Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Where will we go for discourse on the Internet? Semi-public groups for forums work.

I like Seth Godin’s recent short essay on trust and how folks use the Internet. Godin described the early (1970s) online interaction as, “Because each of these groups were high-trust communities, it was easy to conclude that the people they’d be engaging online would be too.”

Godin mentions the unfortunate online interaction of this century, “When a site decides to get big fast, they usually do it by creating a very easy way to join, and they create few barriers to a drive-by anonymous experience. And when they make a profit from this behavior, they do it more. In fact, they amplify it.”

Money is the root of much of this. Open your platform to everyone, increase traffic, increase ad revenue, get rich.

Godin points to the future and a better way, “Until there’s a correlation between what’s popular or profitable and what’s useful, we’re all going to be paying the price.”

Another solution: start your own little invitee-only discussion forum that is not hosted by the big and famous tech companies. Jerry Weinberg’s “SHAPE Forum” was one I used for a decade (This link goes to a sample discussion. In the sample, names were replaced with generic ones.) People who knew one another and understood the language of that group discussed complex matters of importance. Disagreements were common as were suggestions and solutions.

I describe the SHAPE Forum as a semi-public one. It is open to the public as long as the group members invite someone and explain the local guidelines for discussion. Persons who violate the guidelines are removed. If you are removed and don’t like it, well, no one violated your civil rights be allowing you in or moving you out.

Create a forum for your extended family. Family news is shown. Create a forum for persons engaged in the same industry or trade as you. These things are fairly easy to do.

Why do this? We are scattered across the country and the world and time zones. We know smart people who have answers to our questions. Discourse helps us all.

They key is to avoid hundreds of millions of dollars being involved. That is pretty easy to avoid. As long as the money isn’t worth the effort, no one will bother you.