> In general, twitter conversations are quick back-and-forth affairs. If you need more than 2 tweets to express your thought, you're either using the wrong medium or thinking too far.
Hmmm. I'm not sure how to respond to the suggestion that people who can't fully express their thoughts in around 300 characters are thinking too far ... or the subtly implied pejorative of 'too-far-thinking'.
Aside: I note you used 1386 characters to describe the benefits of terseness.
No pejorative was meant at all. My point about 'thinking too far' was about the singular thought you're trying to express. It's easy to want to say too much, 'walking the chain too far' if you will. Twitter is a far more iterative medium than most, and expressing a complicated thought isn't a case of writing it out in whole. Usually, you will develop the thought together with the other party. Conversations are closer to a form of collective thinking than a long-form debate. Thought patterns are more on display.
Aside: this conversation would have taken a very different form if we had had it on twitter. The medium defines the form. So I don't mind being verbose here :)
The idea of iteration through (a) thought I think has been explained to me before, but I must have suppressed it. I can see why it's necessary within the context and medium of twitter ... however I'm unconvinced (duh :) that it's a useful constraint to apply to a communication medium. I don't expect I'm unique in voicing this opinion.
The idea of developing a thought with another party, or as you also describe it, 'collective thinking', is genuinely anathema to me. I'm happy to have a discussion that involves me adjusting my thinking, and, of course, a discussion that results in the other party(/ies) adjusting their thinking. Actually, I expect that essence of conciliation and compromise is what you're describing. However, the idea of avoiding 'long term debate' really does unnerve me.
Perhaps I've been debating for too many years with people that I really wouldn't want to share a collective thought with.
I would agree that iteration through thought is not necessarily a useful constraint on a medium by itself. In the case of twitter, however, it is merely a product of the 140-character limit for each message. If, during a stand-up debate, your opponent was allowed to interject after every sentence, you would get much the same. That sounds incredibly annoying and counter-productive at first, but the form of the debate would adapt over time.
The advantage of developing a thought in tandem with somebody is that the compromise happens more naturally. You rarely need to 'concede' a point or prove somebody wrong, since you can influence the way the point is made in the first place, pointing out flaws in their reasoning or facts as they happen. Conversely, the other can do that for your reasoning. The result is that, rather than adjust your thinking in a few big steps, you adjust it in minor ways with every sentence. It takes time and practice to get used to this, but it can be very productive and enlightening.
On the other hand, I would never avoid long-form debate either. Both have advantages and disadvantages, just as both have mediums where they work and mediums where they don't. Twitter isn't conducive to classical debate, just as hackernews isn't conducive to the iterative thought development style.
Hrm, what you are suggesting sounds like some kind of conversation back and forth between 2 people. Like a chat system or something. Issue is, you are talking in an environment where everyone can interject, and everyone has a strongly felt opinion. Just look at any news show "interview" between 2 sides of an argument. They tend to devolve into shouting matches of who can drown out the other side without getting smacked down by the host.
It is much like a conversation in a chat system, but the etiquette on twitter means your conversation partner usually won't wait for you to finish a string of messages.
It's true that it's easy for people to interject and annoy, and it happens more and more the bigger your celebrity status. However, unlike the interview example, it's also easy to ignore them. Twitter's reply helped a lot for that. Replying to anybody is optional, you don't even have to read their tweets if you don't want to. It's not perfect by any means, I don't think any platform will ever be. But it isn't bad.
Wow, you really, really nitpicked OPs argument and completely ignored things to make your point. The comment was "you're either using the wrong medium or thinking too far". Assuming the false dichotomy here (notably, of a quick comment on HN...), maybe, just maybe, it's not that people who can't fully express their thoughts in around 300 characters are thinking too far, maybe it's the other part -- that they're using the wrong medium?
The only portion of OPs comment I can find to "describe the benefits of terseness" would be the last paragraph. If I shorten that paragraph to the last two sentences, it fits in a tweet.
Where does one draw the line between cherry-picking from, and identifying the quintessential component of, a message? Rhetorical question. :)
If X or Y --> means that both are possible, right? If you then suggest that it's always and only X, then the or construct is misleading. I was picking up on the fact that there will be some Y, and that worried me.
But, to be absolutely clear, you are completely correct in saying that in some cases X (or inappropriate medium selection) is going to apply. (I wonder whether people who need more than 2 tweets to express their thoughts are capable of self-identifying which category they fit into. If not them, then who?)
Going beyond that I'd suggest that twitter is an appropriate communication medium far less frequently than people evidently believe it is.
I don't believe shortening things to fit into tweets is a healthy aspiration. I ran a character count solely to demonstrate how many tweets would have been required to get that entire message across, and most of chton's message was a guide on how to communicate in a medium that enforces brevity. An undeniably useful guide if you happen to be embracing that medium, mind.
Most people probably fall into the using the wrong medium category. If you are taking are taking over 140 characters to say what amount's to 'Who want's to go to Olive Garden?' then you are thinking too far though.
And he specifically chose a medium which was not twitter to describe it.
Hmmm. I'm not sure how to respond to the suggestion that people who can't fully express their thoughts in around 300 characters are thinking too far ... or the subtly implied pejorative of 'too-far-thinking'.
Aside: I note you used 1386 characters to describe the benefits of terseness.