Coming back a bit late to this conversation... with far too long of a post:
Dan earlier said:
I worry about how the whole idea of a public metaconversation might affect those who worry, for example, about contributing to mailing lists and the like. I can see how somebody might find the idea of presenting a conference paper very intimidating while subject to instant public comment and criticism.
People find presenting conference papers intimidating for all sorts of reasons beyond our control, while all academic societies (like TEI and DM) should do their best to minimise any major sources of anxiety for people, I don't believe it should be a major concern of them to cater for everyone's fear and paranoia. I think it is a myth that twitter somehow opens up new way to provide public comment and criticism. During a paper one could easily email a mailing list and say "Dot is talking about yet another image viewer/navigator, why do funding bodies *keep* funding the same thing again and again?!" Or one could put it in a blog... and blogging conferences is quite common. If Dot were then somehow offended by this, then she could of course answer this criticism (to point out that the TILE project is really more about Text/Image linking in my example). But in my opinion we should avoid attempting to shield people from comment and criticism; we do them and the field a disservice. I'd be tempted to posit that without forums for causing disagreement and possibly offence that an academic field would stagnate. Obviously I'm not suggesting we just all go out and vilify each other, but there certainly is an academic benefit in pointing out the emperor seems to be a tad scantly dressed. As a comedian I went to see recently when discussing attempts to legislate to prevent hurt feelings commented something along the lines of: "What ever happened to 'sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you', if you are offended by what I say, then _fine_ be offended, that is your right. But nothing really _happens_ to you when you are offended, it isn't like I've pushed you down the stairs, if you don't like what I've said then just vote with your feet!".
At a recent conference (DRHA in Belfast) I specifically followed the tweets by one particular person because he was being blunt and honest. He was outraged by the waste of his tax revenue being spent by JISC on the development of software that already existed in countless forms, and scathing when people presented the same project they'd presented four years ago with almost no difference in content, but equally lauded those papers which had something new and interesting to say. It made attending other parallel sessions much more enjoyable. I remember one person expressing regret that the person in question had attended another session instead of theirs -- they *wanted* the honest blunt feedback that everyone else would hide behind meek assertions that the paper went 'fine' or tweets that just described what the person had said.
I was shocked at the TEI to learn that people find contributing to listservs intimidating (I seem to have been born without that gene). But they report that they do.
I know when I joined the TEI mailing list eons ago it was a bit more rough-and-tumble, but plenty of people were nice to me and helped me. I think the TEI list these days is actually a really nice and pleasant list compared to some, so while I'm not shocked that people are sometimes intimidated by the idea of posting to mailing lists, the TEI one is so much better than it once was and so much better than some other mailing lists. It goes without saying, I hope, that the DM-L mailing list is similarly a nice friendly place when we occasionally break out into conversation. I certainly hope that no one feels that they can't contribute to any conversation on DM-L or start new ones! Please do! I'd like to hear from more people I *don't* already know!
I don't think that there is anything to be done about twitter feeds or that one ought to do something about them (other than perhaps encourage people to be kind to each other).
While I recognise it is personal preference, I'd certainly prefer people were honest with me. They were in the questions afterwards: "Why didn't you just use software X", and I replied "Well because it does something different, here is why..." During the #tei_09 conference there were 3 tweets about my paper all by the same nice person, but all just descriptive of what I was saying, no critical feedback one way or another. (All the people doing that kind of thing were in the other parallel session, which sounded quite interesting!) In most cases, most of the tweets were just like this, descriptive of what was going on with occasionally some additional comment. If the person in my session had complained that the paper was just a basic description of what the software does and why we made it, then well, they'd have been right, because that was the paper I chose to give! Even if they'd been viciously cruel about the paper and my method of presenting, I would have shrugged it off as one person's opinion, but tried to do better in the future. I wonder if a 'tweet' flame-war results in roasted poultry of some sort.
Sorry for rambling on so much about this! Feel free to criticise that on any twitter account you have. ;-)
-James (And only my opinions, not the opinions of Digital Medievalist or any institution connected with it. If you are offended by any of its contents, then I apologise and hope that makes you feel somewhat better.)