Ben, yes, absolutely, there are always rules of order. Good point. And on the Web, one level of them is baked into the software. For example, in the real world, we have to have an implicit rule about when you’re allowed to interrupt someone. But online the software dictates how interruptive you can be. Of course, there are still plenty of implicit rules of order online, including how digressive you can be.

We confound chat and discussion, conversation and debate … so folk actually trying to go at things hammer and tongues (usually a pretty energetic and so pretty heated process) have to do that in situations that are chaotic and disordered. Or, rather, ordered in only the worst way: serialized.

After nearly 30 years of rubbing my face against such walls of stone and brick I’ve come up with a way of seperating the uhhh shall we say “social” component from the underlying matrix of fact and truth. I liken it to the “glass bead game” Hesse depicted in this “Magister Ludi”. Story and pictures at 11.

http://wiki.nethique.info/wiki/Nethic_Charter_for_blogs.

Just over one month ago, the Associated Humans (les humains associes) held a conference here in Paris which brought together the internet representatives of the three main political parties among others in order to discuss the importance of agreeing on a charter of good conduct (which remains an open project) :
http://carrefour-numerique.cite-sciences.fr/-La-Nethique-Vivre-ensemble-sur-le-

The Nethics campaign has increased the awarness of the major French political parties regarding the potential for mudslinging during the presidential campaign and for the misbehaviour of e-activists.

We are very interested to exchange infos with you about this debate, and how we can improve the sensitization…