It certainly influences the people who follow a given link-comm to feel as though there's an actual discussion (with people reading each other and responding to each other) going on.
Absolutely -- it makes it look like we're all sitting in the same room talking, and naturally, shouldn't we have to take turns? Please, stay on topic, focus, raise your hand if you have something to say. And that impression has absolutely no basis in reality, but is created solely and entirely by the link round-ups.
The problem is that link-roundups are, undoubtedly, a useful and informative thing. It's just, I think, the more you organize and editorialize in your link-presentations, the more you give an impression of there being any kind of an order to it. When in fact you're just enforcing the veneer of a single conversation on what is really an entire cafeteria of four-tops all discussing different things amongst themselves, and only every now and then overhearing what someone else might be saying (and just as often, mishearing what someone else is saying).
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Date: 22 Jan 2011 06:52 pm (UTC)Absolutely -- it makes it look like we're all sitting in the same room talking, and naturally, shouldn't we have to take turns? Please, stay on topic, focus, raise your hand if you have something to say. And that impression has absolutely no basis in reality, but is created solely and entirely by the link round-ups.
The problem is that link-roundups are, undoubtedly, a useful and informative thing. It's just, I think, the more you organize and editorialize in your link-presentations, the more you give an impression of there being any kind of an order to it. When in fact you're just enforcing the veneer of a single conversation on what is really an entire cafeteria of four-tops all discussing different things amongst themselves, and only every now and then overhearing what someone else might be saying (and just as often, mishearing what someone else is saying).