Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site hou3c.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!hou3c!REM@Mit-Mc.ARPA
From: REM@Mit-Mc.ARPA (Robert Elton Maas)
Newsgroups: net.mail.msggroup
Subject: EIES NORMS
Message-ID: <513@hou3c.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 29-Apr-84 20:12:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: hou3c.513
Posted: Sun Apr 29 20:12:00 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 30-Apr-84 05:37:05 EDT
Sender: ka@hou3c.UUCP (Kenneth Almquist)
Lines: 18
To: 114%NJIT-EIES.MAILNET@Mit-Multics.ARPA
Cc: MsgGroup@Brl-Aos.ARPA


    It is useful to indicate your agreement or support of someone 's
    comments.  Otherwise, EIES can be like talking into a tape
    recorder with no feedback at all.  Metacommunication
    (communication about communication) is especially important.
Same goes for Arpanet. I often give reinforcing feedback when somebody
says something really nicely stated that I agree with. (Gee, this
seems to be self-referent, I'm agreeing with the above quoted text
here.) But most people usually adopt the "if it ain't broken, don't
fix it" philosophy, i.e. don't upset the applecart, don't comment
except to correct or rebut. Maybe when structured text (hypertext) is
generally available it'll be easy and common for people who agree with
expressed views to flag the views as agreed-with, so later readers can
see various articles highlighted with tens or hundreds of "I agree
too" flags and thus know the article is a real concensus, and thus
give more weight to what is said than would be appropriate if it as
just one person's opinion.
[Just for hack value: self-referent meta-communication such as this is fun!]