Ian On The Red Dot

I like this post by nocturne. I copied and paste what he wrote for my own backup. Please go over to his blog to read what he wrote. The pictures there are worth the extra click.

DK wrote a long post about how he’s given up on the community and such, how much work he put in, and how aggrieved he is. He promptly got banned. Uzyn and Daphne both wrote posts about the subject. Oh, and the “in-people” tagline in pink (in my last post) was quickly removed, so I’d like to point out that it wasn’t an edited screenshot.

Both positions have fair points, much like the debate on waterboarding (just with, you know, less implications on the morally of its utility in an age of asymmetric warfare).

DK feels that the “ping.sg is for everyone” motto is sacrosanct, something the old guard decided on, long ago. It’s sort of like the Second Amendment, outdated, unrealistic, and possibly dangerous, but the Founding Fathers thought of it, and damn it, it must stay.

Daphne feels that some people are popular, and why shouldn’t she be allowed to call them “popular”? In the original post, she knew she would ruffle some feathers while doing it, which prompted a very long aside explaining her choice of words. But she did it anyway. How sassy!

The word “agenda” has been cast around a lot. Supporters of both sides keep saying that the other has an “agenda.” Let’s take a look at what “agenda” means – an agenda is an aim, some lofty goal, usually with sinister, secretive connotations (Goggle’s robotic plot for world domination is an agenda). The word is usually used to demonize – People rarely say “This helps our agenda.” People say, of their opponents, “They are seeking to fulfil their Communist/Capitalist/Islamist/Feminist agenda.” It’s a very useful word. I should know, as the founder of the Character-Assassination School of Blogging, I use it a lot.

The thing is, both sides have clearly stated aims. Both of their “agendas” is to “make ping.sg a better community.”

DK, possibly due to being left out from the “cool group” as a child, wants an egalitarian ping.sg, where everyone knows your name, and no one is more special than anyone else. He also states how he’s an old timer and all the things he’s done. If someone who wasn’t an old timer and haven’t done all sorts of things had written what DK did, that person would get banned. At least in one way, ping.sg is exactly what he wants. Not banning him would be making him special.

The other side is split into two, Daphne and Uzyn.

Daphne just wants to be able to call popular people “popular”. Not much to ask, free speech and all that. If almost anyone else had called the people she called popular “popular,” no one would have anything to say about it (they would, after all, be merely stating facts). And Daphne wants to be like everyone else, to be allowed to say the same things as everyone else, in an egalitarian sort of way.

Does anyone else notice that the elitists and the egalitarians are trying to have their cake and eat it? It’s not their fault, it’s because both positions are equally untenable. DK cannot say that “everyone should be equal” when the facts are, obviously, that some are more equal than others. Daphne cannot say that “this is the popular group” because it implies that everyone not there is, de facto, unpopular (this is the same thing as adverts that go “available at all good bookshops”).

Daphne does not seem to understand the concept of “Conflict of Interest” or “Fraternisation between Ranks.”

Say there’s a manager at a company. He hangs around with his staff. He says something like “these are the good workers,” or “these are the smart people.” Note that he’s not giving praise to one single person, which is less offensive; he specifies a group which is distinct from everyone else by a favourable trait. He does so in a social setting. Is it his fault for saying it? Is it his fault for being there? Is it the fault of those who misinterpret his intentions?

The fact of the matter is, he should simply know better. It doesn’t matter how pure your intentions are. If you know people can (and, likely, will) misinterpret you (as Daphne knew), then you shouldn’t say it, or at least be willing to stand by it.

If Daphne wants to speak like everyone else, then she should BE like everyone else. Also, on the forum thread that spawned, her responses were flippant and dismissive. She had every opportunity to apologise and retract herself, but she choose to see it as a small matter.

To her, it is a small matter, to lots of others as well, but not to everyone. In being dismissive, she’s simply insensitive to the small number of people who are offended. She said something like “This is my official word on this issue… I’m going to watch DVDs.” How many of you, after being offended, think “whatever” is a calming response?

Daphne, you see, puts herself forward as an innocent Hello Kitty. But, underneath that fluffy cotton shell, she’s got a hubris that burns white hot. I don’t want to get banned, so I won’t give examples, but let’s just say that, unlike other Hello Kitties, offending Daphne is not a good idea. After all, when a girl comes crying to you, what kind of monster are you to tell her that she’s wrong?

Uzyn, our other protagonist, functions like God on High. He never warns, he’s simply bans. He’s shown this before – it’s all or nothing. On the one hand, I think it’s really really good for the community that he stays above the fray. On the other, a fair warning is only fair. I don’t know if DK was warned about this, but it seems like his banning came as a surprise. I don’t think he’d heed warnings either, but fair’s fair.
The Collective Bias

Daphne does have an agenda. She wants ping.sg to be for the pingsterati, for a group of people who mutually approve of each other.

I happened to keep track of my pongs for the last post for a few hours, and I got unponged by paced and chillicraps. I would be really surprised if, considering I’m in the Top 10 now, Daphne didn’t read my post. Most of the “in-crowd” don’t pong me, though I know for a fact that a lot of them do read me (or, at least, used to, when I had that blogcatalog visitors thing on the page).

Seeing as practically all of my posts are over 500 words, it’s not for lack of content. Seeing as I don’t linkbait, it’s not for linkbaiting (possibly for not linkbaiting, since I don’t always label [NSFW] as such – it seems too much like linkbaiting to [NSFW] a post because of one little picture with nipples). Their only reason to unpong is because they disapprove of what I say.

Unlike many Top 10 regulars, who can make the Top 10 by going to supper, I don’t make the Top 10 because of the pingsterati, I make it in spite of them.

This is because the more hard-core users, myself included, see their pongs as “approval,” and the non-hard-core users don’t care.

There’s an optimal size for a group. After too many people, it’s too difficult for everyone to know everyone else. That’s how cliques form.

It’s unrealistic to expect that cliques won’t form within ping.sg, as it will in any other social group. It’s barely more realistic to expect that, once cliques form, not to label the popular group as such.

As ping.sg grows, the popular group will become a smaller and smaller percentage of the whole, because it will hit critical mass. There will be people on the edges of the popular group, and there will be groups within the popular group, and such.

The fact that I can still make the Top 10 in spite of the pingsterati demonstrates that ping.sg is reaching the point where the non-core community has some influence in what they want in the Top 10. Or, rather, the influence that the pingsterati has in the Top 10 is waning.

As time passes, ping.sg will return to the pre-1.80 days, where the Top 10 is filled with Stuff of Which the Popular Disapprove. Unlike pre-1.80 days, due to the pong system, this is not necessarily stuff which is scandalous, salacious or frivolous (these are still pretty good contenters).

On Digg, a far more mature community (MrBabyMan, a diggerati, has 301 friends and 9,101 fans), there is a commonly-accepted bias towards Barack Obama (or against Hilary Clinton and John McCain), Firefox, Apple, Retro Gaming, and Digg itself.

The way the system is, because the Top 10 is placed on the front page, there will be a gap in pongs between #10 and #11, which gives those who hit #10 staying power. Because it usually only takes about seven pongs to get to #10, this naturally gives the popular posters an advantage, since they have at least seven “regulars” and don’t have to count on the whims of other pingsters. Daphne, for example, has a Top 10 with almost every post.

You will notice two forces at work here, the “elite,” who pong each other, and who make the effort to unpong, both of which reinforce their position, and the “egalitarian,” who don’t unpong and simply pong what they like.

The elite will naturally welcome those who share their values, which gives those people a door into the ranks of the elite. When the values of the elite clashes with those of the egalitarian, such as in my last post, it becomes a contest, and the elite will get annoyed when they lose (The egalitarian, being part of the common masses, don’t really have feelings). If the pingsterati lose often enough, they will cry for a change in the system. This was what prompted 1.80.

Soon enough, ping.sg will switch to a system whereby you have to actively pong a good read, instead of unponging a bad one, which will return influence to the pingsterati, and the cycle will start anew.

I’m not crying foul or anything. I think this is a natural progress. Like everyone else, I could have joined the elite, they don’t keep people out. It’s just that, because of the way some talk, people feel it’s hard to get in. It’s not even that hard for me to write long posts supporting the pingsterati position on any number of issues. Actually, it’d be easier for me, and significantly funnier, to take a position and start flaming the other side. I would think that some of the popular people censor themselves, or refrain from commenting, because they want to keep their place in the group, and that, too, is natural.

What is unnatural is to deny that this is happening, or to attempt to stop it. We all know what happens to those who mess with natural progress. Yes, mutant zombies.

Uzyn seems to understand that not everything the pingsterati want is good for ping.sg. And the pingsterati has got to accept that not everything they dislike is, by extension, bad for ping.sg.

If the Top 10 is constantly filled with stories of supper, some people will see less value in using ping.sg. I see that as a bad thing, but, of course, my opinions don’t matter. Similarly, if the popular group don’t feel their needs are being met, they will contribute less, which, also, is a bad thing.

I am, however, hoping for the ping.sg bias to rise above that, for a time when you can only make the Top 10 with posts that appeal not solely to the popular group, not solely to the unpopular group, but with posts that appeal to both groups.

As it stands, I say reinstate DK (with an understanding not to escalate), appoint a new community manager, give Daphne a new position, and everyone saves face. Or maybe not.

Insightful right? Vote hor.