Yup, this is a good summary of why I avoid jargon whenever I can in online discussions; and in IRL discussions, I make sure people know about it before using it.
Something people don’t realize is that most of the exposure people get to an online community isn’t from its outwards-facing media, it’s from random blog posts and from reading internal discussions community members had about their subjects of choice. You can get a lot of insight into a community by seeing what they talk about between themselves, and what everybody takes as granted in these discussions.
If those discussions are full of non-obvious jargon (especially hard-to-Google jargon) and everybody is reacting to the jargon as if it’s normal and expected and replies with their own jargon, then the community is going to appear inaccessible and elitist.
It’s an open question how much people should filter their speech for not appearing elitist to uncharitable outside readers; but then again, this OP did point out that you don’t necessarily need to filter your speech, so much as change your ways of thinking such that elitist behavior doesn’t come naturally to you.
Yup, this is a good summary of why I avoid jargon whenever I can in online discussions; and in IRL discussions, I make sure people know about it before using it.
Something people don’t realize is that most of the exposure people get to an online community isn’t from its outwards-facing media, it’s from random blog posts and from reading internal discussions community members had about their subjects of choice. You can get a lot of insight into a community by seeing what they talk about between themselves, and what everybody takes as granted in these discussions.
If those discussions are full of non-obvious jargon (especially hard-to-Google jargon) and everybody is reacting to the jargon as if it’s normal and expected and replies with their own jargon, then the community is going to appear inaccessible and elitist.
It’s an open question how much people should filter their speech for not appearing elitist to uncharitable outside readers; but then again, this OP did point out that you don’t necessarily need to filter your speech, so much as change your ways of thinking such that elitist behavior doesn’t come naturally to you.