On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 7:11 PM, Ross Gardler
<address@hidden> wrote:
Giovanni Marco Dall'Olio wrote:
So, what will be your policy about negative comments on myExperiment? Are you going to allow them? Are you going to explain this issue to your users, so they can understand the problem and maybe be less prone to go angry? Or put some kind of moderation (having someone in charge of moderating comments)?
A negative comment that is constructive is valuable to everyone. A negative comment that is unsupported paints the poster of the comment in a bad light not the person on the recieving end of the comment.
Hi,
thank you for your reply :).
However, I think it could be more complicated than that.
Read this passage in the document I've posted in the previous mail (I should have quoted it before):
"""
There is great hesitancy among the participants to make these personal notes
available to the whole world. 'In that case I should write my comments on the
article in a carefully worded and balanced statement, because I don't want to
insult people. This is especially true in the case when I am negative about the
article. This would cost me half a day: I don't have that half a day!'
(page 8)
"""
Some people are scared about putting negative comments, and end up with not using the social web site at all.
If you continue to read, there is another interesting statement:
"""
One participant notes that this might be a generation-thing: his younger colleagues do share
everything on the Internet with the general public.
"""
It seems that younger users tend to put more comments (negatives and positives) while older ones tend to use these comments, but are more scared/prudent about putting theirs .
I think myExperiment should protect younger users, as they could possibly put negative comments which can (too bad, but it is the true of the scientific world) influence their future careers; and reassure older ones.
In any case, it is difficult, if you want to partecipate to an online community, to avoid putting negative comments - if you are an active user, sooner or later you will make one.
You should point out this issue in myExperiment FAQs, to inform users and in particolar workflow authors.
Maybe you can put a short advice in the registration page, when people create their new accounts. Asking people to sign up a "I won't get mad at people who will write negative comments on my workflow' clause when uploading new workflows is an option, too, but maybe it is a bit exagerated.
In
an open community everyone should be free to engage in the way they see
fit. Community forces will soon either retrain or drive out truly
negative people.
This is how it works in real life and there is no reason why it should be different online.
I am not so sure this always happen in scientific communities.
Ross