I don't really want to involve myself in the QT debate too much. I've explained my position before (I'm against making them easier than they are now). But I found this sequence of toots (their instance could do well be expanding lost length) to be interesting in that it attempts to take a scientific look at the debate.
@loke I fail to see how a study on Twitter users can be reflective of how Fedi users work.
Most Twitter use is politically and economically motivated (i.e., a lot of people are paid to tweet), which means that there is an incentive in QPs being dunks on the political adversaries. That incentive does not exist here, but all the positive aspects of QPing that I've mentioned in my recent posts are still there, though.
@loke - I used quote tweets all the time on Twitter to share things while explaining why they're interesting. Often I'd start a multi-tweet series with a quote tweet, then go on with a more in-depth explanation of some point than the quoted tweet gave.
But I can accomplish the same goal here with a bit more work, so it's no big deal that I can't do quote tweets here.
@johncarlosbaez Indeed. Under no circumstances do I want to make it seem as though I claim they are completely useless. They clearly are.
It's just a question as to whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. This is one of those debates where there are valid opinions on both sides, and there is no clear answer.
That's why I prefer technical questions that do have clear answers: Yes, there are infinite primes. No, you can't colour any map with three colours. Yes, Emacs is the best editor.
@loke - luckily this is a debate that I care about very little.
@josemanuel you may be right. I've never been a twitter user, so it may be that I have a skewed impression of what's going going on there.
It means that I have seen a lot of examples of bad effects, but I have never seen a huge benefit. Perhaps one exists, and perhaps it's worth it. Maybe. But it's definitely worth it to use whatever data exists about it how humans work with these kinds of tools and then correct for the differences between the platforms. That's what I felt the original author did.