Geek communication

[denny]

Most non-geeks have outbound tact filters: they filter what they want to say and add polite noise as it passes through. Geeks have inbound tact filters: they take bare communication with no politeness and just wrap it in assumed politeness as they interpret it.

When non-geeks talk, geeks think the polite sounds they make are redundant.

When geeks talk, non-geeks just think they’re being incredibly rude.

http://geeketiquette.com/archives/2007/08/19/geek-to-geek-communications-with-michael-schwern/

Comments

[simont]

There's nothing to stop somebody having both inbound and outbound tact filters. Even geeks can see the virtue in the RFC 793 Robustness Principle, or else it wouldn't be in RFC 793!

(Also, people who take it as an article of faith that Asperger's syndrome is synonymous with geek culture generally rub me up the wrong way before I've even read their specific points...)

[robert-jones.livejournal.com]

The obvious problem with that is that it's just an assertion. I have no way of knowing whether it's true or not and I don't see how Michael Schwern can have either.

One would need to:

(a) Establish an objective definition of "geek" so that one could classify every person as either a geek or a non-geek.

(b) Collect two groups of people, one of geeks and one of non-geeks, but in every other respect randomised.

(c) Perform a test for inbound tact filters: perhaps by giving people neutrally worded messages to communicate and seeing whether they wrap them up in tact.

(d) Perform a test for outbound tact filters: perhaps by speaking bluntly to the subjects and seeing how they react.

I rather suspect that if you did that you would find a fair degree of independence between geekiness, inbound filters and outbound filters.

I also doubt that the metaphor of the filter is a particularly helpful one here. In particular, I don't think there's any real sense in which an "inbound tact filter" functions as a filter. Indeed, if anything, it seems to me that it is the people who react to tone before content who are performing the filtering: they're checking each incoming statement to see whether it conforms to their tact protocol before going on to consider its meaning.

Finally, it seems that a lot of what Mr Schwern is talking about is merely that different etiquette is appropriate to different media of communciation. What is useful on usenet is not necessarily useful in e-mail; what is useful in conversation is not necessarily useful on instant messangers.

[sevenhelz.livejournal.com]

does that mean I'm a geek? cause my geek housemate seems not to have these inbound filters