Acronym

Conventions are so easy. Everyone is wearing a badge. You get their name and where they're from. And there are usually ribbons that tell you whether they are a member or non-member, a practitioner within the profession or an industry partner who supplies them, and what credentials they've earned.

But there is no one to assign ribbons in cyberspace. Each individual user decides for him or herself which communities they feel a part of, and how much information about themselves they share with others. They have much greater latitude to create the persona they present to the world.

I am not talking about people adopting an intentionally misleading online persona or masquerading as something they are not.

But when @jag interjects a comment into the stream of tweets about the constitutional analysis presented by the keynote speaker at the American Bar Association convention, I can't assume @jag is an attorney. I don't know whether @jag has any relevant experience or education that qualifies him to render an opinion on this topic. I often don't even know whether @jag is a he or a she. The only thing I can judge is the quality of his (or her) message.

In some ways, that's a good thing. It forces the ideas expressed to stand or fall on their own merit, without bias or prejudgments about who is stating them.

But even when the words are clear, without any context, I can't always be sure I am properly understanding exactly what a tweeter means by them. My members, who are officers of the court, mean something entirely different when they talk about the record of what happened in the courtroom than a journalist who is covering the trial. One isn't right and the other wrong. But whether the record you are referring to is accurate, fair, adequate or reliable depends a lot on who you are and where your interests lie.

If I am willing to invest some effort, I might be able to work some of this out if there is enough information in their public profiles. But not always. And even if I am willing to devote the effort to find out enough about where a comment is coming from to form a context that will allow me to form a judgment on it, other more passive consumers of online info don't.

It is almost enough to make me nostalgic for name badges and all those ridiculous ribbons.

But now that I mention it, those ribbons weren't all that reliable as indicators of validity either.

A reasonable degree of skepticism is warranted, whether the stranger spouting an opinion is in your face at the convention coffee break or appears anonymously on your iPhone. Social networking has increased the ease of commerce in ideas AND the importance of applying informed, critical judgments to them.