Sort of meta, but… I’m thinking about the use of acronyms in order to get more density into your title.
If you only get about 5 words, but one of those words is PONDS, have you successfully gotten 9 words? Maybe, and it’s worth checking. If you can spend one of your words on unfolding complexity, that’s great.
But my experience is “not really” – I tend to totally forget acronyms, unless they are hammered into me a lot over time, which requires other infrastructure. And I could go out of my way to set up a spaced-repetition thingy for this particular post, to get it to stick into my head. But, that wouldn’t be scalable. I can only space-repeat so many things.
This is not a strong claim that this acronym won’t work or that this post isn’t useful. (I think this post works sort of as a space-repeat for the collective LW commentariat about “things to keep in mind for commenting”, even if people don’t end up remembering this particular acronym). But, I dunno, something to keep in mind.
I made a second attempt: Avoid cold, lazy nitpicks.
Cold: The comment has both a prickly tone and fails to show a clear willingness to continue the conversation. (Combines “prickly” and “disengaged”).
Lazy: The comment fails to show any underlying reasoning and fails to demonstrate that the commenter even read the whole original post. (Combines “opaque” and “shallow”).
Nitpicks: The comment is addressing a small, local issue without addressing how the disagreement impacts the argument as a whole.
“Cold, lazy nitpicks” is easier to remember as a phrase than “prickly, opaque, nitpicky, disengaged, shallow,” since it’s shorter and uses more common words. But it’s harder to unfold the concepts, due to the inconsistent, imprecise lumping.
And of course, “PONDS” is a single syllable that is also a vivid noun, and is kind of related to the words it contains (“opaque, disengaged, shallow,” “prickly” like prickly bog plants, “nitpicky” like the parasites that grow in a bog).
In general, I think there can be two different goals:
Create a phrase that’s easy to remember. “Cold, lazy nitpicks” wins here.
Create a mnemonic that’s easy to use. PONDS is better for this purpose.
In this case, I was trying to create a mnemonic that’s easy to use. If most readers don’t care to try, that’s fine. But my hope is that at least one reader will actually use PONDS to change their long-term behavior. That would be a great success for less than 500 words :)
I think it’s useful to have opaque as an extra category. In a realtime conversation it often makes sense to ask one sentence questions even if the motivation for the question is opaque if the question progresses the conversation.
My takeaway from reading your post is that it would be benefitial to sometimes be less opaque when writing a comment that contains a single question and adding content to make the motivation of the question more clear.
Oh, one thing that totally didn’t occur to me was that PONDS was meant to illustratively evoke the sub-words. I think if the post did more work to make that actively salient, that’d help a bit. But, not perfectly
I think an important piece of mnemonics is to evoke both the initial-trigger state, and the desired end state (and perhaps the obstacle to avoid/route-around as you get to the end state). So in this case, somehow I want to have the experience:
notice I’m about to write internet comments
notice what sort of comments I’m about to write, and in particular if they are PONDS.
change what I write
In order for PONDS to be memorable, I need an illustrative bridge from commenting (Without necessarily noticing that I’m writing PONDS) to to actively reflecting on my communication goals.
And of course, “PONDS” is a single syllable that is also a vivid noun
Similar to Raemon I didn’t notice this till you pointed it out. Maybe adding an image of a pond at the top of the post would be helpful for getting the idea across?
“See, yonder is Llyn-dhu, garlanded with mosses and mean dwellings.”
Colin and Susan looked where Fenodyree was pointing, and some two or three miles out on the plain they could see the glint of grey water through trees.
“Men thought to drain that land and live there, but the spirit of the place entered them, and their houses were built drab and desolate, and without cheer; and all around the bog still sprawls, from out the drear lake come soulless thoughts and drift into the hearts of the people, and they are one with their surroundings.”
— Alan Garner, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.
Although the real Lindow Common, with its Black Lake, is nowadays a place for nice people to go with their dogs for a nice walk.
Sort of meta, but… I’m thinking about the use of acronyms in order to get more density into your title.
If you only get about 5 words, but one of those words is PONDS, have you successfully gotten 9 words? Maybe, and it’s worth checking. If you can spend one of your words on unfolding complexity, that’s great.
But my experience is “not really” – I tend to totally forget acronyms, unless they are hammered into me a lot over time, which requires other infrastructure. And I could go out of my way to set up a spaced-repetition thingy for this particular post, to get it to stick into my head. But, that wouldn’t be scalable. I can only space-repeat so many things.
This is not a strong claim that this acronym won’t work or that this post isn’t useful. (I think this post works sort of as a space-repeat for the collective LW commentariat about “things to keep in mind for commenting”, even if people don’t end up remembering this particular acronym). But, I dunno, something to keep in mind.
I made a second attempt: Avoid cold, lazy nitpicks.
Cold: The comment has both a prickly tone and fails to show a clear willingness to continue the conversation. (Combines “prickly” and “disengaged”).
Lazy: The comment fails to show any underlying reasoning and fails to demonstrate that the commenter even read the whole original post. (Combines “opaque” and “shallow”).
Nitpicks: The comment is addressing a small, local issue without addressing how the disagreement impacts the argument as a whole.
“Cold, lazy nitpicks” is easier to remember as a phrase than “prickly, opaque, nitpicky, disengaged, shallow,” since it’s shorter and uses more common words. But it’s harder to unfold the concepts, due to the inconsistent, imprecise lumping.
And of course, “PONDS” is a single syllable that is also a vivid noun, and is kind of related to the words it contains (“opaque, disengaged, shallow,” “prickly” like prickly bog plants, “nitpicky” like the parasites that grow in a bog).
In general, I think there can be two different goals:
Create a phrase that’s easy to remember. “Cold, lazy nitpicks” wins here.
Create a mnemonic that’s easy to use. PONDS is better for this purpose.
In this case, I was trying to create a mnemonic that’s easy to use. If most readers don’t care to try, that’s fine. But my hope is that at least one reader will actually use PONDS to change their long-term behavior. That would be a great success for less than 500 words :)
I think it’s useful to have opaque as an extra category. In a realtime conversation it often makes sense to ask one sentence questions even if the motivation for the question is opaque if the question progresses the conversation.
My takeaway from reading your post is that it would be benefitial to sometimes be less opaque when writing a comment that contains a single question and adding content to make the motivation of the question more clear.
Oh, one thing that totally didn’t occur to me was that PONDS was meant to illustratively evoke the sub-words. I think if the post did more work to make that actively salient, that’d help a bit. But, not perfectly
I think an important piece of mnemonics is to evoke both the initial-trigger state, and the desired end state (and perhaps the obstacle to avoid/route-around as you get to the end state). So in this case, somehow I want to have the experience:
notice I’m about to write internet comments
notice what sort of comments I’m about to write, and in particular if they are PONDS.
change what I write
In order for PONDS to be memorable, I need an illustrative bridge from commenting (Without necessarily noticing that I’m writing PONDS) to to actively reflecting on my communication goals.
Similar to Raemon I didn’t notice this till you pointed it out. Maybe adding an image of a pond at the top of the post would be helpful for getting the idea across?
Here’s a verbal image:
— Alan Garner, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.
Although the real Lindow Common, with its Black Lake, is nowadays a place for nice people to go with their dogs for a nice walk.
Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll take it!