would waste bandwidth to some extend. A one or two liners basically demands other people to do the analysis of the certain issue for you.

A longer version of a "me too!" post is still a "me too!" post. There are times when I tried my best to avoid making reflex judgement by deleting a whole chunk of reply post because I find myself making no additional contribution to the thread beyond saying I agree with who and who.

In those sci-fi verse thread, people are heavily slammed if they post a one or two liner saying that I got a strong feeling one side will win in the given scenario without providing us with any sort of analysis. While there seems to be a lower standard when it comes to a news and politics debate/discussion.

There are times when the OP (including myself) that posted a short one-liner saying I agree with this news article without saying why or giving others any supporting arguments, and the following posters would do the same thing as well. We don't spend enough time justifying our opinions when it comes to a political discussion most of time, or we are given a free pass just because our opinions happens to be liberal.

Whenever someone posted a conservative viewpoint down here, everyone would be slamming down on him and ask him to prove himself. While a person that posted a liberal one-liner opinion tends be given a free pass ( I think people did gave me a free pass as well) from time to time.

I just feel that we might need to hold ourselves to a higher standard when it comes to a political discussion as well. Not that I'm asking for any actual policies to stop people from expressing their opinions of course.

Feel free to point out of if I have left out any major points.

If you have the Mods crack down on any and all short "reflex" post, like a whole lot of the banter and the quips and the chit-chat you see in most threads, then what happens? Do you honestly expect people to post only in paragraphs-long pseudo-essays containing worthwhile reading material? Can you post material like that? Jesus Christ, ray, this is still just an internet forum composed mostly of pimply teenaged kids, ruled by an oligarchy of wizened grumpy adults, and even the great Micheal Wong himself makes the rare/occasional/frequent one-liner quip post about anal sex every so often because while SDN is a place for discussion, it is also not 100% SRS BSNSS (serious business).

This is not Singapore, ray. We can chew bubblegum in Stardestroyer.net.

Though, yeah, if you want to do stuff like apply higher standards to your own posts and never-ever-ever post a single short one-liner, then feel free to do so.

Ray, man, you've shown progress, but seriously you still sometimes over-think some things that don't need it... and don't think enough when you should!

Ray, there is no way to come up with the "perfect set of rules". It cannot happen when dealing with human beings.

Coyote wrote:Ray, man, you've shown progress, but seriously you still sometimes over-think some things that don't need it... and don't think enough when you should!

Ray, there is no way to come up with the "perfect set of rules". It cannot happen when dealing with human beings.

I'm not asking for any new set of rules, but simply encouraging people to make less reflex judgement. Something which I am trying to do down here.

ray235 wrote:I'm not asking for any new set of rules, but simply encouraging people to make less reflex judgement. Something which I am trying to do down here.

What do you suggest then Ray? In my opinion it's hard not to make a knee-jerk response if you see something you percieve to be stupid. Instinct and reason do not always mix.

Force Lord wrote:

ray235 wrote:I'm not asking for any new set of rules, but simply encouraging people to make less reflex judgement. Something which I am trying to do down here.

What do you suggest then Ray? In my opinion it's hard not to make a knee-jerk response if you see something you percieve to be stupid. Instinct and reason do not always mix.

It's only hard for those who have no self-control.