Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: Intentional Online Communities
Author: Dan Lyke Posted: 11/1/1999; 8:57:06 AM Topic: Democracy, personalisation and Reputation Managers Msg #: 12581 (In response to 12575) Prev/Next: 12580 / 12582
I wonder how we can tie blogging to all of this? Blogs have kind of become what news with a monster killfile and rating system used to be, we've got headline syndicators and tools like Nibelung to help us read the content of people we trust, we link to the articles that we think are worthwhile, and hold debates that are only comprehensible in full to people following both sides.And in the case of some of our blogs we open up to collaboration a bit more, we've got a dominant voice (editor) with some people whom we trust to speak when they've got something pertinent to the blog to say (columnists, I've got 5 or so who know the magic combination, only 1 ever says anything without asking me to edit it first), and we glean the rest of our articles from the 'net at large.
It also seems that the general level of discourse is raised if people realize that they're writing for posterity. The personal association that a blog has means that we take it a little more seriously (those who follow Flutterby are now thinking "If that's his self-edited stuff, how's he survived the reactions to his off the cuff remarks?").
Aside from the possibility of some sort of remote linking protocol (and we're getting scarily close to Third Voice sorts of issues here), what do we lack?
Other than that, it seems that what you're asking for is implemented as a mailing list. I'm subscribed to a few invitation-only lists, some with easier invitation criteria than others, and they seem to work, but I'd rather have social structures which allow for self-moderation, and allow for more fluidity from outside contributors.
Un-fleshed out idea: A central repository. When a blog author creates an entry they deem worthy of comment, they can link to this central repository with some sort of document ID and puts a little icon after the mention of it in their blog. If other authors want to comment, they can link their documents from this repository (obviously you don't need to create a database record until another author actually wants to link). The original author can then approve links, which moves them to the top of the list.
When readers click on the little icon they're given two lists, the approved and the unapproved documents.
At first blush this screams of a clumsy interface, but there may be a way to make it work; it might be one of the few places where frames could be useful.
Just brainstorming. As always, the initial technical solutions are easy, building interfaces that encourage the social structures which are the long-term solutions is much harder.
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