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Update<\/span>: #topprog Tweetup : Tuesday Night 7:30 EST : Subject – topprog.org features, functionality, and community. Please Retweet!\u00c2\u00a0 H\/T @cacardinal<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The new #topprog Twitter hashtag for progressives<\/a> continues to make progress with a good range of topics and tweeters — including big names like @blogdiva, @PunditMom (who’s moderating a breakout session at fem2pt0<\/a> tomorrow), and @JoeTrippi.<\/p>\n
The progressive blogosphere’s ignoring it, of course,* but the conservatives of #tcot are nervous enough that they’re already labelling it a #fail<\/a>, thinking about flooding it<\/a>, and coming up with euphemisms for trolling<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 And in fact @The_Anti_Guru’s “active engagement” probably accounts for over 50% of the traffic, counting replies.\u00c2\u00a0 Guy attempts to disrupt and dominate conversation in potentially-woman-friendly-space, film at 11!<\/p>\n
Gender issues aside, a lot of people are skeptical whether it’s possible to have meaningful conversations on Twitter.\u00c2\u00a0 Won’t the loudest voices drown everybody else out?\u00c2\u00a0 The three loudest tweeters yesterday had 46, 30, and 29 tweets yesterday.\u00c2\u00a0 As calibration, @drdigipol, aka Alan Rosenblatt<\/a>, who as the creator of the list presumably has as much to say as anybody else, had 7.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 So it’s easy to overlook @lizandra311’s updates on the Rootscamp in Philadelphia, or the occasional posts from @blogdiva, @Heardtfelt, @myrnyatheminx, @GetFISARight and others.<\/p>\n
It’s a place where a little functionality would help a lot.\u00c2\u00a0 If only each user had a way of ignoring people they thought were trolling and everybody replying to him!\u00c2\u00a0 Or wouldn’t it be cool if I had a knob for the RSS feed that said “ignore everybody who posts more than 10 times in a 24-hour period”?\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 As more political debate discussions happen on Twitter, hopefully Twitter user interfaces will incorporate funcationality like this [in fact for all i know they already do].<\/p>\n
In\u00c2\u00a0 the meantime, oh well, people will probably learn to ignore @The_Anti_Guru quickly enough.\u00c2\u00a0 “Please don’t feed the trolls.”\u00c2\u00a0 And with a little practice it’s easy enough to skip over the posts by the loudest posters even using Twitter’s generic search page.\u00c2\u00a0 At least for now, with a little practice it’s not too hard to separate out the wheat from the chaff.<\/p>\n
And now back to the gender issues.\u00c2\u00a0 Thus far, according to Google, there have been four blog posts about the new #topprog Twitter hashtag for progressives.\u00c2\u00a0 Here’s what the linking pattern looked like between mine on Liminal States<\/em><\/a>,\u00c2\u00a0Nancy Scola’s on techPresident<\/em><\/a>, Stefan Deeran’s in Exception Magazine<\/em><\/a>, and Colin Delany’s on <\/a>e.politics<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n
– I didn’t link to anybody<\/p>\n
– Nancy linked to me<\/p>\n
– Colin linked to Stefan<\/p>\n
– Stefan didn’t link to any of us<\/p>\n
To be clear: nobody linked to the only woman who posted about #topprog.\u00c2\u00a0 See Shelley Powers’ Guys Don’t Link<\/a> on Burningbird<\/em> for more discussion of this dynamic.<\/p>\n
It’s also interesting to look at who gets quoted in the articles. Nancy quotes @anotherpundit and me; Stefan quotes Alan and Michael (aka Mr. #tcot).\u00c2\u00a0 Colin quotes Alan.\u00c2\u00a0 I wonder if women have any opinions on this?<\/p>\n
Hmm.\u00c2\u00a0 These all sound like good topics for fem2pt0<\/a>.<\/p>\n
jon<\/p>\n