You make some great points Jared. While I see your point about archiving and understand your objections, knowing that your statements are archived in a public database or Googleable (not sure if that is a word) can certainly influence how freely one discusses a topic and how much detail to include and what to discuss. One's perceptions of the extent to which conversations are saved and distributed and accessible to others can influence the style and content of conversations. Social norms (whether you like them or not) and other social psych principles do have an impact on one's interactions over social networks.
You are right that anyone can forward a message of course. No disagreement there. However, there are risks for forwarding based on the appropriate social, business, and legal constraints. Perhaps there should be strict no-forward choice for emails as well as a no-archive choice (whoa, another controversy) :-). So there are several things that are important with regard to conversations on social networking systems. 1. Consider that your conversations are public and could be forwarded 2. Ask whether there is an archive and how accessible it is 3. Avoid inflammatory language. 4. Consider whether what you are discussing would be perceived as proprietary. 5. Engage in strong debates, but don't flame or be abusive. While we are on this topic - there is a pretty lively discussion at UPA about Twittering during sessions, especially with loud keyboards. I'm curious what others think about twittering during a session? Chauncey On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 12:07 PM, Jared Spool<[email protected]> wrote: > > On Jul 2, 2009, at 6:10 AM, Chauncey Wilson wrote: > >> It would be useful to be able to choose whether you wanted something >> archived or not. I'm on another group where we don't archive any of >> the conversations (people can of course, save copies) to encourage >> more freedom of speech and less concern over the issues we've been >> discussing. Of course, some people disagree with the no-archive >> policy, but overall, it seems to work and the policy is clearly >> spelled out when you join. That approach is more like a conversation >> where you are not being recorded the entire time. > > It's a falsity that the group that doesn't archive is somehow more free to > have conversations that this group, which does archive. > > As a member of that group, you never know who else is on the list. You don't > know who is saving messages or who might forward them to someone else. (The > group has a policy that you not supposed to forward, but there's no way to > enforce it.) > > So, even in a group which doesn't archive, you can't assure the sender that > a client/colleague/manager or someone else won't see the email. > > In my opinion, it would be detrimental to the long-term social value of this > group to have a choice of archiving. If you gave the choice on individual > messages, then threads would be sporadic (not to mention the problem of > quoting unarchived messages in archived responses). If you gave the choice > on entire threads, then important information would be missing, making the > value of the archives unreliable. > > The reality is that once you press the SEND button in any email, that > message is then broadcast to hundreds of computers, logged, and archived on > systems you don't even know exist. (For Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, many US > corporations now log every incoming and outgoing message.) > > So, if you don't want someone to see your thoughts, don't put them in an > email. Period. > > My $0.02. > > Jared > > Jared M. Spool > User Interface Engineering > 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 > e: [email protected] p: +1 978 327 5561 > http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks Twitter: @jmspool > > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
