On 21 Oct 2008, at 21:58, Bruce Bostwick wrote: > > There's an interesting sort of social dynamic to successful online > forums that seems to have been fairly constant since the dialup BBS > days -- I notice a lot of commonalities between an unusually > successful local BBS I used to frequent back in the dialup days, and > many modern social-networking communities and e-lists like this one. > Based on that, I think the medium the forum resides in is only a > superficial aspect of the community -- focus on the people, and on > bringing in people who are both the kind of people you want to attract > and, to some extent, the people who attract others of that type as > well, and most of the other problems solve themselves.
I think the technology does shape the community. Slashdot and Digg are the way they are because of the peer-review algorithms they use. Wikipedia has its problems because of the way the hierarchy of moderation is organised. The way all these forums have been played and abused and the way those running them have tweaked the algorithms and organisation to counter that and been re-countered in return show that there is no simple way of building a general forum for ideas and debate. > > > It may just be the fact that I've lived close to Internet-related > technology for a lot longer than most people, but I've never seen the > technology itself as a raison d'etre for an online community. The > technology facilitates communication, but never perfectly, and never > in such a way that there isn't room for improvement. Email is a good > medium for writers -- the one population not particularly vulnerable > to email's known limitation of filtering out nonverbal communication > cues that keep offhand humorous quips from being treated as hideous > insults and mortal threats -- and literate readers, whom I tend to > think of as just extremely non-prolific writers in disguise. But > there are other media that would work equally well. (Facebook > probably isn't one of them, from my experiences with it, as it tends > to provide a sort of "canned sociality" that facilitates social > activity between people who have difficulty navigating both the > technology and the social conventions, but tends to get in the way of > more meaningful social interaction by reducing it to a sort of video > game. Same complaints about Myspace, never liked either of them > much. LiveJournal stays out of the way somewhat more, and as a matter > of fact, at least two of my favorite communities are LJ communities, > but again, it's only a medium, not the message.) LiveJournal does > provide an article/comments structure that e-list communities handle > more in terms of email threads (and some mail reader clients don't > handle those as well as others, and sometimes servers regurgitate old > posts, etc.), so that might be a good model to look at in terms of > better supporting the *style* of communication the community prefers, > but still, people first, technology as needed to support the people. An email list represents the bazaar model of idea exchange. One can simply ignore threads of discourse one isn't interested in and killfile those that are irrelevant or pointless. Any more complicated model with ratings, peer trust networks, relevancy association or whatnot is placing faith in the idea someone else's algorithm can sort interesting from bullshit better than oneself. > > > IMHO, trolling and monotonous posting are self-limiting problems. > I've dealt with them in e-list communities in which I've been a mod or > owner, and while new members may be more inclined to feed trolls and > pour fuel on flame wars, for the most part, these are behaviors that > mature community members eventually learn to help control, if by no > other means than ignoring the posts/comments that tend to generate > more heat than light. Media that provide more tools for depriving a > flame war of fuel (like placing the more intemperate commenters on > temporary moderated status, etc.) can help somewhat in that respect, > but can also make it hard to strike the delicate balance between > moderation, facilitation, and censorship. I'd rather live with the > signal/noise ratio and decide for myself what's signal and what's > noise than have someone try to protect my delicate little ears/eyes .. > the latter is often a hallmark of *unsuccessful* online communities, > and tends to kill successful ones too when it's over-applied. > The problem is avoiding communities that crystallise around a world- view and become isolated by filtering out all dissenting voices. Opinion Maru "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish." - Albert Einstein -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
