This is going to be a big fat post, going all theory of communication on a lot of things. If you're easily bored, skip it by all means, but if you're Monk, please read it. It starts off in the Monk vs ED on WIFI, but it goes further later on.
ED is stressed, and no longer has the time/energy to write out the obvious points. Monk, by stress or by feeling "attacked", strike down upon the "obvious" missing. From one point, it is obvious than ED is "wrong" - Of course, a bigger device crappily built would possibly be worse at WIFI reception. That is selfevident. Which, to ED, means that it is so obvious it needs not be mentioned, and to you is an obvious fault of EDs point. To avoid this, he'd have to write that a bigger device always
has the potential of better wifi reception, or that an
optimally built bigger device always...and so on. Lets make a more obvious (and therefore, more slanted) example:
A)
1: A bigger bucket always can contain more water than a smaller bucket.
2: No! If I drill a hole 5 cm from the bottom of the bigger one, it will hold a lot less water!
1: Well, yes, that is obvious. A bigger bucket without holes...
2: Now your just fixing the story! You were just plain wrong - admit it
...or another example:
B )
1: This car will run 500 km on 20 liters of gas
2: No! As soon as I get out on the road, the consumption rises so I can barely get more than 150 km out of 20 liters!
1: Well, yes, that is obvious. This car will run 500 km on 20 liters of gas at speeds below 20 km/h...
2: Now your just fixing the story! You were just plain wrong - admit it
These two examples are obviously slanted in two different directions, in order to be very clear. First, look at example A. Would it be fair, in this case, to think that the person number 2 is being unreasonable, is twisting words around to make person number 1 appear a liar? Would it be reasonable, in this case, for person number 1 to feel attacked? I think so.
Then, example B. This is the opposite. At least I would say that in this case, person 2 is reasonable, person 1 is saying false things or at least is trying to hide very important facts and conditions. It might even be reasonable to call person number 1 an untrustworthy weasel. Anybody agree?
Now, this is a problem with obvious things - they are not obvious to everybody. If we'd like to go all academic on this, we might start talking about "shared contexts" and how the communication involved fails because it does not convey enough context in order to render the context common to all parties. We also have several axises here - One where we varies the actual amount of information needed in order to make that context common (I.E. Be more thorough in listing all presuppositions, "obvious" facts, relations to earlier statements and so on). Another is the question of malicious intent in persons 1 and 2. In the A version, 2 is the bad one. In the B version, 1.
So, given that we see that the problem here is one of non-shared contexts, where do we place the little issue with wifi strength (or, really, any of the later hot blasts of air) on a scale of A to B? Obviously, ED thinks it is close to A. He said something which wasn't precise enough to convey all possible context, Monk called him out on a obvious thing, and goes on to pester him about being wrong. Monk thinks it is closer to B - That Monk points out an actual, real flaw in EDs argument, and that ED is trying to weasel himself out for no other reason than to be a weasel. Monk is upset about EDs conversion to ferretdom. My personal opinion os closer to EDs than Monks in this case, but I am aware that both positions are easy to get into. They are also hard to get out of, because of the inherent moral blame given from both sides. After all, both sides are accusing the other side of being wilfully dishonest, basically.
Similar things goes with the battery thing, where the missing piece to start off with is the exact intended function of the meter. With the queue positions, where the missing pieces are the actual relations between queue numbers and produced pandoras. Heck, even with Craigs tweets, which everyone berates for being wilfully obscure. They are, of course, not, but they depend on the context that only Craig has.
The problem arises because there are a lot of very "informationskåta" - any swedish people want to help me with that one?
- Lets see...People are very hungry for information. Therefore, people try to wring as much meaning out of every little statement, and tries to build a context out of separate pieces. However, the information needed to make that shared, unambigous context isn't there, different people assume different things, we get a context breakdown, and then the general mistrust is let loose. We can see the beginnings of that already in the thread called "Pandora Production information" or whatever, where apparently there is some kind of chart and already someone goes "Wait, does that include the 200 being built or not? It must" "No, my reading of the forum clearly indicates that...". Assumptions. It will end in tears, again, of course.
How does one prevent this problem? Well, there is two ways:
Write more context: Well, just once and for all write whats up, eh? This is the gist of the general cry at the forums - "We need just a quick update". Well, we do get quick updates, and they are not enough. In order to avoid the above problem, there needs to be thorough, unambigous information from a single source that for each piece of information clearly states the underlying assumptions, the intended goals...in short, every information update needs to make sure that everybody shares the same context. Achieving a shared context is hard enough face to face, with people you know and trust. In a way, every normal conversation is an attempt to bring two persons contexts in sync, and we use very sophisticated cues in body language and other feedback in order to adjust, repeat and modify our statements on-the-fly. Here we're talking about creating a shared context for hundreds of people from wildly different social and linguistics backgrounds. Doing that is
seriously hard work. Timeconsuming and difficult. Big companies and government agencies have departments that deal only with managing information. For OPT, to try this way would mean that the person doing the information would do just that, and nothing else. ED complained in another thread that he had had to delay hotfix 3 because of a load of forum bickering, and Monk kinda sneered at that, but that is, indeed, true. Never mind whether ED tries to create a unified context before the fact (by writing really well thought out blog posts and other informational releases) or after the fact (by trying to put out fires in the forums) - If he is to be responsible for the shared context, he won't have time for nothing else. Srsly.
Add more trust: There is another axis on there, and that is the level of trust. After all, the only reason that we got in this mess to start off with in both case A and case B is that the persons involved did not trust the other one to "do their best", communicationswise. Monk is angry with ED because he believes ED is being dishonest with his information. ED is angry with Monk because he believes Monk is dishonest with his motives. And with the belief of dishonesty (or "lack of trust") comes the accusations, pointing at quotes, and so on, and it is a downwards spiral from there. Break that. Assume that the other person is doing his best. Monk made a very nice speech directed at ED to do just that - He just forgot to turn the mirror around and look in it himself, too. Assume that the ambiguities that arise - And that will arise, until OPT is big enough to have their own information management departmend - are the effects of a lack of context, not a conscious effort to deceive. This, of course directed both at ED and Monk, as well as the rest of the boards.
That, really, is the gist of it. The level of information needed to have a clear, unambigous view of whatever is not forthcoming from OPT, not with less than that core people stop working on the actual pandora. In a way it is almost a Heisenberg thing - You can now exactly where your pandora is, or it can be moving towards you, but not both at the same time
I probably lost track somewhere in the middle of this. Still, I believe there is something important in the above text. Somewhere.
