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Branching affordance?

Could it be a good idea to demonstrate policies by making them the easiest thing to do?
Like, add a "OOB discussion", or "Complain" link in addition to "Reply" link, which would just start a new "Site Discussion" thread with a body conveniently containing a backlink to the post to be meta-discussed.

I realize that it may be even better to discuss some topics completely out-of-band, but as noted, there is no single shared private channel between any arbitrary LtUers (emails seem to be hidden?).

By Andris Birkmanis at 2007-07-01 06:52 | Site Discussion | previous forum topic | next forum topic | other blogs | 6694 reads

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negotiating oob

That sounds generally like a good idea, because it enables use of a gray zone between inband and oob, so folks can negotiate going oob. (Gray zones between black and white poles seem useful to resolve conflict.)

But it seems like a lot of work to create another tier of space beyond discussion — a new one for negotiating oob: a meta discussion about where to continue.

You might have folks drag their arguments there, and not actually leave, after having gone far enough "outside" for their purposes. (I think "Outside" would be a good name for this place, so you can tell folks to "take it outside." :-)

So you might want Outside to connect fairly directly to another place offsite, as a gentle reminder to keep going and not hang out by the door.

By Rys McCusker at Sun, 2007-07-01 19:24 | login or register to post comments

A couple of random thoughts:

A couple of random thoughts: It seems to me that it is fairly easy to do as it is (perhaps the FAQ should include something about using Quicktopic...) Since this is a use-case that I personally don't want to encourage, I'd be reluctant to facilitate it by adding such links. I think that we didn't have much need to for this in the past, so why now?

By Ehud Lamm at Mon, 2007-07-02 10:00 | login or register to post comments

Presumably because there

Presumably because there appear to've been two incidents in one day. I'm not convinced that's much more than a coincidence though.

By Philippa Cowderoy at Mon, 2007-07-02 10:38 | login or register to post comments

I agree

I agree.

By Ehud Lamm at Mon, 2007-07-02 11:16 | login or register to post comments

+1

I agree that it's mostly a coincidence, and I agree that this is a use case that I'd rather not really encourage. People who want to continue a tangential (but useful) conversation have never had a problem finding ways to do it, and I don't really think the site needs to provide convenient mechanisms for people to continue bickering or haranguing one another.

By Matt Hellige at Mon, 2007-07-02 15:06 | login or register to post comments