Hi Akshay, Fernando, All, Fernando sent me a nice introduction off list that I plan to respond to. Akshay responded to my question about whether it is good idea for us to share our social context with one another...
> I would say that when you begin reading a person's post on a public > forum, > you already do have a certain idea about the person, at least an > expectation. For example, on coming to know that I am Hindu, you might > relate me with one of your Hindu friends, and (at least > subconsciously) > expect me to behave a certain way (such as using strange flavors of > English). I didn't know that you are Hindu, but you are right that we already do know some things about one another's social context. > About me, I am a Hindu teenager, living in India. I have been > brought up in > a moderately religious family, but I rebelled and became a skeptic > atheist, > but finally have come to embrace Hinduism, making it closer to my > heart and > mind than anything in the world. Thank you for sharing this. Much of this will help me understand what you say in discussions on moq.org. My concern is that what you say may be discounted based on the fact that you are so young. > Knowing the social context of the person does help, but only if it > is used > morally. This is my concern. Can it be used morally? I wonder if it can. For example, I already admitted that if a woman signs her name to a post, I can't help wondering about her physical appearance. I am also likely to treat her more gently in replies when I think she is being stupid than if the post has a male name attached. > Of course, I trust that on an intellectual forum like this, nobody > is so baseless so as to insult or mock another on the basis of > religion or > nationality. > I would hope so. > On the internet, it is difficult to tag a forum/list geographically or > culturally, although here it happens to be that most people are > Americans, I > haven't seen many Europeans here. There's also the issue of > privacy, most > people don't like to share much about their personal lives, and > this is > especially a Western trait. I understand that some people won't want to share out of a desire for privacy. In my case, I would like to share, but I'm not sure if it is moral to do so. And I am very interested in other people's thoughts on the issue. Thanks, Steve Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
