Today I spent the afternoon watching the Debian Developer Project Leader debate on IRC for the elections. I have been anticipating the debate for a long time as such sort of events are pretty pertinent to my research and I was also interested in how a debate would play out on a medium like IRC. I was the back-up moderator just in case the moderator had any problem with his net connection. Thankfully that did not happen but when he asked, it reminded me of one of my recent nightmares that entailed having to ask all the questions for the debate while on IRC. In the dream, something akin to ethnographic stage fright took over as I locked up, unable to ask not even one single interesting question despite the fact that I, as the anthropologist, was supposed to know a lot about Debian. Thankfully, none of it played out and I was able to sit back and enjoy the debate and discussion albeit, a little groggy from some deep sleep after nearly 3 continuous nights of insomnia.

I was asked what I thought of the debate by one of the candidates and though I am going to refrain from commenting on their positions, there was a lot of stuff about the debate that I found pretty interesting. Admittedly much of it had nothing to do with the debate per se. But more about me as a supposed ethnographer of cyberspace. I think back to a year ago when I only knew like a handful of developers and rarely went onto IRC as it frightened me. But now, there are some nights that I would rather stay home and hang out on various channels and am much more comfortable in the debian-devel channel being that I now know many of the developers in person or from talking to them on IRC. In some ways, being an online anthropologist is not all that different from meat-world anthropology if you take the time to really spend time in this world. Over time, you get to know more people, trying to follow and observe the mundane and extraordinary aspects of their lives. Time, trust, and conversation are all important facets of getting research done. IRC has been a really indispensable part of the process, enabling me to keep in touch more closely with the Debian community as well as developing friendships much like any other anthropologist might living in a more close knit community would. When I first logged onto the channel a long time ago, well, it intimidated for me. All these faceless, people with nicks like “BigNachos” spewing out all this text that at the time was really incomprehensible. I would log off almost as quickly as I entered. It was after meeting a bunch of the developers at the Debian conference that I gave it another go and the second time it was a lot easier and I grew to really enjoy the whole IRC thing, which has seemed to touch my life in quite a number of ways.

I was a bit disappointed that there were not more developers at the debate although a fair number could have been at work where I know some people can’t connect to outside servers (poor souls). There were I think about 135 developers which out of a project of nearly 1000 seems small. Of course, all the Australians were probably asleep and then others probably waited to read the logs, and a bunch obviously felt that it was not necessary to see the debate. And granted, there was not anything radically shocking or new divulged on the debate (the candidates already posted their platforms on the web and answered questions on a mailing list) but on the whole it was more informative and less painful than I thought it would be. I say less painful as I have participated on some IRC meetings that, well, can take a really long time.

My biggest complaint is that it was too short. It was an hour long and it really could have easily gone on for at least an hour or two more. I think it takes like an hour to get comfortable in such an event, allowing the greasing of wheels for some more interactive debating from the candidates. The pre-arranged questions are always less interesting than the unknown conversations and paths that can ensue form questions. A little more time and depth would have allowed for that opportunity more.

One of the most interesting parts was the discuss channel where a group of like a 100 developers commented on the debate. Someone compared it to “whispering” amongst friends at a live debate but really it is infinitely more interesting as on IRC “whispering” is made public to everywhere. It is sort of a mess as there is message after message being fired off but with some good focus (and all the developers are already inculcated in the art of deep multitasking), reading has this sort of video-game like quality to it where you are following all these different things going on all at once and at a very intense pace. Granted, there is still whispering that goes on by privately messaging somebody and perhaps that it were some of the more really interesting comments were placed. But having a debate go on in which commentary unfolds in realtime and available is one of the best attributes of IRC.

The comments in fact, were more tame than I thought they would be given that IRC often acts kinda like alcohol, it is an inhibitor. You are sitting at your desk, usually by yourself, when someone says something interesting, and a response just pops in your head, and the automatic reflex is to fire away on the keyboard, especially if clever or biting. This comments from people are really quite uncensored and unrefined making IRC a fresh of breath air sometimes in comparison to real world conversation that feels more censored to me. Or it is just that I don’t get drunk enough… Or maybe it is just that everyone on IRC is inebriated?