Reply #110: I think you have come across an unsolvable problem...

[Devils Advocate NZ]

Firstly, anyone who has seen the few original posts I have made, knows that I have no problem with posting more than 5 sentences. Hell, even more than 50, would probably not be a problem for me. However, I do believe that it has a chilling effect on many people, and I don't think it will have the desired effect.

From what you have posted, it seems that the primary problem is the tone of the board. You, the admins, and, I would wager, the majority of us DUers would love for this board to gain a kind of credibility that makes it a worthy resource for studying liberal opinion. We want people in the media, government and academia to see DU as a good place to find out what real liberals are thinking.

But therein lies the problem: how to get at what we are thinking, without stifling the very thoughts that liberals want to share. As many posters have said sometimes a single sentence can have profound meaning, while an entire essay (not unlike this one) could be essentially meaningless. Or so it may seem.

To me, the noise, as some put it, can and does have a value all its own. Not EVERY meaningful post appears out of thin air, some of them have come on the back of what most people would consider rather meaningless posts. Sometimes, the noise IS the signal. But, the noise can and does drown out those gems when they appear.

I guess what I am trying to say is that by supressing the noise, we may end up supressing the primordial thought soup out of which higher thoughts can and do evolve. The desire to enhance the quality of the conversation could in the end result in a far less rich discussion that becomes hollow and worthless.

I believe that by messing with the dynamic in GD, we risk changing the very thing that makes this place so great. Call it the Chaos Theory of DU Discussion. A small change may have far more profound effects than ever intended or expected.

Another way of looking at it is that yes, forcing people to write a minimum of 5 sentences does force them to think about what they are posting more, but that second thought, could cause a valid thought to be disgarded due to the idea that it may not be worth the trouble. The fact is, that post itself may not be worth it, but the replies it generates could hold the gem that sparks a very meaningful debate.

So, as I said in my subject line, I believe the problem is essentially unsolvable. Getting rid of the noise may seem like a good idea, but risks throwing out the baby with the bath water.

So it's not a matter of how to go about cleaning up the debate (5 sentence minimum or quality of post guidlines for the mods or whatever) but whether cleaning it up is a good idea at all.

Perhaps, what is needed is for the DU mods to have the ability to pin threads that seem to be generating good discussions on the first page, like this thread is. So rather than supressing the noise, we tune in the signal a little better?

Like I said, not all essays are meaningful, but I hope you found this one to have a little meaning. :-)

PS - Have I thanked you today for DU? Oh well, it can't hurt to thank you again: Thanks to the all the admins for providing us a place where we can argue about what is noise and what is signal, and where we can express ourselves, no matter how meaningless that expression may be!