JSH: Perspective is weird
- From: jstevh@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: 23 Dec 2006 21:48:04 -0800
One of the odder things that has emerged recently as I have expressed
my opinion of posts with ratings on Google Groups as they give that
option is that people who replied to me so obsessively actually care
about getting an honest assessment of the reality of how much their
posting is valued by both the number of ratings they get--few--and the
reality that there are maybe 3 or 4 other people who try to combat my
low ratings.
It gives them some perspective on their real social ranking on the
newsgroup.
Before, they must have just looked at replies, where as I've noted,
maybe 3 or 4 people can make it look like there is a LOT of support for
them by replying a lot in a thread, but the ratings tell you how many
people are rating and give you some idea of how it goes.
I am highly critical, not surprisingly, so I mostly give out 1 star, as
I see a lot of crap posts and rate them accordingly.
Their supporters, all three or four of them, come back to give them 5
stars, an outlandish overrating as their posts ARE crap, but still it
seems to settle in that hey, they are not the newsgroup celebrities
they thought they were.
These people didn't know where they actually stood.
But my guess is they thought they were very popular with most of the
newsgroup, of which they seem to believe there are a few hundred
readers with a few dozen regular readers based on the posts they
notice.
Weird, but from what I've read from these people in the past,
consistent with their gut feeling of the size of the sci.math
newsgroup.
In contrast I measure my impact off of the newsgroup and don't count
replies to my posts because I know there are a few very obsessive
people who skew things to the negative because they think they are some
kind of stars or something posting negatives the newsgroup wants to
see.
But they are actually minor hanger's on, drawing attention to
themselves at the expense of my research which I can measure as having
an ever growing worldwide impact by using a lot of tools, which yes are
mostly as a result of Google, that tell me what the real impact is,
versus the skewed view you'd get from posts on the newsgroup.
Perspective is weird that way. Most people have no clue about their
worldwide impact and in a situation where there is worldwide
attention--like here--they just screw up figuring out where they stand
as they don't take the proper view that it takes work to figure out
what is going on.
Especially in a world like ours does it take work.
Like how many of you have the slightest hint of a clue how many people
are likely to read this post in the next 24 hours?
Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?
Or in how many countries?
1? 2 or 3? 20 or more?
If you accept that your answer is you do not know, then maybe you are
on the path to realizing that unlike me, you have no clue what is
actually going on.
James Harris
.
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