A conversation about conversations

A conversation about conversations

Moderator: Jon Garfunkel, Civilities.net
Notetaker: Dawn Buie

DRAFT

NOTE FROM JON: Sorry I don’t have direct quotes from any folks — I’ll check with Dawn. This is a summary of what I had put on the note paper

BLOG POST: A discussion of news genres — by Jon Garfunkel

Initial Questions/Issues

  1. Social Dynamics
  2. “Crowd Sourcing”
  3. Spam Control
  4. How to build consensus so that ideas “bubble-up”
  5. How to enable participatory journalism
  6. Understanding the core goals of the community
  7. How to maintain the “artistic integrity” — a reporter crafts an article, and it get sullied by piles of comments….

Dynamics

Emergent <————————————> Directed
Community <———————————-> Editorial

 - - - - - > 

   "Power Law" is the phenomenon where power is concentrated in the hands of few community members.

Free Speech <—————————–> Construction
Liberties <———————————> Civilities

Things that MAKE Conversations

Purpose-Based communities are often better behaved/efficient:

  1. Serve a niche, focused on solutions (Tech Support forums)
  2. Some communities have paid members

Communities that overlap with real-world communities can help:

  1. Existing identities from the real world are leveraged; people know each other.
  2. The occasional face-to-face contact of members helps build community

Other mechanisms may help ad hoc communities form:

  1. Aggregate blogs
  2. Social norms develop over time in communities
  3. Recognizing model commenters

Also, a community that seems chaotic may seem purposeful to individuals.

Things That BREAK Conversations

  1. Anti-Social participants: Spammers, Trolls, Single issues (see Flame Warriors), caricatures by Mike reed
  2. Godwin’s Law – The chance that
  3. Poor structure of forums
  4. Anonymity, Impersonation

see Dynamics above: Users of a large newspaper site see it as a “freedom forum” and don’t want censorship. However, this frustrates the ability of people to discuss constructively.

Solutions

  1. Trade off quantity for quality (adding registration hurdles reduces trolls)
  2. Reward good behavior: feature best posters (Like Slate’s “Best of the Fray”
  3. Have the community do “tacit squelching” — simply ignore people not following decorum
  4. Comment Management Responsibility
  5. PaperTrust model – This would allow registered subscribers to bypass moderation blockers (see dynamic between freedom and )