The war on noise

[nancylebov]

http://blag.xkcd.com/2008/01/14/robot9000-and-xkcd-signal-attacking-noise-in-chat/#comments

And then I had an idea — what if you were only allowed to say sentences that had never been said before, ever? A bot with access to the full channel logs could kick you out when you repeated something that had already been said. There would be no “all your base are belong to us”, no “lol”, no “asl”, no “there are no girls on the internet”. No “I know rite”, no “hi everyone”, no “morning sucks.” Just thoughtful, full sentences.

Notes: This is for chat. It would probably be a bad thing to eliminate cut-and-pasting what you're replaying to, as is usual in slower sorts of conversation.

This is intended to improve conversation among people of good will. You still need human moderation to deal with griefers, spammers, and other such parasites.

Comments

[redbird]

And no "Good morning," "I'm so sorry," or "I love you"? Those are full sentences, often thoughtful, and often repeated. Even sentences like "My cat just jumped off the refrigerator" or "I'm not sure who I'm going to vote for Tuesday, because my first choice has dropped out" turn up over and over. (So do things like "Where are my keys?" and "Would you like some tea?" but those less often online than in person.)

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

Thing is, a lot of real conversation among people of good will is, technically, "noise" -- but it's the noise of social connections being made and reaffirmed. The content of what's being said is not really important; the action of saying it, is.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed. It's called "phatic communion". "Phatic" means 'relating to speech', and "communion" means 'sharing' or 'intimate fellowship or rapport'; but many people (even -- gasp! -- some linguists!), unfamiliar with "phatic", (mis)learned the name as "phatic communication".

Definition:

(Coined by the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, from the Greek phatos, "spoken"; pronounced fat′ik) Of, constituting, or given to language, as formulistic talk or meaningless sounds, used merely to establish an atmosphere or to establish or maintain social contact, rather than to communicate specific information or ideas. Bronislaw Malinowski defined phatic communion in the 1920s as "a type of speech in which ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words."

In speech, examples include informal comments on the weather ("Nice day, isn't it?"), an enquiry about health at the beginning of a conversation or in passing ("How's it going?"), or the fraternal grunts of sports players. In writing, this includes the conventions for opening and closing a letter ("Yours faithfully").

Another (this page also has some Examples and Observations):

Nonreferential use of language to share feelings or to establish a mood of sociability rather than to communicate information or ideas; ritualized formulas that prolong communication, attract the attention of the listener, or sustain his or her attention.

As a personal observation, I'll add that non-use of phatic communion is often a serious defect in social skills.

Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoëpist, and Philological Busybody

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

As a personal observation, I'll add that non-use of phatic communion is often a serious defect in social skills.

Depends on context. In face-to-face conversation, I'd agree. But in a formal debate or an archived conversation, I think it does more harm than good. Of course, it wouldn't work well with Usenet, since the primary noise sources there are already posting randomized garbage.

But there are some web forums where I wouldn't mind seeing it used, where a thread that I'm interested in has 6 new posts, and all of them turn out to be "me too". It would also delete all those ()*()**)^&*( blog comments that say just "first post".

[lightningb.livejournal.com]

Perhaps, instead of just filtering out repeated sentences, we could number them? That way, "ROFL" would be "23" and "first post" would be "56", and so forth. We could have a list of them in the FAQ, and it'd be pretty simple to do automatic translation.

It's a real- world (so to speak :-) version of the convicts and the numbered jokes.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Oh, you mean #23.