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Wikinews has learned that the Wikimedia Foundation has decided not to participate in a panel discussion that is to take place at Santa Clara University in ...
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Please see this comment on a WikiNews story that needs to be updated, per the principles of Ethics in Journalism.
OK, so I E-Mail the above comment to eight people in the media, with copies to a handful of Wikipedians who generally don't read here, but who I usually keep apprised of what I'm doing (I don't like to blindside people if I can help it).
So among the recipients was Durova, who inexplicably responded to all the recipients with an ill-chosen comment. So another recipient answered her back, and very quickly Durova found herself painted into a corner. this all happened very fast, while I was downstairs getting something to eat.
It went something like this...
Moulton mails out the WikiNews comment to about 15 recipients, including the journalists and media critics who had covered the original story.
Durova replies to everyone with the remark, "Seems like a foolish kid who didn't realize when the joke wasn't funny."
Matthew Belmonte, Assistant Professor, Department of Human Development, Cornell University, responds with, "To what joke are you referring? A joke usually involves intent to deceive, even momentarily or in jest. The prosecutors' agreement to the dismissal of this charge demonstrates that there was no intent to deceive. Ms Simpson has nothing to apologise for. The police and prosecutors, on the other hand, have a great deal to apologise for, not only in their initial overreaction but also in their steadfast, months-long pursuit of this frivolous case."
Durova replies, "I wasn't aware that jokes involved any intent to deceive. What theory of humor suggests that?"
At this point, I return from raiding the fridge and compose a longer response to the above:
Durova then sends this to everyone: Please remove me from this e-mail group. I don't know why I was included in the first place.
So I reply directly to Durova (omitting the others) with, "It's not an E-Mail Group, Durova. It was just one message, with multiple recipients. I included you because it was a story about ethics in online media, relating to a WP BLP, plus a second WP article on the event at Logan Airport, plus a third article in WikiNews. For reasons unbeknownst to me, you elected to reply, and to reply to all the recipients."
To which Durova replies, "spammed."
And even as I was composing the above, Matthew Belmonte returns with a lengthy reply to Durova and everyone else:
Meantime, I go over to my Skype window, and I see that Durova is logged into Skype and is idle. I have a text chat window still open from the last time I had chewed the fat with her.
This is how it goes...
Whereupon Durova goes offline.
So among the recipients was Durova, who inexplicably responded to all the recipients with an ill-chosen comment. So another recipient answered her back, and very quickly Durova found herself painted into a corner. this all happened very fast, while I was downstairs getting something to eat.
It went something like this...
Moulton mails out the WikiNews comment to about 15 recipients, including the journalists and media critics who had covered the original story.
Durova replies to everyone with the remark, "Seems like a foolish kid who didn't realize when the joke wasn't funny."
Matthew Belmonte, Assistant Professor, Department of Human Development, Cornell University, responds with, "To what joke are you referring? A joke usually involves intent to deceive, even momentarily or in jest. The prosecutors' agreement to the dismissal of this charge demonstrates that there was no intent to deceive. Ms Simpson has nothing to apologise for. The police and prosecutors, on the other hand, have a great deal to apologise for, not only in their initial overreaction but also in their steadfast, months-long pursuit of this frivolous case."
Durova replies, "I wasn't aware that jokes involved any intent to deceive. What theory of humor suggests that?"
At this point, I return from raiding the fridge and compose a longer response to the above:
QUOTE(Moulton's Rejoinder)
The squadron of State Troopers under the supervision of Major Scott Pare surrounded the 19-yr old Ms. Simpson. From the Boston Globe story:
Outside the terminal, Simpson was surrounded by police holding machine guns.It occurs to me that surrounding Ms. Simpson with a squadron of State Troopers holding machine guns, and ordering her to remove her top is just rude.
"She was immediately told to stop, to raise her hands, and not make any movement so we could observe all her movements to see if she was trying to trip any type of device," Pare said at a press conference at Logan. "There was obviously a concern that had she not followed the protocol ... we may have used deadly force."
Simpson was arrested, and it was quickly determined that the device was harmless.
"She said it was a piece of art and she wanted to stand out on career day," Pare said.
Durova then sends this to everyone: Please remove me from this e-mail group. I don't know why I was included in the first place.
So I reply directly to Durova (omitting the others) with, "It's not an E-Mail Group, Durova. It was just one message, with multiple recipients. I included you because it was a story about ethics in online media, relating to a WP BLP, plus a second WP article on the event at Logan Airport, plus a third article in WikiNews. For reasons unbeknownst to me, you elected to reply, and to reply to all the recipients."
To which Durova replies, "spammed."
And even as I was composing the above, Matthew Belmonte returns with a lengthy reply to Durova and everyone else:
QUOTE(Matthew Belmonte)
Durova <nadezhda.durova@gmail.com> replied,
In this case in particular, because the police falsely inferred "bomb" from "blinking lights" and therefore falsely expected others' inferences to match theirs, they could in retrospect have seen the event as an attempt at humour rather than as the miscommunication that it was -- and any observer or commentator who believes that the inference from "blinking lights" to "bomb" is a likely one is therefore liable also to perceive the event falsely as an attempt at humour.
The root of the disagreement is the false belief that a blinking light signals a bomb -- a belief which, judging from the events of the past eight and half months, seems all too common amongst the police, the prosecutor's office, and the readership of the Boston Herald, all of whom may be watching too much television.
I wasn't aware that jokes involved any intent to deceive. What theory of humor suggests that?In fact in the absence of an accurate mental model of the inferences (and therefore the beliefs) made by others involved in an interaction, plain false belief can become indistinguishable from humour. Most of the literature on this confusion has concentrated on failure of second-order theory-of-mind skill in modeling the beliefs of social partners (e.g. Winner & Leekam, British Journal of Developmental Psychology 9:257-270 (1991); Sullivan et al., British Journal of Developmental Psychology 13:191-204 (1995); Leekam & Prior, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 35:901-915 (1994)), but the same confusion can arise in instances where theory-of-mind is intact but social partners make different inferences from the same observations and their models of each other's beliefs therefore diverge.
In this case in particular, because the police falsely inferred "bomb" from "blinking lights" and therefore falsely expected others' inferences to match theirs, they could in retrospect have seen the event as an attempt at humour rather than as the miscommunication that it was -- and any observer or commentator who believes that the inference from "blinking lights" to "bomb" is a likely one is therefore liable also to perceive the event falsely as an attempt at humour.
The root of the disagreement is the false belief that a blinking light signals a bomb -- a belief which, judging from the events of the past eight and half months, seems all too common amongst the police, the prosecutor's office, and the readership of the Boston Herald, all of whom may be watching too much television.
Meantime, I go over to my Skype window, and I see that Durova is logged into Skype and is idle. I have a text chat window still open from the last time I had chewed the fat with her.
This is how it goes...
QUOTE(Skype chat with Durova)
[18:50:08] Barry Kort: How did you get the impression that Star Simpson's MIT Career Week name tag was a joke?
[18:54:00] Durova: I made no such inference.
[18:54:14] … Please delete me from that list. I have no idea why you added me in the first place.
[18:55:31] Barry Kort: You wrote: "Seems like a foolish kid who didn't realize when the joke wasn't funny."
[18:55:58] … It's not a list. I just sent one message to a handful of recipients.
[18:55:59] Durova: I don't like to repeat myself, Barry.
[18:56:12] … If this line of conversation continues I will block your Skype access and your e-mail.
[18:56:35] Barry Kort: Come again? What "line" of conversation are you referring to?
[18:54:00] Durova: I made no such inference.
[18:54:14] … Please delete me from that list. I have no idea why you added me in the first place.
[18:55:31] Barry Kort: You wrote: "Seems like a foolish kid who didn't realize when the joke wasn't funny."
[18:55:58] … It's not a list. I just sent one message to a handful of recipients.
[18:55:59] Durova: I don't like to repeat myself, Barry.
[18:56:12] … If this line of conversation continues I will block your Skype access and your e-mail.
[18:56:35] Barry Kort: Come again? What "line" of conversation are you referring to?
Whereupon Durova goes offline.
Durova hates to be wrong, and she has a habit of making herself look three times more foolish trying to portray her errors as intentional fact, when it would be so much easier just to say, "Oh, I misunderstood the situation. Sorry."
QUOTE(Moulton @ Fri 6th June 2008, 1:03am) 
QUOTE(Skype chat with Durova)
[18:50:08] Barry Kort: How did you get the impression that Star Simpson's MIT Career Week name tag was a joke?
[18:54:00] Durova: I made no such inference.
[18:54:14] … Please delete me from that list. I have no idea why you added me in the first place.
[18:55:31] Barry Kort: You wrote: "Seems like a foolish kid who didn't realize when the joke wasn't funny."
[18:55:58] … It's not a list. I just sent one message to a handful of recipients.
[18:54:00] Durova: I made no such inference.
[18:54:14] … Please delete me from that list. I have no idea why you added me in the first place.
[18:55:31] Barry Kort: You wrote: "Seems like a foolish kid who didn't realize when the joke wasn't funny."
[18:55:58] … It's not a list. I just sent one message to a handful of recipients.
You in fact sent seven messages (at least, that many that I also received in a different discussion - I wasn't included in the one you are talking about, so that'll be even more) to Durova. She received another nine from others hitting the "reply to all" button. Being removed from receiving further messages is a perfectly reasonable thing to request, though arguably she should have e-mailed everyone asking them to remove her from further responses.
Something you may not be aware of, Moulton, is that "reply to all" is often taken as the path of least resistance when responding to an e-mail that was sent to multiple recipients. If you'd not intended to have the set of people you had responded to turn into an impromptu discussion group, you should not have disclosed the list of recipients in the Cc: header (if you still wanted transparency you could have disclosed it - with or without their actual e-mail addresses, in the message body)
Durova was wrong, though, in assuming you had the ability to prevent future responses from others from going to her. She should have asked everyone to remove her from further responses.
Durova was wrong, though, in assuming you had the ability to prevent future responses from others from going to her. She should have asked everyone to remove her from further responses.
There weren't any names in the CC portion, Random.
Here is the header of my original message...
The body of the message was comprised of one introductory line, followed by a direct paste of content posted on WikiNews:
Posted today on WikiNews...
Barry Kort
__________________
Barry Kort, Ph.D
Visiting Scientist
Affective Computing Research Group
MIT Media Lab
--
The Process of Enlightenment Works In Mysterious Plays.
I hadn't expected anyone to reply at all, let alone reply to all.
Here is the header of my original message...
QUOTE(Message Header)
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 17:11:29 -0400
From: "Barry Kort" <bkort@media.mit.edu>
Sender: barry.kort@gmail.com
To: "Star Simpson" <stars@mit.edu>,
"Affective Computing Research Group" <affect@media.mit.edu>,
"Cynthia Breazeal" <cynthiab@media.mit.edu>,
"Nancy Williams" <nancy.moonbeam@gmail.com>,
"Michael Sweeney" <mike.sweeney@usu.edu>,
"Rebekah Bradway" <rebrad@cc.usu.edu>,
"James Carroll" <letter@globe.com>,
"Emily Rooney" <greaterboston@wgbh.org>,
"Robin Young" <letters@here-now.org>,
"David Boeri" <radioboston@wbur.org>,
"Matthew Belmonte" <belmonte@mit.edu>,
Lar <lar@miltontrainworks.com>,
"Kim Bruning" <kim@bruning.xs4all.nl>,
"Serina Quinones Barkley" <sbarkley@dwyercollora.com>,
"John Hockenberry" <hockoo@media.mit.edu>,
"Linda Emerson" <lemerson2@gmail.com>,
Durova <nadezhda.durova@gmail.com>
Subject: Praise for the Globe and "Beat the Press" for Other Media
From: "Barry Kort" <bkort@media.mit.edu>
Sender: barry.kort@gmail.com
To: "Star Simpson" <stars@mit.edu>,
"Affective Computing Research Group" <affect@media.mit.edu>,
"Cynthia Breazeal" <cynthiab@media.mit.edu>,
"Nancy Williams" <nancy.moonbeam@gmail.com>,
"Michael Sweeney" <mike.sweeney@usu.edu>,
"Rebekah Bradway" <rebrad@cc.usu.edu>,
"James Carroll" <letter@globe.com>,
"Emily Rooney" <greaterboston@wgbh.org>,
"Robin Young" <letters@here-now.org>,
"David Boeri" <radioboston@wbur.org>,
"Matthew Belmonte" <belmonte@mit.edu>,
Lar <lar@miltontrainworks.com>,
"Kim Bruning" <kim@bruning.xs4all.nl>,
"Serina Quinones Barkley" <sbarkley@dwyercollora.com>,
"John Hockenberry" <hockoo@media.mit.edu>,
"Linda Emerson" <lemerson2@gmail.com>,
Durova <nadezhda.durova@gmail.com>
Subject: Praise for the Globe and "Beat the Press" for Other Media
The body of the message was comprised of one introductory line, followed by a direct paste of content posted on WikiNews:
QUOTE(Body of Message)
Posted today on WikiNews...
[Verbatim paste of the above linked Comment at WikiNews]
Barry Kort
__________________
Barry Kort, Ph.D
Visiting Scientist
Affective Computing Research Group
MIT Media Lab
--
The Process of Enlightenment Works In Mysterious Plays.
I hadn't expected anyone to reply at all, let alone reply to all.
QUOTE(Moulton @ Fri 6th June 2008, 9:45pm)
There weren't any names in the CC portion, Random.
That's a quibble. The point is that there were multiple recipients.
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