Challenge

What's holding you back from participating in online conversations with people you don't know?

Darko Savic Oct 05, 2020

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Necessity

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In online communities it is the norm that 90% of people are passive readers, 9% contribute a little, and 1% of people account for almost all the conversations. Why does it have to be like that?

What holds you back from participating in online discussions?

Please bite your lip and answer below:)

[1]The 90-9-1 Rule for Participation Inequality in Social Media and Online Communities. Nielsen Norman Group logoNielsen Norman Group. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/

brainstorming intellectual collaboration

Creative contributions

Everything has already been said

J. Nikola Oct 05, 2020

Every topic targets and usually finds the enthusiasts who elaborate it deeper than 99% of the others. They are passionate, full of knowledge, and ready to dig deep and debate. The rest is barely scratching the surface, use no energy to understand the topic better, and just entertain themselves. They are just not into it and everything what they wanted to say is pretty obvious and somebody else already said it. 

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Shubhankar Kulkarni2 years ago

Sometimes, I am lazy and I don't go through each and every contribution just to check whether what I want to say is already said. If only there was a better way to check for duplicate sessions and contributions.

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Impostor syndrome

Darko Savic Oct 05, 2020

Feeling like the conversation is out of your league and your thoughts don't belong there

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Martina Pesce2 years ago

I would say this feeling is incredibly amplified on the internet. The audience is potentially immense and your fear of someone more qualified and knowledgeable than you that could see your contribution is not just more probable but actually realistic.
This could be avoided by using a pseudonym. You need to have this idea, though.

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Darko Savic2 years ago

Martina Pesce It's all in the perspective. Whatever we do in life, it always starts out of our league. Then if we persist for long enough someday it isn't:) There is no shame in coming to the table later than those before you. Looking down on people (snobbery) is a more realistic problem in my opinion. But then again, it's the problem of the person who is doing it, not the one who is being looked down upon. Sure, it's inconvenient if I'm being looked down upon. If this is too taxing on my ego, I might need to rethink the group I got myself into:) But I should still proceed with what I set out to do, just maybe with different people. Or I could take it as a practice, strengthen my self-confidence, and press on until I'm in the position to be kinder to newcomers.

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Martina Pesce2 years ago

Darko Savic I completely agree with your point of view. Would be brilliant if we could all manage to effortless feel giving contributions like that.
Having a platform supporting this it's already quite of a step forward!

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Inability to put words into text

Crispen Phiri Oct 20, 2020

Many people can easily express their ideas through speech but find it difficult to put those ideas into text.

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Darko Savic2 years ago

A cool thing about this platform is that everything (except comments) will be editable, so even if your words are not great, but your idea gets across, someone will edit your contribution and make it the best possible version. We are working on building this functionality. Anyone will be able to suggest edits, the suggestions will then be peer-reviewed and approved by vote before they go live.

Because all ideas here are shared, it doesn't matter who contributes what. All it matters is that the idea ends up being the best possible version.

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Darko Savic2 years ago

Good point. I never considered this because, for me, it's the opposite. I find it easier to take my time in coming up with a good paragraph of text. In-person or over the phone I need to be well warmed up to be able to articulate my ideas right. Even then it probably comes out half worse than text🙂 

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Fear of being proven "incorrect"

Shubhankar Kulkarni Oct 05, 2020

A single attack on your thoughts is sufficient to discourage you from participating any further - especially when sharing / not sharing on the platform does not directly affect you. To overcome it, anonymity helps.

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Laziness

Shubhankar Kulkarni Oct 05, 2020

A concept that would have taken X number of words to explain to a person in front of you takes more than that when writing about it, to help the reader understand it entirely. Participating in discussions, therefore, requires more effort on the contributor's part.

In addition to that, if you end up having a debate, you need more words. People may be simply lazy to explain something to someone unknown, how they may be incorrect. Here is where Twitter scores, I guess - limited number of words - to write and to read.

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Darko Savic2 years ago

Laziness also applies when not being willing to put in the effort of signing up just to be able to post.

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Fear of being attacked for no particular reason

Darko Savic Oct 05, 2020

People can be nasty. I suspect it has to do with our innate drive to position ourselves above others (powered by serotonin). Some people grab every opportunity to exploit a "hole" in your words just to show you and anyone else reading it that they are better and you suck.

There seems to be no way of getting around status games. It can be done constructively (helping you out with great info), but it can also range from microaggressions, sarcasm to full-on bullying and abuse.

No way around one-upmanship, someone will put you down no matter what you say:

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Selfishness

Darko Savic Oct 05, 2020

Getting the info you were after and not being willing to put in the effort of signing up and composing a message to improve the information for the next reader.