Peripart
Antediluvian
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2005
- Messages
- 6,770
Here's a question: is there any purpose of having personal details, such as age and gender, on our profiles?
I used to think there was - if I post something, people's reading of that post can be justifiably coloured by knowing that it was written by a 39-year-old man. Folk may think I'm posting something childish, stupid, irrelevant or just wrong, but just as in real life, they can base any response on what they know about me, if they wish. For that reason, to reduce just a little the chances of me being misconstrued, and also so that people have something resembling a "face" to talk to, I'm happy for people to know these details about me.
But so many people choose now not to share even these basic details, I'm wondering whether it's even worth the bother. We have about 12500 members, at the latest count, active or otherwise, which should mean, on average, about 34 names in the "Happy Birthday" box at the bottom of the Forum index. But what do we have, in fact? Three - on a good day. So over 90% of members are choosing not to share their age with everyone else, and the 10% who do includes those with fictional ages.
Is this important? Personally, I think it is, but I'd love to know others' opinions. If someone posts something I disagree with, any response I formulate is necessarily shaped by my knowledge of that person. There are things that I'd expect a 30-year-old to know, for instance, that I wouldn't want to task a 17-year-old to task for.
I'm certainly not advocating giving out full names and addresses, but clicking on someone's profile and finding nothing is a bit like talking to someone in a burkha.
I'll finish now, before I finally go off on one, but I'll conclude with the observation that, IMHO, there have some arguments on this board in fairly recent times, that would never have gone as far as they did if the protagonists had known a little more about who they were talking to.
I used to think there was - if I post something, people's reading of that post can be justifiably coloured by knowing that it was written by a 39-year-old man. Folk may think I'm posting something childish, stupid, irrelevant or just wrong, but just as in real life, they can base any response on what they know about me, if they wish. For that reason, to reduce just a little the chances of me being misconstrued, and also so that people have something resembling a "face" to talk to, I'm happy for people to know these details about me.
But so many people choose now not to share even these basic details, I'm wondering whether it's even worth the bother. We have about 12500 members, at the latest count, active or otherwise, which should mean, on average, about 34 names in the "Happy Birthday" box at the bottom of the Forum index. But what do we have, in fact? Three - on a good day. So over 90% of members are choosing not to share their age with everyone else, and the 10% who do includes those with fictional ages.
Is this important? Personally, I think it is, but I'd love to know others' opinions. If someone posts something I disagree with, any response I formulate is necessarily shaped by my knowledge of that person. There are things that I'd expect a 30-year-old to know, for instance, that I wouldn't want to task a 17-year-old to task for.
I'm certainly not advocating giving out full names and addresses, but clicking on someone's profile and finding nothing is a bit like talking to someone in a burkha.
I'll finish now, before I finally go off on one, but I'll conclude with the observation that, IMHO, there have some arguments on this board in fairly recent times, that would never have gone as far as they did if the protagonists had known a little more about who they were talking to.