ComMOOnity Discourse Features One of the hallmarks of MOO is the fast moving, multi-threaded conversations which take place when several (or more) people are connected at the same time, in the same room. Here, everyone has a voice, folly abounds, and play is the thing. Some argue that MOO conversations are limited to brainstorming activities. This is probably due more to limiting MOO conferencing to large cafe discussions. Moos are quite quite useful for small group discussions, one-on-one discussions, and individual work. But when one is attending large gatherings such as the Tuesday Cafe, one must be able to scan the quickly scrolling lines of text, attend to the waxing and waning of multiple threads of discussion, even while formulating and typing a response. This takes some practice: MOO dexterity. Some have likened these conversations to cocktail parties, where one hears ALL the conversation as well as taking part in all. Again, that depends on the MOO, the room, and the number of people. Turn taking and other speech acts do exist as part of the social conversational conventions, but might be changed beyond recognition. Different "communities" and different "situations" onMOO call for different conventions. By far, the greater complaints about conventions such as politeness and turn taking stem more from the MOObie status of the individual than the medium itself. As individuals acquire MOOspeak, learning the verbal shortcuts, the "feature objects," the jargon and puns, they become more comfortable with expressing themselves more fully. Still, a MOO can seem a strange, rude, and lonely place for a MOObie. For instance, interrupting. One can/cannot interrupt in MOO, one always must interrupt another in that we type our responses to something along with many others. You will see more "traditional" turn taking in one-on-one MOO convos. In a crowded room it's every MOOer for *eirself.

Just as you cannot avoid interrupting, you can never interrupt. Since the MOO program only prints one line at a time, one cannot literally interrupt another...simply interpose. Asking questions might not always elicit a response. Either the person asked may not SEE the question, or the person might simply choose not to answer. This is much easier to do in a MOO convo without seeming to be rude. Even though you might state something once, twice, even thrice, there are times when you might not feel as if anyone hears you. You see your lines of text appear on the screen, but no one responds directly back. Again, this does not mean you haven't been heard, simply that no one has responded directly.

Irony is a tough nut in MOO convos. Quite often it comes across as a literal statement. It takes a seasoned MOOer to express the niceties of facetious_speak. For example, you might see:

MOOper says, "Ya gotta love Bill Gates."

And you might interpret MOOper's assertion as a literal expression of *eir admiration for Gates, depending on the context of the convo and whether or not you admire the man. More often than not, people project *tone* through their own terministic screens.So it is important to "set the stage" for statements with "emotes." For example, if MOOper types:

MOOper rolls *eir eyes and sighs in exasperation, "Gotta love Bill Gates."

the chances are much better that you will be clued in that MOOper is being ironic. The "emote" is an important feature of MOO communication, and learning to use the emote commands and the feature object "social" macros will relieve much of the frustration and anxiety of the MOObie.

Aside from learning the emote commands through accessing the MOO help files, another thing MOObies can do is to read up on the research and experience of others. In THE MODAL COMPLEXITY OF SPEECH EVENTS IN A SOCIAL MUD Lynn Cherny provides a detailed analysis of speech acts in Muds, the parent of MOOs. She focuses on the context setting "emotes" which have evolved over time to communicate the offline situations which may impinge on the Mud conversation as well as emotional states of the speaker. She "discuss[es] the status of emoted actions as speech acts, and how their interpretation depends on frame of reference within the virtual world and the real world." Cherny promises to "examine in detail how a community functions in text. In particular, I investigate the categories of "actions" that have evolved to delimit and communicate availability, interest, and attention in conversation, provide opportunity for collaborative play, and open up multiple frames of reference in the MUD and "in real life." Learning to MOO takes some time and effort, but that is generally the case whenever we travel to "foreign places, new worlds. The more we prepare by learning the language and customs of that "other world" the better our journey is likely to be.

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