I'd love to be able to pull up a list of nodes that have lots of votes, but where the up and down votes are nearly equal, say, within 10% or so.
I have a node that currently is at +6/-6 and while I was pondering the thinking of those who downvoted it, it occurred to me, "Gee, I wonder what else divides the Monks?"
So interesting!
Hmmmm. While this might be an 'interesting' look, I'm not sure it would promote the general well-being of the monastery. Sadly, many of us are not very good at handling differences of opinion in a constructive manner, and such a 'Most Divisive Nodes' list might serve to throw further fuel on flame wars that were happily dying out.
Based on discussions I've observed in the chatterbox and some of the language war threads that have sprung up, I'd rather down-play our differences and present a more united front.
No good deed goes unpunished. -- (attributed to) Oscar Wilde
I'm thinking of the fascinating sociological observations and the chance to locate areas of discussion where further research would be most valuable, while forgetting about the flame wars.
It's sometimes called Node Tension.
I'm one of the freaks who spend inordinate amounts of time spelunking in the Monastery. :-)
When I came across that thread, I filed away the term "node tension", but I had to search to find the thread again.
Btw - there was a follow-up thread which may also interest you. And this seems to be the subthread in which the idea was germinated.
Crawling through a maze of twisty little passages all different, planetscape notices jdporter curled up, asleep, so she switches off his headlamp to conserve battery power, and continues on...
Personally, I think this sounds great. I like divisive conversation, I like having my ideas challenged. I liked needing to back them up. I think debate is healthy.
One of two things hopefully come out of it.
- I convince you I'm right. Ideally, of course, you will then accept my opinion as The True Light and change your mind going forward. Of course, that may not happen, but at a minimum, I've helped strengthen my case.
- You convince me you're right. That's great. I've changed my mind on other issues when presented with a good argument. I want to choose the best option, but I'm (usually) not insistent that it has to be my original choice, you just need to convince me of yours.
I proudly wear the label of heretic. Dogma should be questioned and re-evaluated and modified and grow and be scrapped when necessary. I'm reminded of the story of the 5 apes, which I shall repeat here for those that don't know it:
Put five apes in a room. Hang a banana from the ceiling and place a ladder underneath the banana. The banana is only reachable by climbing the ladder.
Have it set up so any time an ape starts to climb the ladder, the whole room is sprayed with ice cold water. In a short time, all the apes will learn not to climb the ladder.
Now... take one ape out and replace him with another one (Ape #6). Then disable the sprayer. The new ape will start to climb the ladder and will be attacked unmercifully by the other four apes. He will have no idea why he was attacked. Replace another of the original apes with a new one and the same thing will happen, with ape 6 doing the most hitting.
Continue this pattern until all the original apes have been replaced. Now all of the apes will stay off the ladder, attacking any ape that attempts to, and have absolutely no idea why they are doing it.
This is how company policy and culture is formed.
Not questioning why things are done a particular way can keep you from coming up with newer, better ways to do it.
Of course, this is all in the ideal, which is pretty far removed from the internet with its more colorful characters. So it might not work in practice, but I'd love to see it tried. What's the worst case scenario? Put the feature in, let it sit for a few weeks or months or whatever. If it's useful, then keep it. If it causes problems, then scrap it. No harm in trying.
Update: Fixed the really comical typo that Limbic~Region pointed out down below.
Great story--I think I know those "apes" :)
Good judgement is the result of experience.I would add that it doesn't have to be your bad judgement that you learn from. That's what education is about, and tradition. For every bad piece of information the monkeys got from following their predicessors, they also got many other things that saved them a lot of trouble.Experience is the result of bad judgement.
It's a balance. You say you like divisive conversations, but you probably don't like conflicts in the middle-east, or the ones they used to have in Northern Ireland. Re-hashing old questions can be a waste of time and overly divisive, but a little re-hashing is essential to avoid stagnation. For me, it was best said some time ago (though somewhat dryly) by A.N.Whitehead
The art of free society consists first in the maintenance of the symbolic code; and secondly in fearlessness of revisions, to secure that the code serves those purposes which satisfy an enlightnend reason. Those societies which cannot combine reverence to their symbols with freedom of revision, must ultimately decay either from anarchy, or from the slow atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows.