Hello all, Following earlier discussions about the fear of looking stupid in public, I've decided my unofficial research project for the year is to look into ways that communication (especially on professional listservs) might provide grounds for that fear. I think this might be something especially relevant in tech circles.
I would like to ask you if you have any examples of listserv communication where you felt that one person was trying to belittle another person, particularly about their knowledge of a given subject in their field. Best of all would be if you could point me to the conversation in a public listserv archive so that I could read more of the thread. However, I am also perfectly happy with you quoting the message or even just telling me about it. I would also appreciate any explanation you could provide about why you see it as a case of someone belittling someone else. (I ask that for two reasons: 1) it may not be obvious to me because I am not part of that group and I don't know how things normally work in it, such as ongoing flame wars, etc., and 2) I'd also be interested in gathering people's feedback and interpretations of the bad behavior they have seen.) An example would be someone saying, "You should know x, y, and z" in response to someone who identifies as a newbie and has a very basic question. The newbie is asking for help and someone else essentially calls them stupid for not knowing about the topic. I promise to keep all posts confidential, as well as your communications to me about them. (If I publicized any of that information, I would myself be publicly shaming people for being stupid, and that is the opposite of what I am trying to accomplish here.) I intend to anonymize feedback, removing information about people, topics, the particular listserv, etc. To avoid spamming the list with this project, please send your response to juliecswierc...@gmail.com<mailto:juliecswierc...@gmail.com>. Also, if you are interested in the project, please communicate with me through that email address, since I feel this is off-topic for the list. Thanks very much. Julie ------ Julie C. Swierczek Digital Asset Manager and Archivist Harvard Art Museums 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 www.harvardartmuseums.org<http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/>
