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That is an interesting thought.. I've never looked at it from that angle, but formality is certainly a buffer against "pecking order" fights. Then again, as muc
by groby_b 16y ago
That is an interesting thought.. I've never looked at it from that angle, but formality is certainly a buffer against "pecking order" fights. Then again, as much as I'm happy in a less casual setting, I wouldn't go so far as addressing fellow HN posters as "Sir" or "Ma'am" :) (But maybe I should...)
It's also interesting that in the last 6 months or so I ran across a couple of sites that take your HN karma as a predictor of your geek-worthiness. Well-intentioned, I'm sure, but it encourages gaming the system. HN karma now is not only something valuable to the HN community, but outside.
It would be very interesting to see if kuro5hin/slashdot/reddit "decline" periods correlate with wider acceptance of their karma metric.
- Mz 16y agoI don't know that formal culture necessarily has that much to do with using titles (though that can be a part of it). I think it just doesn't assume familiarity. Informal cultures assume a degree of familiarity which you logically can't achieve with your 80K closest friends and I think that is one of the roots of evil here, so to speak. I read a story once about a young American man who had an affair with a British woman and then ran into trouble because when he met her in public, she was offended that he behaved in a familiar fashion merely because they had slept together. Her view: "We've never been formally introduced." That may make no sense to many people here. I can't think of a better example though right now. Formality gives people a certain degree of social space that a "small town" mentality (for lack of a better phrase) fails to provide. That space reduces friction enormously.