[Sigia-l] List Moderation

[David Heller]

<< I actually don't really want to talk about individuals. There are a
couple
who used to show up who never gave anything but venom, there are plenty who
are here now vacillate between insight and venom. >>

Ok, now this is interesting ... I'm game. I started thinking about this
stuff in 1993 as an antrhopology student studying the early virtual
communities on Prodigy and AOL.

To me there are a couple of aspects to this:
What is a virtual community?
What actually turns a form of collaboration into a community?

I don't believe that Amazon creates a sense of community. What it does
create is an excuse for "loyalty". Just because I contribute doesn't mean
that I am interacting. Yes there are some people who's voices get notariety,
but in the end that is the most of it. This to me is limited to a form of
collaboration.

Slashdot to me is a borderline community whereas Neopets is an all out
community. What's the difference? I think it is subtle and arbitrary to some
extent (aren't all taxonomies), but the difference is intent. Slashdot is
about information distribution and qualification whereas neopets is just
about the people (ok the pets, but you get my point). Game sites have been a
lot more successful at community building in the virtual world as has the
health-based forums online. The subject matter is focused on the people more
than the actual topic. The topic is used as a means of aggregating a
specific group of people but that is really where it ends. When you start to
get people talking about their children, their day2day lives outside of the
main chosen topic is when you start breaking out of the collaborative and
into the community building.

Is there a community here on sigia-l? I would say like slashdot it is
borderline. I don't here a lot of people talking about their kids, but b/c
there is a strong offline connection between a critical mass of people on
this list (I know I went screaming towards it when I moved to the Bay
Area-we even met Christina) it brings a sense of personalization that
doesn't exist on other similar topiced lists such as CHI-WEB. Face2Face is
something very important to the community aspect of a professional list
(something I'm trying to promote on my own list, IxD), but it can't only
reside there.

CHI-WEB is also not a community b/c the fluidness of the conversation is
stalled and formalized to the point where people CAN'T interact. They can
only "contribute & summarize". Yes, they claim there is abilty for
discussion, but b/c there is an announcement of a moderator every week and
then (anyone who has tried to post to CHI-WEB knows) the moderators actually
do stuff. Your messages are held and often rejected for IMHO very lame
reasons. Reasons that keep that list purely professional.

This is something (I'm sorry to bring it back to the sigia-l but it is a
reference we all know) that the sigia-l accels at. It is conversational and
informal and there is a sense of I know you! I can joke w/ you aspect to the
whole thing. We are not adverse to jokes, puns, OT posts, and other forms of
familiarity which to me help to make this list more of a community. My
favorite kind of community post on sigia-l that you will NEVER find on
CHI-WEB is "I'm looking for a roommate at the IA Summit; anyone interested?"
What is more familiar than being open to the idea of sharing a sleeping
space with someone? (yes, I know sex would be more familiar ... Who knows
what happens on this list? ... <wink> )

Anyway, I don't think you can BUILD a virtual community. Unless you do
something like NeoPets or EverQuest. I think that Slashdot is intentional,
but it is also lucky. I think AOL and Yahoo (BTW, I met my new wife on
Yahoo, in a chat room, so something worked there already) are tools that
people can use to try to create community, but I don't think there only
purpose is "community". "Collaboration" is as important a feature to these
tools as community. However, community builds loyalty, and loyalty means
repeats visits, and more eyeballs looking at advertising which is never a
bad thing for AOL and Yahoo.

I can say that someone who was trying to use Yahoo Groups as a free way to
do collaboration and communication for a not-for-profit of mine, I
appreciated all the tools that it offered, but I ran as soon as I had to
become professional b/c the advertising and the registration requirements
were considered  a drain on my community needs (also the tools for
subscription manipulation were not good enough). So while getting people in
front of adverts might be "the goal", I wonder if that goal might be counter
to the abilities to truly get people to think about community building on
the service.

4 communities to concentrate on: entertainment fans, hobbyists, healthcare,
activity groups.

Good luck!

-- dave