You want me to encourage people to use an anonymous channel by publicly praising their anonymous advise?
That would be even better, if they make praiseworthy anonymous advice. What I was actually suggesting, though, was encouraging people by publicly praising other people’s anonymous advice, which I’m guessing makes even less sense to you.
Why would any normal status-seeking individual want that kind of praise?
Theory aside, I do observe that many people seem to be motivated when their output is praised publicly, even when they aren’t identified as the author. I can take advantage of this even if I don’t understand why it happens.
Similarly, I observe that publicly praising an act often encourages others to mimic it.
Neither of those observations strike me as implausible: they identify the action as praiseworthy. Many people are motivated to do things their culture identifies as praiseworthy.
you are the one advocating a change to the culture here on LW.
I don’t think I am, actually… certainly not in this thread.
Here, I’m responding to JoshuaZ’s proposed “in the meantime” solution for a scenario that lionhearted introduced as “If you’re at a meeting and someone gives a presentation and asks if anyone has questions.”
If I’m advocating cultural changes to LW in some other thread, it might be helpful to point to it, so we both know what advocacy you’re referring to.
Your prescription makes no sense at all as advise to an LW person seeking to interact with the outside world.
In that case, of course, it’s a useless comment. Naturally, I thought it made sense in that context when I wrote it. (And I haven’t yet understood why it is senseless, actually.)
you should be advising sensitive people on LW to post including a boilerplate notice that only private or anonymous criticism will be considered by this author, should they prefer to operate that way.
The issue I was concerned with was not that people might be too sensitive to receive criticism. It was that in a culture where people won’t “bluntly tell” JoshuaZ there’s a problem, they might still be willing to anonymously do so, so setting up a channel that allows them to do so would be an “in-the-meantime solution” that gets him the feedback he wants without first altering the entire culture (his proposed “long-term solution”).
And let the rest of us continue to operate in public.
The rest of you hereby receive my official permission to operate in public.
Or did I miss your point?
I don’t know if you did or not. Nor am I especially motivated right now to work with you to figure it out. Perhaps my replies helped clarify things; perhaps not.
It seems I did miss your point. I was confused by the switch, from JoshuaZ’s “in the meantime” advice to the critic, to your advice directed to the potential target of criticism. And in particular I missed that the motivation was to allow the target to get the feedback he needs from an audience culture which is disinclined to provide negative feedback.
My apologies for misunderstanding. I didn’t try hard enough to find a sympathetic reading.
That would be even better, if they make praiseworthy anonymous advice. What I was actually suggesting, though, was encouraging people by publicly praising other people’s anonymous advice, which I’m guessing makes even less sense to you.
Theory aside, I do observe that many people seem to be motivated when their output is praised publicly, even when they aren’t identified as the author. I can take advantage of this even if I don’t understand why it happens.
Similarly, I observe that publicly praising an act often encourages others to mimic it.
Neither of those observations strike me as implausible: they identify the action as praiseworthy. Many people are motivated to do things their culture identifies as praiseworthy.
I don’t think I am, actually… certainly not in this thread.
Here, I’m responding to JoshuaZ’s proposed “in the meantime” solution for a scenario that lionhearted introduced as “If you’re at a meeting and someone gives a presentation and asks if anyone has questions.”
If I’m advocating cultural changes to LW in some other thread, it might be helpful to point to it, so we both know what advocacy you’re referring to.
In that case, of course, it’s a useless comment. Naturally, I thought it made sense in that context when I wrote it. (And I haven’t yet understood why it is senseless, actually.)
The issue I was concerned with was not that people might be too sensitive to receive criticism. It was that in a culture where people won’t “bluntly tell” JoshuaZ there’s a problem, they might still be willing to anonymously do so, so setting up a channel that allows them to do so would be an “in-the-meantime solution” that gets him the feedback he wants without first altering the entire culture (his proposed “long-term solution”).
The rest of you hereby receive my official permission to operate in public.
I don’t know if you did or not. Nor am I especially motivated right now to work with you to figure it out. Perhaps my replies helped clarify things; perhaps not.
It seems I did miss your point. I was confused by the switch, from JoshuaZ’s “in the meantime” advice to the critic, to your advice directed to the potential target of criticism. And in particular I missed that the motivation was to allow the target to get the feedback he needs from an audience culture which is disinclined to provide negative feedback.
My apologies for misunderstanding. I didn’t try hard enough to find a sympathetic reading.
Apology accepted; thanks. I’m glad we could clear that up.