Comments and Civility:
I've noticed in the last week that the VC's normally courteous and civil comment section has become a bit nasty and occasionally profane. I suspect that the turning point may have been the comment section for this post on the murder of Steven Vincent, but I'm not sure.
Whatever the cause, please remember that civil and respectful comments are the rule here at the VC. It may be more fun to be nasty, but as Eugene once noted, it's a really big blogosphere and you can find some place else for that. In any event, I reserve the right to be arbitrary and capricious in choosing which comments to delete because they cross the line. If you want to make sure that your comments stick around, keep them clean and civil.
Whatever the cause, please remember that civil and respectful comments are the rule here at the VC. It may be more fun to be nasty, but as Eugene once noted, it's a really big blogosphere and you can find some place else for that. In any event, I reserve the right to be arbitrary and capricious in choosing which comments to delete because they cross the line. If you want to make sure that your comments stick around, keep them clean and civil.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Comments and Civility:
- Comments Threads as Parties:
So I'm at a loss as to what guidelines I should use when posting. To the extent there can ever be guidelines to avoid "arbitrary and capricious" consequences, please enlighten us (or at least me) with respect to what words and phrases are safe to say, or not safe to say.
I was under the impression this libertarian-leaning blog vigorously believed in principles of free speech. I've seen bad words posted here before by bloggers with regards to First Amendment cases, rap lyrics, and news stories. See, for example, the March 3, 2004, post by Eugene Volokh entitled "Shouldn't public radio stations be a bit less timid?" wherein the f-word is used several times by Professor Volokh. Not only that, but Volokh has posted, at least once, the phrase "jerking off" (I'm quoting his post here) - see this post.
So, considering I most certainly was calm, civil, reasoned, and substantive, and avoided ranting, invective, any exaggeration, any personal attacks, and to the extent you consider "j**king off" to be profanity, I'd argue that the longstanding "law of the blog" rule (similar to the law of the case rule) estops you from claiming any word is censorable profanity when a blogger has previously posted the word on the blog in question.
So, please, some guidance here. The bottom line is if people get offended by some bad words, they should not be, and most certainly are not, reading this website anyway. Why insist on catering to the lowest common denominator of the easily offended? And certainly "j**king off" is no more offensive when I say it than when a tenured professor says it. If discussions of law and especially constitutional jurisprudence have to be tempered to comport with immature and irrational notions of offensivness, we're all doomed.
Of course, if you're going to insist on being arbitrary and capricious with what posts you delete, I'll just skip to the logical conclusion of such random discretion and call you a racist now. You're censoring me because I'm something you're not (take your pick).
First, every experiment with anonymity has shown that when people can't be "tracked down," they feel thay can escape the just consequences of their actions. People feel free to be hostile...even masquerade as someone else altogether. Handles are certainly okay, but automatically confirming eMail addresses as part of the registration process prevents people from "hiding" behind an anonymous ID. In fact, many successful communities reject eMail addresses for @hotmail.com, @yahoo.com, etc., because these are "throwaway" accounts that can be created without proffering a "real" identity. (There's more to it, but I'm just offering a 30,000-ft view here.)
Second, as I point out in "What We Know", it is important to have a clear standard for who gets admitted, and who gets ejected. The first is taken care of in fora like VC with the First item, above. The second requires a development of "rules of conduct" with clear, sharp lines that define offensive behavior, and a clear and unambiguous set of rules about what it takes to be shut out. And a process for revising those rules over time.
Third, there will always be people among the public who behave inappropriately; look at any Usenet (newsgroups) for examples. Therefore, most of my clients have set up two-tier systems. The first is open to the public; the second is by invitation only. The people who demonstrate they can "play well with others" in public get invited to participate in the "inner circle," which is where really productive results are usually achieved.
Fourth, think about the kinds of people who post in most of the VC threads: The threads only go on for a day or two in most cases. That encourages "quick hit" contributions, often with little or no thought to consequences. In the private space, I recommend fewer, but broader topics (e.g., "What should be criteria for good SCOTUS appointees"), and encourage the threads to go on for weeks...or more. In one private community I've written about *Building Intentional On-line Community) shows what can be done. As of today, that community still thrives as it has for 13 years...and we still average about 100 messages a day.
Finally, I think there are some technology improvements you might explore. For instance, when I see a "(www)" at the top of a post, I don't bother clicking it because I've never seen anything in there but "http:///". There are better tools than the one you're using for on-line dialog, and many of them are free.
Food for thought? Is further dialog of any interest?
I think this post by Eugene answers your questions.
Orin
Not really. It just explains that it's your party and you can kick out those people who misbehave. Certainly fair enough. But if you're going to insist on house rules, I think we should have fair notice as to what those rules are. In addition, I think to the extent rules are vague and ambiguous (as all rules tend to be), we guests should be able to base our behavior of the behavior of the hosts. If the bloggers can say the f-word, is it not safe to presume that we can too? Certainly picking fights, calling people names, being antagonistic, and just plain antisocial behavior should not be tolerated, and that's nothing I would ever partake in. But you said the phrase "jerking off" was below the standards of the Volokh Conspiracy, and it's obviously not because that exact phrase has been posted by Eugene Volokh here in a blogpost. Worse worse (suck as the f-word, sh*t, etc) have also been posted. So clearly, judging by the standard set by this party's hosts, mere profanity alone is not enough to be deemed below this website's standards. Profanity plus, such as profanity in the context of rants, invective, name-calling, racist comments, and the like cannot be tolerated. But I cannot figure out how what I said earlier today, which you deleted, could possibly be considered below the standards of this website other than for reasons of arbitrary and capricious ipse dixit.
If your policy is to just randomly delete comments that have a bad word or two in them to keep posters on their toes, well that's fine. Just let us know if that's the case, or whatever the standards are if there are any with respect to what words we can't type here.
I don't want to be a bad party guest, but obviously I can't follow the example of my hosts. So what am I to do?
No reason to think so. They pay for the bandwidth. I've always figured they opened up comments to drive up their page views, and the recent announcment about their new ad agreements seems to confirm that notion. (If so, that's just fine, I hasten to add.)
So they want the best of all worlds: civilized comments, more page views, and minimal administrative costs. That's iron triangle; I can't think of a major blog that has a "civilized" comments section. I doubt they'll bend on civility, so if the comments section gets out of hand, they'll just end comments.
Bruce, they don't owe you a thing. They don't owe any of us a thing. They publish a website. We're squatters on their property, here on their tolerance, and it's simply foolish to argue with them. They don't require any consistent standard, and they're not required to live by any policy they define.
Now, you could argue that any failure on their part to provide what their users agree is a consistent, fair, policy would annoy and drive off their weblog audience. But if you did, you'd be wrong twice, instead of just the once.
BTW, Carol Anne is reciting the standard online community pablum, but her dictums are for online forums, which have peer to peer, many to many communication. Weblogs are broadcast and certainly aren't peer to peer; comments are a little more than letters to the editor, but only a little.
But she's wrong no matter what, sez I as the owner/operator of a forum that a) makes a nice little income, b) allows all webmail domains, c) has only banned 2 people in 3 years, and d) is in the top 100 of TLB traffic blogosphere, with closer to 1000 posts a day and 500-750 users/day (okay, and e) made Webby Worthy status, but that's just braggin.) Do what she's advising, and you'll have monstrous bandwidth bills, a group of people who think you owe them something, and a monstrous administrative headache.
Would it be difficult to adopt a "letters to the editor" type of policy where you review and post only a small percentage of the quotes that you deem thought-provoking or engaging?
The Vincent post provoked more hostile comments because it was a more hostile post. It was Professor Volokh's decision to add the post to the site, so he should take much of the credit or blame for the ensuing argument.
Taranto's post adopted the current practice of many prominent conservatives by lumping together critics of the war, Westerners who sympathize with Iraq's, and people who want the terrorists to win in Iraq. (Crooked Timber did an excellent job documenting the practice.)
When people saw what Taranto was doing, they got mad. Go figure.
I think part of the problem was that Professor Volokh read Taranto's post as if it were a student comment or a legal argument, instead of as political rhetoric. Others (such as Crooked Timber) saw what was going on, and responded.
Taranto cast the first stone. Volokh the second.
Just like a judge sets the tone for his or her courtroom, Professor Volokh set the tone for the comment section. The post was out of character for this blog, which explains why the comments were also out of character.
That being said, the problems here seem relatively minor to me compared to some other sites.
At the same time, I think, in my innocent way, that it ought to be possible for a grown-up to express his or her views vigorously without using language that is offensive to many, and that adds nothing to the argument. I don't think it's necessary for the site to have a code prescribing which words are verboten. Anyone should realize that such language falls short of the conventions of professional discourse.
That seems to be a characteristic of many forums I've studied, and (in my opinion) represents an "elevated testosterone level" in responses. Where all posters, irrespective of gender or other idenifiable characteristics, are accorded the same level of response, the community tends to thrive. When, for example, other women see that women's comments are simply ignored, they don't bother to post (or, so they report to me). Women represent a significant fraction of Internet users, but a disproportionately small fraction of the participants in public fora as a consequence. (Women often report something like, "My ideas are largely ignored, until restated and re-presented by a male poster."
Just an observation from fifteen years of observing. Does it strike a chord?
You reap what you sew. When you (as in the other conspirators) post political rants or stuff which you know darn well comes from WND or something like that you know what is going to happen. When you post stuff that you would write in a law review, you know what kind of comments it will generate.
Are you sure about that? As a general rule, about half of people who comment at the VC do not reveal a gender in their screenname. Aren't you just assuming that they are all men? If so, why? Also, what do you mean by "ignoring" a comment or "according it the same level of response"? Most comments here are "ignored," in the sense that a typical comment does not receive a response in another comment.
I think it's noble, optimistic, and a bit naive to have a forum in which *anyone* can post, and then hope to be able to regulate the behavior of the posters with gentle admonitions and the seldom-used threat of deleting comments. If you have a registration system, you can ban abusive posters.
But with what you have here, every time you convince someone to change their posting habits with a "be civil" admonition, someone else will jump in to take the place of the former troll. Also, for every person you are able to change for the better, there will probably be another who is simply egged on by the attention that comes from abusive posters.
I liked the former policy of presumptively not allowing comments, except for the few items that might benefit from it. If someone has something truly thoughtful to contribute, they can look up your e-mail address. If that extra 20 seconds is too much effort, it probably wasn't much of a thought anyway.
But the first Taranto post set the tone by equating some people's view on Bush's Iraq policy with supporting a lynch mob. Read in the context of other conservative comments about the war, that's a fair (although not undisputed) reading of Taranto's article.
The first post moved the limits on appropriate discourse pretty far out. Any comment that did not call someone a racist, murderous, thug was more civil than what Taranto wrote.
They are very bad people, precisely because they do support racist, murderous thugs. They deserve to be criticized. I have criticized them in the past. I will do so again. If you don't enjoy reading that, well, it's a big Internet.
I stress again the "some," as I've done repeatedly: Some people's. Not all opponents of the war. Not most opponents of the war. But some prominent people.
It is perfectly appropriate to say so, and, let me repeat once more, I will keep on saying so. If you don't like blogs on which supporters of the Iraqi insurgents are criticized, please keep in mind that you're not going to like this blog.
Nothing wrong with that, but I just want you to understand why it was objectionable to some. People objected because you clipped an NRO that said the number of Westerners supporting the insurgency was "substantial." Had it said "small," I doubt the backlash would have been big. From what I have read, the only defense for this is that "substantial could mean small." Which seems weak. Because this blog takes Slate to task periodically for casual use of language, it seemed unfair to embrace NRO for doing so.
Second, in my perusing of the blogosphere, I have found many more conservatives who actually support the brutal treatment of prisoners in Iraq than I have found liberals who actually support the insurgency. This site, I'm sure, opposes needlessly brutal treatment of prisoners. But I don't recall any criticism of a "substantial" number of conservatives supporting torture. You can't address every issue, of course, but when you seem to take on only one side of these issues, the other side's going to be angry.
I think of this as a somewhat conservative blog, but not a partisan one or a blinded one. Most of the conspirators seem open minded. But the NRO post seemed pretty partisan and one-sided.
I do have one last quibble: It may be a "big internet," but there are few other sites on which people from different political perspectives can have thoughtful arguments. Many of us disagree with Professors Volokh or Kerr, but they do engage their critics thoughtfully.
Be as rude as you like, delete people for whatever reason you like. If you delete a comment and anyone complains or observes the deletion, delete that too.
Think of yourself as an editor, choosing which letters will be published or not. You owe people nothing. You're doing them a favor in even considering allowing their words on your site.
And never, ever forget that the commenters drive up traffic but are a miniscule percentage of your readership. Any time you make a post about comments and civility policy, you're boring the brains out of most of your readers. The commenters are loud, but they aren't important.
I am sure Carol Ann's right about blog comments by posters who use an obviously female name being far more often ignored than other comments (and I rue the day I adopted my girly screen names!). But this site isn't out of line with most other male-run ones so far as that goes (the "male-run" point holds independently, largely, of the views and behaviour of the men who run the community or blog).
Carol Ann,
The commenters are loud, but they aren't important.
I visit this blog considerably more often now comments are allowed (because I dislike blogs where they aren't). I may not be the only such visitor.
Jayann, you mean me, not Carol Ann. You're certainly not the only one who frequents bloggers who allow comments. But as a blog reader, you're a minority of a minority, not worth thinking about when making a decision of this kind. Far worse (from a bloggers perspective) are the people right behind you, who aren't at all interested in reading the blog and just want a place to argue.
If VC continues to allow comments, over time they'll get more people here, many of whom aren't here to read, but to post and argue. Some of the existing readers will also comment. All of this will drive up page views. If that's what they want, they'll get it.
If they want increased page views and polite, informed discussion that addresses their own posts, then the cost will be increased administration of reviewing and deleting posts, banning troublesome commenters, and dealing with administrative complaints (although if they take my advice they won't do the last).
I have no idea what VC folks are actually looking for, and of course they might not have opened comments for more page views. But regardless of their motives, the outcome really isn't in dispute.
And since, as I said, I can discuss this endlessly, I'll try and refrain from further comment on this meta-post, anyway.
The comments do help make the blog more thoughtful. For example, with the Taranto post, the comments (along with other blogs) pushed Volokh to defend and clarify his argument. As a result, even readers who did not open the comment section got a more informed discussion.
The professors may want to consider closing comment sections after they decide that the comments are just repeating themselves. Perhaps the professors should automatically close a comment section when it has been open for, say, a week. After that, the burden of monitoring the old posts is probably not worth the value of the additional comments.
Your example is precisely the sort of problem I'm talking about. For all you (or anyone) knows, most readers understood exactly what Volokh meant and had no problem with the post. If so, the comments provided an artificial sense of outrage that he could have ignored without any problem at all. But you assume that the outrage was representative and proportionate with no data to support it. Bloggers themselves often make the same mistake.
Your suggestion of closing comments after a week is yet another sign of the distortion that occurs when bloggers offer free real estate. Bloggers have usually moved on to new ideas a day after a post. But you suggest that bloggers allow their commenters to hash out differences on the bloggers' dime for a week longer? Again, unless the blogger's primary interest is page views, there's nothing in it for him.
"John Roberts issued at least 3 formal statements that many feel are attacks on women's rights.
Some attorneys - prominent ones - are explicitly sexist, Let me hasten to add, not all attorneys, or even a majority, are. But no matter the size of the group, I feel it is proper to criticize them, and will do so in the future."
Aside from inverting the group size, I believe the inferential logic of my innuendo above (which I'm using only as an example: this is not my viewpoint) is roughly identical to the posting that kicked off a lot of the flaming.
You may believe that people who are being tarred by that sort of innuendo are being overly sensitive (and it is in no way an excuse to be rude in public, and I apologize for when I was), but it clearly is a popular smear, and I think you can see why your providing a certain amount of velocity to that sort of thing could cause those of us who have opposed the war to wonder where the usual even-handedness went. You are of course completely free to make any sort of political statement you like; I am merely pointing out why some people (OK, at a minimum me and my lap kitten) who are quite fond of your analysis - even if we may disagree with your conclusions on occasion - found it a little disappointing.
That said, I'm a big fan of a civil environment, and laud the general quality of discourse here.
It would be a personal loss for me and a loss for civil discourse in general for the comments to be disabled.
While the method is not infallible, I do believe that one can often deduce gender from content, a laDeborah Tannen's work.
For instance, Tannen writes: "For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships." I'd add that, for most men, the language of conversation is primarily a language of differences. (As one wag once said, the first thought a man has upon meeting another man is, "Could I kill this guy?")
As a woman who's been in engineering for longer than I care to admit, I've had to often adopt the masculine style to get results, so I've become sensitized to the subtle differences. Just one example (although I'm not necessarily a good example): Men tend to use modal operators of necessity (e.g., must, have to, will, always), while women tend to use model operators of possibility (e.g., "might, may, could, sometimes"). Read some of the posts in VC to see what I meen, especially when passions are elevated.
OK, so close the comments after a day instead of a week. The point was that closing them after a period of time might be a good idea. The people who have to monitor the comments can decide what that time should be.
I also agree that many conservatives did not see any problem with the Taranto post. But many on the left did. The final Volokh posts were far more thoughtful and documented than the original Taranto post. The Volokh posts also prompted the liberals to work to support their claims.
To avoid revamping the debate, I'll let the posts and comments stand for themselves for anyone who wants to decide which side "won."
Finally, I agree that the debate reached a point where new ideas were few and far between. That's the point where it might be a good idea to close comments (at least on this subject).
While insisting that all would-be commenters first register and provide an email address from a non-free provider would certainly keep out the rude ones, it's worth asking whether all the results of setting up such barriers to entry would be as desirable. It was suggested earlier, for instance, that one of the VC's reasons for allowing comments at all might be to draw more traffic. I personally (a) tend not to have much interest in reading a comment thread if I can't contribute to it myself, and (b) resent being required to register at every single site I visit, even if registration is free. If a significant number of people share these opinions, requiring registration is likely to significantly reduce the number of new readers attracted by the promise of a comments section. (Assuming, of course, that drawing more readers was one of the motives.)
This is especially true if email addresses from major free providers like Yahoo and Hotmail are banned outright; one of my standard assumptions when I encounter a site that asks me to register is that registering will result in me getting more junk email. There certainly are sites out there that don't sell email addresses or send out annoying newsletters and commercial offers of thir own, but I haven't found many.
The big problem is that anonymity and remoteness tend to bring out the worst in people. That fact plus the number of leftists on board are a recipe for disaster. A libertarian/conservative blog with so many comments from socialists/liberals will undoubtedly be ruined by ranting and raving, rudeness, trolls, and personal insults to and about the Conspirators. It's only just started but will undoubtedly get much worse as time goes by. You're going to end up spending little time actually blogging and major time moderating the comments.
IMHO, the comments are a distraction from the main blog anyway. I think you should start enabling comments only in a few situations, such as when a Conspirator is looking for an answer to a quesion, or when there's a good legal opinion or case that would likely draw informative comments.
Eugene, Orin, DavidB, and the rest of you Conspirators all have highly respected reputations which need to be protected. The garbage comments from outsiders, their rudeness, their personal attacks on the hosts--that stuff helps neither the Conspiracy nor the Conspirators.
It's hard to maintain professionalism when someone's attacking you in an outrageous manner. Yet, something imprudent that you say in the heat of the moment could come back to haunt you someday, particulary in any confirmation hearings that some of you may face in the future.
I advise extreme caution in deciding to allow comments to continue.
In any debate which attracts a widespread audience, there will always be those who have nothing to contribute, but feel the need to expound upon this great nothingness. Some will miss the point. Some won't care about the point. Some will rant and rave. It's the nature of the beast. Why get upset about it? As long as reasonable people keep their heads on straight, act appropriately, and ignore the others, the damage done is minimal.
There's a price for civility, and it's called identity. As Sandy007 points out, people who hide behind anonymity are generally the offenders, and they can do lots of damage.
The requirement for registration doesn't seem to impede contribution to lively blogs (e.g., dKos). The people who know how registration helps maintain a healthy respect through just consequences are attracted, and those who just want to promulgate views or provoke arguments aren't, because they can be ejected.
To Sandy007:
The issue is, "What is a Blog?" If it's merely a one-way broadcast of information, it may be useful (cartainly, I subscribed to many periodicals' RSS feeds). But, the founders of this particular blog have a choice: They can engage people in a dialog, or promote a particular set of views. Personally, having used both for more than 15 years, I'm convinced the richness of a collaborative group of people who are mutually respectful of each others views is what the Internet best contributes to society.
I'm also curious about your assertion that
"...the number of leftists on board are a recipe for disaster." What's so scary about "leftists?" I find as many self-declared libertarians (or was it libertines? :-) ) and conservatives capable of asocial behavior. A rich medium like this should, in my opinion, leverage the diversity toward better outcomes. Having a broad spectrum of viewpoints and world views keeps the dialog from falling into the abyss of mutually-reinforced extreme opinions. Personally, I'm probably (in some ways) one of those "leftists" in some matters, but I trust I've not become an ingredient in that "recipe for disaster."
It's Eugene Volokh's party, and he's got the right to decide who gets invited. "Censorship" and "Free speech" are not the issue here (the First Amendment applies to government, not this particular privately-owned syberspace). What the issue is: What constitutes civil behavior that leads to better ideas, better knowledge sharing, better outcomes?
When boors dominate the dialog, I move on. Let the boors bore each other.
Regarding comments on this site, I enjoy them and would miss them if they're gone. I think there's something rather ironic about using comments to condemn the practice of allowing comments. And I've been saddened by the breakout of personal hostility and trollitude in the past week or two.
Finally, I use a hotmail account, but it's my standard email address. I'd probably stop posting if required to use a different one. (Maybe that's an incentive to ban free accounts; up to the Conspiracy.)
We're in "violent agreement." I use my "throwaway eMail account" here, for that very reason. It is possible for spammers to harvest eMail addresses from this site.
For clarification: Sex is about the genetic basis which governs anatomy (mail/female/intersex). Gender is about behavior, which may or may not be congruent with sex (masculine/feminine/andorgynous). In other words, a female might generally behave in masculine ways, etc. They're "orthogonal" (i.e., independent variables).
As for you posts and my assessment/assumptions: I looked at a half-dozen threads in which you posted, and found you remarkably collaborative(*). You seem to place more emphasis on sustaining/nurturing the relationship than on "winning the argument" when people disagree with you. At the same time, I find that because your language is never (in the sample I viewed) offensive or attacking of other posters, few people respond to you in offensive or attacking ways.
It's a small sample, of course, but I'll go out on a limb with my guess: I don't know :-). Forced to make a decision, I'd say 52/48 feminine, but that's still within the "margin of error" in such an assessment.
Maybe I need to make you angry to provoke the "real you" to emerge? :-)
(*) In my paper "Cowboys, Communicators, Collaborators and Communities," I identify Collaborators as people to actively seek out divergent opinions. Collaborators accept that they don't know everything, and they don't know what they don't know, so the seek to gather more information from others to increase their knowledge set. They implicitly recognize that "creativity" is found in the differences between two people's views, not in trying to convince another to agree with them.
You make three points, one of which is obviously valid.
Volokh can institute any rules he wants to. It is indeed his party.
When you say that: "Censorship" and "Free speech" are not the issue here (the First Amendment applies to government, not this particular privately-owned cyberspace), however, you are half right. The First Amendment is indeed not at issue. But the remainder of your comment is a red herring. Any attempt to limit who speaks is censorship. It doesn't have to be done by the government to count as censorship, and I cannot imagine why you would think to the contrary. Therefore, Censorship and Free Speech are indeed at issue here. Will speech continue relatively uncensored? Or will we move to a system where the administrators decide what "deserves" to be posted?
You have provided your own solution to an appropriate course of behavior in a situation where things get out of hand: "When boors dominate the dialog, I move on. Let the boors bore each other." So ignore it. What's the problem?
If I may ask, what's the degree of correlation between being male/female as a matter of sex, masculine/feminine as a matter of gender, and a Cowboy/Collaborator as a matter of personality? And can you name some people who are Cowboys?
I'm interested in these questions in part because I have generally found such dichotomies to be less than completely helpful (other than male/female, that is). In particular, most people I know are collaborative and nurturing in some contexts, and abrasive and selfish in others. In my experience, Tannen-esque dichotomies don't reflect real people as accurately as they should. I'd be interested in your thoughts.
Orin
My suggestion is to enable comments on legal topics, but leave them off of more political comments, those that are more likely to invoke more heated responses. There are plenty of other places that we can go and vent. This, I think, would help maintain the high level of comments that I have seen in many of the threads here since comments were enabled.
Because of the first point above, I find VC with comments significantly more valuable than before, and hope that some way can be found to keep them available for those cases where they add, and don't subtract, in the discussion.
As noted, this is a blog run by men, and, thus, has a somewhat male outlook. If you haven't tried it yet, let me suggest althouse.com. Ann is a law professor, so you get some interesting legal discussions there. But, as she is a woman, you can be assured that a female perspective is not ignored. Plus, she is usually pretty draconian in maintaining decorum, ruthlessly deleting comments that degenerate into, say, name calling and the like.
I love the term "Tannen-esque dichotomies". Very appropriate.
What, exactly, is a "male outlook"? Rational thought? Failure to consider "gendered" communication?
And Althouse's communication style isn't in any way typically female, and while she herself is female her "perspective" is not.
Carol Ann's paper on Cowboys, etc says that we "evolve" from Cowboys (the "virulent" loners) until we are all "Collaborators".
Cowboys = men. Collaborators = women.
Notice that she guesses that Shelby is a female because Shelby is more interested in nurturing relationships--which (surprise!) is the Collaborative style: "The Collaborator pays more attention to the people than the results, having faith that if the relationships are nurtured and sustained, any outcome is possible".
There are two kinds of people: Those who classify people into categories, and those who don't. :)
That having been said, I find that distinctions are useful. And, as you point out, contextual. I may be collaborative here, but don't get between me 'n' my ice cream!
This medium is a poor one for a lengthy exegesis, so let me just pick one example: The difference between sex and gender. Sex is defined on the male/female scale, gender on the masculine/feminine. They are not isomorphic. With a two-by-two distinction (consider the two scales X and Y axes), I would posit there are feminine-behaving genetic-males (cross-dressers), and there are masculine-behaving genetic females (see the movie, "Boys Don't Cry").
However, I agree with you. In fact, I believe the only generalization I can make about anyone I meet is that they're virtually guaranteed to be a unique collection of beliefs and behaviors. My challenge, as the observer, is to deduce how those behaviors (I can't observe beliefs, only their consequences in behavior) communicate to me, and how I can facilitate the communication by interacting with them. The more I know about someone, the more the dichotomies breakdown; they're just a useful gambit before I've gathered observations.
For instance, that burly woman, wearing boots, jeans, and a bulky denim shirt over a tank top, walking up my walk like John Wayne to deliver a package is more likely to positively respond to a simple "Thanks" than a "Thank you, m'am!". On the other hand, the uniformed delivery person with the coif and makeup is more likely to appreciate the latter. (Upon further interaction I might, in fact, discover that my preconceptions are wrong...but that's what makes people interesting.
As for "Cowboys,..." I invite you to see http://www.deepwoods.com/transform/pubs/Cowboys.htm. I'm sure that after you read the description, you'll recognize them around you. They're the ones that operate from the premise, "Leave me alone to get my work done!" They hate those meetings where everybody's sharing what they're doing with everyonelse, 'cause they see it as so much time-wasting. (I know; I used to be one as a young computer programmer, more comfortable with the cut-and-dried, black-and-white binary world than the complex, ambiguous world of people. Hopefully, I grew beyond it.)
Thanks for the remarks about "Cowboys..."
However, in the sense of my response to OrinKerr, I'm not sure I agree that "Cowboys = men. Collaborators = women". In fact, and lots of Cowgirls, and lots of men who are wonderful and energizing Collaborators. There is some popular management claptrap about "Men being top-down leaders, women being collaborators," but I don't believe it for a minute. I'd say, for example, that Jack Welch (former CEO of GE) has demonstrated prodigious and productive Collaborator skills; I'd submit that Michelle Malkin is clearly a Cowgirl.
BTW, I've noticed a bit of traffic from this comments section. It could be that people are just interested in checking out the FFFT blog, which is always nice, of course. However, since I've made reference once or twice to my forum, I'll just say that my forum is different from my blog, is called The Perfect World (no link, don't wish to shill) and leave it at that.