Shorter ver­sion: Jesus, don’t Digg and Red­dit scare the crap out of you?

Strange jux­ta­po­si­tions in the wind. What’s up with the world?

On the one hand, a huge ker­fuf­fle all up and down the aisles at Sci­ence­blogs recently over social and cul­tural norms of dia­log, fram­ing, and debate. PZ Myers dissed for treat­ing ass­holes like ass­holes on his blog, and the deep philo­soph­i­cal and soci­o­log­i­cal con­se­quences of being rude and being immod­er­ate and get­ting mad and show­ing it. In the mid­dle of a polit­i­cal debate of all things.

Clutch the fuck­ing pearls.

And orig­i­nally unre­lated, but sud­denly not: I’m doing a lit­tle side-​​project with some local col­leagues over here at the Nudge blog, where we’re re-​​implementing Lee Spector’s, Chris Perry’s, Jon Klein’s, and Maarten Keijzer’s Push lan­guage for a genetic pro­gram­ming exer­cise or two. We’ve posted a few entries over there, just mainly project-​​related dis­cus­sions and clar­i­fi­ca­tions for our­selves, though as we get closer to a decent release can­di­date we’re hope­fully going to have leg­i­ble con­tent as well. What­ever. It’s not a big deal.

It’s not what you’d call “Search Engine Opti­miza­tion Ready”, OK? And not unremit­ting schol­arly pedantry, either. What, you’re sur­prised? That means you don’t know me very well.

Your bad.

And, as it hap­pens, that’s my point.

So any­way, because I like to keep the beloved couple-​​hundred peo­ple who read this blog up to date on things that I think are inter­est­ing, I cross-​​posted a bit I wrote over there, here. A short sum­mary of some genetic pro­gram­ming search algo­rithms I like.

Now I’m, like, you know, pro­fes­sion­ally a prac­ti­tioner of these arcane arts. I kinda know how to be tech­ni­cally spe­cific and all advi­sor­ish and Suity about stuff. I do Suity really well, when I choose to—which is gen­er­ally when some­body with more money than you is pay­ing me.

And as some astute read­ers will recall, the author does also tend to fall into an aca­d­e­mic cadence now and then, and has through the years given ample evi­dence that he knows how to explain things in that leg­i­ble, clear Pas­sive Voice with which one tries to elu­ci­date finer points and con­vey over­ar­ch­ing con­cep­tual frame­works to the Gen­tle Reader, pro­vid­ing as needed all salient cita­tions and ample back­ground infor­ma­tion and shit like that.

Let’s all take a moment right now and acknowl­edge to our­selves my guilt. I shouldn’t ever, ever, ever write the way I am right now. There’s so much poten­tial use­ful­ness wasted every time I fail to edu­cate and share my knowl­edge and remain polite and try to make the user expe­ri­ence more help­ful and pleas­ant and when­ever I’m not nice to peo­ple. Every time I’m not per­fectly clear about some­thing, an angel eats a kitten.

I feel like such a friv­o­lous pissant.

OK. Done now. Their turn.

Other, smarter peo­ple are stand­ing by, ready to be help­ful and talk to you directly, and answer your ques­tions and con­cerns. If you want nice, polite dis­course and help­ful schol­ar­ship, go get it. Nic and Ric­cardo and Bill are all bet­ter peo­ple than I am, and they’ll help you find your way. I have the deep­est respect for them. Plus, added bonus: it’s their job to teach you stuff about genetic programming.

This is a blog. Bet­ter: per­sonal blog. It says it, up on top there. Go look.

You’re not read­ing a book, and I’m not writ­ing one. You’re not watch­ing an edu­ca­tional tele­vi­sion chan­nel broad­cast for the good of human­ity. I’m not sell­ing some­thing and need to make sure the brand­ing and the value propo­si­tion are crys­tal clear. I’m not review­ing any block­buster movies in hopes of get­ting my own picked up by a major stu­dio. You’re not sit­ting in lec­ture at school—although maybe you did land on this page because Google lied to you and told you the answer to your fuck­ing home­work would be here.

In other words: it’s not my job to be com­pre­hen­sive. Not in any way. Not here, at least (Cf. com­ment on “peo­ple with more money than you”). Not my job to Speak to the Ages.

I’m too busy speak­ing with the peo­ple I actu­ally set out to speak to. We’re hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion. And even though you just dropped down out of the sky by way of Digg or Red­dit or del​.icio​.us or slash­dot, you may be sur­prised to find that what you’re look­ing at is part of an ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion. Schol­ar­ship is a con­ver­sa­tion. Being a mem­ber of a com­mu­nity of prac­tice is a mat­ter of con­ver­sa­tion. And that’s what blog­ging is, as well.

POINT OF TOZIER’S SCROLLY RANT IS DOWN HERE»»>; SKIP THE REST IF YOU’RE BORED!!ONE!

Seems to me that the fun­da­men­tal premise of social search is bro­ken for that very rea­son. I’m not sit­ting here rant­ing because I want to fill up my server with more words, or because I invested in scroll bar stock and want you to buy buy buy and every click in the right mar­gin of a win­dow earns me cash, or even because I got all sad and upset about some­thing rude and fool­ish some­body said about My Pris­tine Rep­u­ta­tion on the Inter­net.

[Let me tell you about My Pris­tine Rep­u­ta­tion on the Inter­net, boyo. Spi­der Jerusalem, Al Swearen­gen? Out of work.]

Social search assumes that what we say on the Web is sup­posed to be read out of con­text. Telling some­body to go look at some­thing that’s an expla­na­tion, or a cun­ning piece of sum­mary, or use­ful tool, that’s easy. Telling some­body to look at a sin­gle utter­ance in a long, con­vo­luted con­ver­sa­tion with many par­ties and eso­teric back­ground knowl­edge needed?

That’s lazy. That takes more than a few tags and a 255-​​character comment.

Assume that the author and other com­menters are in the mid­dle of a dis­cus­sion. Assume it. You land in the mid­dle of a con­fus­ing, unhelp­ful Inter­net Site because some­body linked you there? Act like polite peo­ple at a party and intro­duce your­self, try to catch up by qui­etly watch­ing. Find out what’s going on. Ask ques­tions. Par­tic­i­pate like real peo­ple do.

Not like users.