Exercise 4.2 Hosting good conversations: House Rules!

a. Discuss 3 ways of providing users with more control in an online community

In some large online communities members are inundated with information. They need access to a technical facility which allows them to manage and sort messages and/or provision of online summaries (eg by a volunteer or the facilitator).

All online community members need access to a Netiquette guide, particularly in the early stages of the community's life, to facilitate good practice.

Large groups, eg online learning communities, will need an obvious facilitator presence to support and guide the community learning process. Otherwise the group can become disorganised and wander off-topic.


b. Howard Rheingold wrote the The Art of Hosting Good Conversations Online in 1998. What 3 rules or tips did you find interesting or have experienced so far in your online meetings or interaction?

1. "Patience is rule numbers one through three: Deliberately add a time delay on your emotional responses before you make any public posting or private e-mail."

In addition, I found that synchronous communication is more effective if people wait for others to finish their sentence before jumping in with their own contributions (just like you do f2f).

2. "Pose questions for the group to consider."

Learning communities need to focus on relevant issues. Set questions in our group pod work help to maintain this focus.

3. "Eventually, natural hosts emerge in each community, and existing hosts should scout and mentor them."

I was surprised to find myself organising green pod meetings. I'm used to going along with the flow. This time I had to create the flow which was a good experience for me.


c. Read the ISPG policy for user behaviour in a MOO at http://ispg.csu.edu.au/subjects/cscw/moo/moo-policy.doc and compare it with the Community Guidelines at http://digg.com/guidelines. Why do collaborative social software systems with synchronous and asynchronous communications need to develop a set of “rules of engagement"? Is the need the same or less when using a document sharing systems only?

Although the MOO policy is a formal document and contrasts with the Digg guidelines' use of informal language, they both set out the "rules of engagement" for their respective communities. Rules are necessary for collaborative social software systems because, as Kim ponits out "online culture has long been anti-authoritarian, and people in Web communities routinely do and say things they'd never dare to in a face-to-face encounter" (2000, p.201). Lack of the immediate repercussions which exist in the physical world plus the opportunity for anominity make inappropriate behaviours more likely to occur in online communities.

The rules of document sharing systems need only cover what's necessary to manage the documents and ensure access to them. Documents are viewed as more permanent records which could be available indefinitely to the scutiny of others, while online social community communications are comparable to ephemeral publications or conversations which are not expected to be permanently accessible and accountable for.

Reference:

Kim, A. (2000). Community building in the web: Secret strategies for successful online communities. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press.