One of the toughest lessons I had to learn in my corporate life was how difficult informal written communication is. A formal white paper or proposal is easy - it's the informal, ad hoc email/IM/blog/forum mediums that the friction manifests. It's easy enough to get one's point across, but sometimes difficult to do it in a fashion that doesn't seem abrupt and often downright rude (regardless of intent). The longer the exchange goes back and forth, the more danger there is. Take away the verbal and visual cues that humans evolved to read and the communication can break down. Easily.
IIRC, I remember someone meeting Dave from USSM at an event a couple of years ago and being shocked at how soft spoken, polite, witty and engaging he was. I've heard much the same about the LL boys and Churchill as well. I imagine the same would probably be said of most posters.
Tough nut to crack. Emoticons can only take one so far.
You know what? ... if we could find a little bit softer phrasings, when we think we've got a fellow MC/DOV'er on the wrong side of something, that would be great.
Not saying that I don't need to work on it, too. Friendliness + fresh thought = recharge (from the day's real work). At least that's what I want to see in my info-tainment...
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Is there any upside to contradicting each other so bluntly?
Let's grant for a second that I have the absolute truth on some point or other -- which is much less likely than I think it is -- and one of the 140-IQ posters here has actually said something that can be proven to be mistaken.
Why provide the "correction" in a rude manner? Why not provide the correction politely? We can be pointed and friendly at the same time.
Rudeness is just not necessary to compelling idea exchange. We all know that the internet is full of places wherein the lead members rudely embarrass anybody they see a chance to.
This is neither here nor there, and present company is excepted. But for what it's worth, when I see a blogger get rude in response to disagreement, the first thought that crosses my mind is, "He knows that his own ideas are weak." If my ideas are strong, they stand on their own, without my own attempt to discourage disagreement. ... again, present company is excepted. MC and SSI-DOV are places where members actually do step up to the ping-pong table with confidence.
Life's tough enough, wouldn't you agree, without the cyber mini-vacation spoiling our mood for the day :- )
Please, everybody, don't underestimate my determination to have this place be a friendly one.
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=== Rudeness on the Resume ===
As a completely separate issue, amigos, do any of you have dreams of someday doing some work for an ML organization?
The first thing that would surprise you about white-collar baseball employees is that they keep their claws and fangs in, around each other. They work very hard at being friendly and polite to each other. They specifically avoid the sort of flat-contradiction mode that is so easy for us to get into.
They've got the claws and fangs, b'lee dat. They just don't use them on each other.
Some of those guys are around each other 12 (or more) hours per day -- the baseball people they work with are their lives. So they go the extra mile in being pleasant to each other. Every one of them that I've ever run into was just a sweetheart, in terms of discussing an issue with you from the other side of the question. Every single one.
A few examples that the community is familiar with ... take CA/Billy1. Whatever his background in pro baseball might be, he's definitely got the baseball personality. In the middle of the hottest flame wars, he's two or three notches softer than the folks talking to him. And his ideas are usually two or three notches more informed. :- ) It's a good combo. Tom Tango is like that. Mat Olkin. Bill James is. Tony Blengino. You get the point.
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Last month we had another cool baseball guy stop in, join the conversation... and one of our community leaders started flatly contradicting him. Our visitor handled it gracefully, but hasn't been back. There's just no upside to impoliteness.
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We "sabermetricians" have a bit of a rep for being tough to get along with. There are a number of them who would be working in baseball, except for the people-skills part of it.
They think, "Well, I treat my superiors with respect; it's these morons on the internet I don't like," and they think they'll get hired on that basis. It doesn't work that way. The way we treat "peons," as we see them ... that's the mode we'll revert to under stress and overwork.
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So, if you're in your 20's, scary smart ;- ) and hope to be "discovered" one day, realize that you're being graded on your personality first.
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=== Danks: 5 WAR in 2008, 3 WAR in 2009 ... Split the difference? ===
If John Danks is a 5-WAR pitcher then, yeah, Jose Lopez for him would be a coup. No argument.
But that would make Danks a perennial top-10 starter...
I like the guy, but not sure I like him that much... however, with Danks' repertoire, he has a chance to log five years as an Andy Pettitte-level lefty, and that's definitely a franchise pillar.
He's got 100% legit stuff, as evidenced by his established 7+ K rate. His cut fastball, as in Pettitte's case, gives him the ability to deal with RH in the long term.
Personally I don't see him as Jon Lester-class, because the K/BB are trending south and I just see his stuff as more Ryan Rowland-Smith caliber than elite caliber. He throws 90-92 mph, throws fastball-cutter 80% of the time, and that's a Cliff Lee game (except that Lee's command is plus-plus).
Let's fire up another 20-team Yahoo league and see if the Taro-nator takes him 3rd round :- ) ... that's what makes a ball game...
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Like champ sez, the question is whether a Danks would be available in the first place. If he were available, and I needed SP's more than I needed IF's, I'd give you Jose Lopez for him.
Cheers,
Dr D
Comments
The longer the exchange goes back and forth, the more danger there is.
Right. So in 80%, 90% of the cases, the outcome just isn't so important, that we can't just shrug and give away the last word...
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Take away the verbal and visual cues that humans evolved to read and the communication can break down. Easily.
Right. The internet is conducive to flame wars. Two guys who might be great friends in real life become mortal enemies across two monitors :- )
Have never quite figured out what this means. But am aware that Matthew ch. 18 emphasizes, in huge capital letters, if I have a problem with somebody I'm supposed to go look him in the eye and talk about it. It's amazing how much more reasonable we are in that situation... again, not sure what it says about us, positively or negatively...
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IIRC, I remember someone meeting Dave from USSM at an event a couple of years ago and being shocked at how soft spoken, polite, witty and engaging he was. I've heard much the same about the LL boys and Churchill as well.
Does not surprise me a bit. Thanks for saying it, too.
Have said four or five times across the years, that had the Seattle blog guys all met in different circumstances -- say, playing in a flag-football league or whatnot -- that we'd probably all be best buds.
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Ya, the net is weird, and the answer is to put a little extra effort into de-fusing that tendency it has towards friction...
That's one reason I put the stupid little smileys :- ) into my comments a lot. To compensate a little bit for the internet's lack of non-verbal cues, the tendency towards hostility, and my own insufferable personality...
...at least...not on this particular day. I haven't seen any conversations that were super-rude or angry sounding and I don't think anything I've posted today was over the top.
For whatever part I may have played in Doc's frustration, I apologize. I don't ever enter a conversation intending to belittle people or offend.
As with much of life, a little humility goes a long way in these eCommunication venues. We all have opinions and hind ends, after all :)
Just a general policy statement...
Beyond avoiding super-rudeness :- ) we are seeking an actively friendly tone ... the target is a positive, enjoyable tone, of which everybody here has played an important part...
There are two things that I see happen periodically - infrequently, but periodically - on this forum, where rudeness starts to creep in.
1. Where one poster characterizes the other's as COMPLETELY wrong. And yes it is often in CAPS. : ) This is rude because it is almost never true. Occasionally someone will get a fact wrong, but I have yet to encounter an opinion or point of view here that doesn't have some thoughtful and logical reasoning behind it.
Telling someone their argument has zero merit is a perilously short step from telling them they are stupid. Which is of course very rude, and uncivilized, and not true of anyone I've read here. Oh except for one that just came to mind. ; )
2. Where the arguments graze ad-hominem attacks. Usually this shows up here as more pointed dialog toward the poster, and not the argument. 'baseballnut58, how can you possibly think xxxxx!!'... that sort of thing. baseballnut58 can of course think what he posted because he did. : ) And he/she is a thinking human who likes baseball and dialog enough to hang around here & post something. We need people like baseballnut58 to bring other ideas to the table. If they don't think their posts are going to be thoughtfully considered, well they'll be less likely to post here.
Jemanji is right IMO, the rudeness that occasionsally shows up says more about the poster and the legitamacy of what they have to say than anything else. Although I am very insulted he thinks my IQ is only 140-something.
... and no message.
:- )
I've been a little too dismissive recently. I think I've had a part in this.
May your tribe increase. Knowledge communicated without love puffs up into arrogant pride that creates unecessary conflict and blocks learning. What good is knowledge in one's self if it does not contribute to knowledge and understanding among others?
Funny that this would come up now... Recently read a repost at lookoutlanding. I went and glanced through the comments and saw a detecto citing and a present Graham comment about the poor quality of the detecto comments. I was totally turned off, as I have been many times at lookoutlanding. Obviously, Graham could care less about my opinion, but he might be surprised by my CV... or not.
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I am a physical chemist, and as such, trained in mathematically based models. Note this is modeling quite distinct from what you learn in engineering or the social sciences, often technically simpler but much more clearly defined. In principle, the Schrodinger equation tells us all we need to now about non-relativistic phenomena. In practice, it begins to 'fail' with the He atom, much less a field effect transistor. But it's not true failure, but rather progress requires approximations. The key is we can investigate the quality of different approximations by making comparison to experiment and in the process learn something about He and FETs.
In sabr-metrics we have no Schrodinger equation. We start with approximations, but we aren't even sure what they are. But baseball is fun so we forge on for entertainment and insight. The issue I have is that many people are more dogmatic about TRA or DER or FIP than I am about the Schrodinger equation. This lack of humility kills the debate and impedes progress.
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My rule of thumb is never to enter a discuss where I don't want, and ideally expect, to learn something. Too many on the internet approach the conversion with the goal of teaching not learning, which leads to pedantic attempts at indoctrination neatly wrapped in the innocuous cloth of community edification.
As a fellow blogger, but not necessarily the biggest baseball nut, I completely agree about the necessity of web politeness and beyond that, trust me, you guys are all a class act.
Obviously, Graham could care less about my opinion, but he might be surprised by my CV... or not.
Am sure your resume would be a pleasure to read amigo... if you scanned it and posted it online it would be the post of the month from my end :- ) ... just the same, if your resume said "ran jackhammer with no tardies for fifteen years" I would be not one whit less influenced by your analysis...
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Graham's evidently a scientist himself, but if (on baseball) he were going to listen to other scientists only, he'd have his pick of himself, you, Pirata, Dr. Naka and two or three others.
If natural-science and postgrad-math degrees were the coins of the realm, the buyers wouldn't be validating USSM's parking tickets, nor Jack Zduriencik's, for that matter...
Fortunately, that's not the coin of the realm. Predictive validity is. Winning pennants (or, on our level, roto leagues) is.
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I notice that guys who scoff at 'detecto commentors' wisely stay behind the chain-link fence to do it. :- ) They're aware that they're welcome to say their piece here, but don't. Easier to call names than to back it up...
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You've got the respect of the guys whose respect (presumably) means anything to you -- those who exchange ideas fearlessly, with sincere intellectual curiosity, and with emphasis on baseball as opposed to pecking order.
This is the place where Darwinian pressures have refined the ideas.
Great post Kelly.
:intros: Guys, if Grant is the Selig, then becksta is the Felix Hernandez of the klat league. Her calling herself 'a fellow blogger' is a little like Ichiro referring to himself as 'a fellow outfielder' in a conversation with Michael Saunders.
Thanks for sayin' amiga :- ) ... feedback always warmly welcomed...
-Jeff
One of the most valuable posters bro'... and generally one of the politest...
If we all need to get back towards friendly along with the fabuloso, we'll do so...
Rock on :- )
Couldn't agree more that my CV isn't relevant here because I stopped playing baseball in 8th grade and wasn't anything special at any other sport. It's the ease with which many dismiss the ideas of others that disturbs me. Of course it is our blindspots, if you will, that are most easily dismissed, and these are the areas where we should be paying the most attention if we want our humanity to grow.