RTFM: Newbies vs oldbies

Joseph Reagle

Question

How to welcome newbies without being overwhelmed?

Eternal September

Terms: Culture

enculturation
absorption of one’s own culture from immersion (e.g., children);
socialization
deliberate transmission of culture
acculturation (Berry 2007)
change resulting from meeting of two different cultures
assimilation
associated with adoption of larger culture by a minority (extreme acculturation)

ex. Exemplify in a story??

  • enculturation
  • socialization
  • acculturation
  • assimilation

Terms: Capital (Bourdieu 1986)

economic
one’s financial assets, perhaps accumulated from one’s labor.
cultural
one’s holding of cultural values, habits, and tastes
social
value of one’s social network and is dependent upon one’s embeddedness in a group
symbolic
related to the honor and recognition of the individual

symbolic↔︎economic↔︎culture↔︎social

ex. Exemplify in a story??

  • economic capital
  • cultural capital
  • social capital
  • symbolic capital

Nerd!

+ hacker

The lording and hoarding geek

The answer is no, and I can say it in Na’vi or Klingon, which are pretty much the same. I have some theories on that, which I will share with you never. –Comic Book Guy (Wikipedia 2014)

Top 5 songs: track 1, side 1

The sharing geek

When a hipster sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say “Oh, crap, now the wrong people like the thing I love.” When a geek sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say “ZOMG YOU LOVE WHAT I LOVE COME WITH ME AND LET US LOVE IT TOGETHER.” (Scalzi 2012)

Why so many synonyms?

  • newbie (newb, noob, n00b, noobie, n00bie), loser/luser, BIFF (Usenet), gnubie (Free Software movement), weenie (bulletin board systems), chainik (Russian hackers), and muggle (Harry Potter fandom).
  • oldbies, alpha geek, gray-beard, wizard, god, guru

Socialization, defense, & bias

What are…

  • 101
  • FAQ
  • RTFM

“Dumb questions”

There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.” – Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World.

Do you agree?

How to balance noob self-reliance and wizard friendliness?

Geek Feminism RTFM card

ex. Find a “FAQ slap” and consequent debate online and share (5m)

Defense

How to tell a troll from a newbie?

“Epistemic exploitation”

In other words, it is the responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressors their mistakes. (Lorde 1980/2007)

Epistemic exploitation occurs when privileged persons compel marginalized persons to produce an education or explanation about the nature of the oppression they face. (Berenstain 2016, sec. 2)

Bias

The exhortation to “read the fucking manual” is gendered: men are able “to tell someone to RTFM without ever being accused of PMS” (Feminism 2013).

  • impostor syndrome
  • Unicorn Law
  • mansplaining

Improve your F’ing M

20071105-_IGP5144

But writing documentation and outreach are often a low-status and gendered task.

Would you be upset if I…

LMGTFY or LMGPT

it’s in the syllabus

QICs Go Around

Conclusion

Wrap up

Review

  • differentiate enculturation and socialization
  • describe a capital flow from symbolic↔︎economic↔︎culture↔︎social