I saw this thread over the weekend, from Eve Tuck: https://twitter.com/tuckeve/status/1141501422611128320, about grad student seminars and Q&A, and the concepts seem broadly relevant.
… I make it clear that it is the audience’s responsibility to help craft a > positive public speaking experience for graduate students and early career > scholars. I tell the audience to help keep the good experience going and > tell them not to ask violent questions. Right after I am finished talking > or all the panelists have shared their papers, I invite the audience to > take 5-10 minutes to talk to each other. After 45-70 minutes of listening, > people are bursting to talk, and taking the time to turn to talk to a > neighbor keeps the first question from being from a person who just felt > the urgency to talk. … I suggest that they use the time to peer review > their questions. I say that this is a time for them to share a question > they are considering posing in the q and a, and that they should a) make > sure it is really a question; b) make sure they aren’t actually trying to > say that THEY should have given the paper; c) figure out if the question > needs to be posed and answered in front of everyone; d) I remind the > audience that the speaker has just done a lot of work, so they should > figure out if their question is asking the speaker to do work that really > the question-asker should do. … > It's specific to the academic context and the face-to-face setting of an academic seminar or other controlled meeting room, so these techniques aren't literally transferable to, e.g., mailing lists or talk pages. But I think the problems they are intended to address, such as violent, off-putting, or unconstructive questions, sound familiar, I wonder how we can adopt and apply these ideas. Joel Aufrecht (he/him, they/them) Program Manager (Technology) Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
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