1. Jon Udell on February 17, 2004 7:00 PM writes...

Usenet's tens of thousands of interest groups were Top-down, Place-centric, Moderator controlled, Topic driven, Centralized?

The Usenet could, and did, support decentralized democratic group formation across institutional borders. It just didn't do so in a nimble, lightweight manner. I'd say the difference between Usenet and today's more agile networks is matter of degree, not a difference in kind.

2. Jeff Jarvis on February 17, 2004 7:38 PM writes...

Sorry, Ross, but I couldn't disagree more with your definition of communities. Communities are not top-down; they often form around a common interest; I have communities I host that I do not run on, say, high-school wrestling. They are not place-centric; a community of diabetes patients can exist anywhere on earth. They are not moderator controlled; my communities have no moderators. Centralized? No. Architechted? No. Topic-driven? That's the only one where I will agree. Go to any of the forums on my day-job services (such as nj.com) and you will find communities, not networks (they don't even know each other) that form themselves and, despite being on nj.com, are not geographically centered.

3. Darrin Eden on February 17, 2004 7:41 PM writes...

Where does this thinking place [Wireless] Community Networks?

http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/WirelessCommunities

4. Lucas on February 17, 2004 8:38 PM writes...

Topic-centered communities and user-centric networks need not be oppositional, although they tend to be today.

From a sociological perspective, the advantage of being topic-centered (Usenet for example) is that it tends to focus more around the ideas presented and less on the people doing the presenting.

The disadvantage (and it is a bigee) is that it does not incentivize users to grow their reputations since an individual's postings will be scattered across communities, and thus only loosely tied to their identity.

The advantage of being user-centric is simply that what people care most about -- even *gasp* more than what they write about -- is themselves. Blogs exist primarily for the benefit of the blogger, not the reader. Blogging for many (if not most) is an exercise in reputation building, which simply cannot be done easily in topic-centered forums.

One disadvantage is that conversations become more self-absorbed. The echo chamber can and often does shrink to a single person talking to him/herself.

Another is the soapbox phenomenon. The power asymmetry between poster and commenter does add a stifling element to many user's perception of their range of appropriate responses.

The biggest disadvantage is that in a user-centric environment users tend to talk past each other, and not carefully and explicitly reply to each other's points. The same points are made over and over again, ad naseum, in slightly different garbs.

Here is how to get the best of both worlds:

1) Make RSS/Atom categories meaningful. Then a user can aggregate on category rather than blog. This then looks and feels like a newsgroup. (It should be called a topic and not a category to emphasize that it should be specific and not general, and perhaps even given a guid.)

2) Make comments entries and conflate comments and trackbacks. This solves the power asymmetry, adds threading, and does a bunch of other fun stuff that blurs the line between topic and user centric discussions.

3) Add more filtering, blocking, grouping, and viewing tools to aggregators, and integrate aggregators with publishing tools. A discussion then can be either user-centric (either themselves or others) or topic-centric based upon the user's configurable view of it.

5. JayT on February 17, 2004 11:56 PM writes...

Well, this is close:

"One disadvantage is that conversations become more self-absorbed. The echo chamber can and often does shrink to a single person talking to him/herself.

Another is the soapbox phenomenon. The power asymmetry between poster and commenter does add a stifling element to many user’s perception of their range of appropriate responses.

The biggest disadvantage is that in a user-centric environment users tend to talk past each other, and not carefully and explicitly reply to each other’s points. The same points are made over and over again, ad naseum, in slightly different garbs."

But these are disadvantages of different types of people and personalities, rather than the media used!

The range going from tasting/touching to hearing/seeing to conferencing to usenetting and emailing to listserving/foruming to blogging is, to me, not all that great... Primarily the speed of the feedback turnaround-time and the nature of the feedback, the "VOLUME" of thought/feeling communicated (as in mindspace it takes in, just as much as the sound or the whuffie), the privacy afforded, the closeness, and such...

The primary difference between blogging and all the rest (not to diminish the personal-expressiveness allowed by HTML) is The Moderator... Thus, as many have noted, the early adopters being those who crave "their own castle" or space, where they can do WHATEVER they WANT with it. NO RULES (outside the unwritten ones of one's loose-knit communities, of course). Libertarians, by a significantly-significant percentage.

As the ease of use (rather than the cost) has come down, that ratio is changing, of course.

Btw, "Lucas":

1) ENT/K-Collector
2) Channel Z
3) WIP

Imv, the tip of my little finger is a network, a network of related parts. A network is neutral, in that it has advantages and disadvantages.

A community is a form of network, no doubt. But the interelationships of the people will determine the value of the group, almost entirely... Whether top-down authoritative or bottom-up populist (both being best), using a better tool plays some perhaps, but relatively little, part in controlling human nature.

Luckily, imv.

6. Will Davies on February 18, 2004 4:39 AM writes...

"Try getting a contentious message through a moderator or unsubscribing from someone’s views on a mailing list or discussion board. Try having a topic shift to your context without straddling across platforms. Try moving a community beyond its original purpose. Fundamentially, its about choice demanded by today’s consumers and businesses."

Can I add the following?

"Try getting a network to take a collective decision that isn't legitimised primarily by the cult of a single personality. Try persuading members of a network to stick with it, even when it doesn't entirely represent their precious consumer preferences. Try using a networked model of association to win your candidate a single primary..."

Can I stop now? ;-)

7. Andrew on February 18, 2004 3:39 PM writes...

Ross, this post sounds a lot like a pitch from a consulting service to a client who needs to be convinced to spend money on the next, newest thing. Especiially since you see the "fundamental" difference as the *cost* of group forming. It's like a few new buzzwords compared to a few older ones.

8. Lucas on February 18, 2004 3:40 PM writes...

JayT, Will, I wish there was a way to architect out cynicism, because cynicism has become the real mind-killer in the last few years, it seems to me. The cynicism is only justified by itself. It just boggles my mind the enormous dropoff of will and energy devoted to the commons. It is as if a deep-freeze has set in, it really is, and we need to wake up to this general crisis if we are to do anything about it.

Cynicism is an externalization of one's own lack of ability to face reality. As the world around us gets scarier, we become more heads down and involved in our own little worlds. And when we do look up we see the results of a world ignored by everyone else. This supplies us with the perfect justification for our desperate struggle to cut ourselves off from it.

Technology does affect human behavior to a much greater extent than our illusions of self-determination are willing to admit. Since heads-down self-absorption is a feedback loop, by reducing just some of it through, for example, an amalgam of topic and user centric discussion, we may be able break the cycle. Enthusiasm breeds enthusiasm, but only when it is enthusiasm for something outside of oneself.

Whenever I express my ideas in this area I get these infuriating looks of "ah yes, youthful idealism, I remember back when I thought the world was a neat place too." I seriously want to inflict damage to those people. (not to you, dear reader)

"All the world stinks, so no one's taking showers anymore." -- Modest Mouse

9. Kathleen Gilroy on February 18, 2004 6:02 PM writes...

I'm going to stick my neck out here, but my own experience with weblogs vs. online discussion boards has to do with context and consciousness rather than community and networks. Weblogs (read online) provide a much richer, embodied context than the discussion groups. They are "messy with meta-data." (Smart Pieces Loosely Joined). This is what makes them richer and more interesting.

As for consciousness, my weblog is feeling like yoga -- with identity building as the common thread. In her wonderful new book, Bringing Yoga to Life, Donna Farhi says, "The word Yoga is derived from the verbal root yug, which means "to bring together" or "to harness." "Yoga, in essence, describes both a practice and a way of being in which we realize the inherent unity behing the multiplicity of life's expressions."

In Yoga, "what we are to practice, then, is an active inquiry into the nature of our true being." (Farhi, page 33.) The hyperlinking aspect of weblogging achieves the goal of harnessing and bringing together and exposing our underlying unity. And it's frequency assumes the quality of a daily practice in its systematic inquiry: "Yoga is an ongoing participatory experiment in which the world and every part of our life becomes our laboratory." (Farhi, page 36). "Practice is any movement that brings us closer to recognition of our true self." Both yoga and weblogging stem from the impulse to discover and to know.

10. Ross Mayfield on February 19, 2004 2:45 AM writes...

Getting your head handed to you, whether you have lost it or not, is a great thing.

Describing differences you see is contentious at best. Simple frameworks are abstract generalizations, and the blog form encourages the hasty ones. Usually degrades into definitions and the search for common language. But these comments teach me a great deal and let me build upon it.

Jon, Usenet is an open messaging system that is a glaring exception. But it doesn't afford the choice inherent in other models.

Jeff, nj.com rocks. Of course, while looking for your boards I was distracted by the glaring Weblogs section full of all kinds of interesting people that I could subscribe to and form new groups with in different contexts . Then I found a place with a rigid taxonomy of nicely logoed board topics. Some experts determined the topics (iteratively indeed), architected the site, moderate upon alerts and do the other good work of maintaining a center of discussion.

Darrin, I mean virtual place. Would even suggest that physical space can by dynamic, like cafes. Self-organizing wireless networks are the context of people in a place in time.

Will: Can I add the following?

“Try getting a community to self-organize in opposition to the cult of the organized when choice constrains the emergence of leadership. Try persuading members of a community to stick with it, even when it doesn’t entirely represent their precious consumer preferences. Try, indeed, using a networked model of association to win your candidate a single primary…”

No, you can't stop now ;-)

Lucas, can't wait any longer you start your blog. Networks can create context around a topic while still being driven by personal incentives. JT is right to point to K-collector.

JT, can't wait until you start your blog so your posts can be as powerful as your comments. Yes, Everyone is a moderator.

Andrew, I should have put this in a 2x2 matrix to make this unquestionable. If it was a pitch, I wouldn't be talking about lower costs. And if group forming is a buzzword, the world is better for it.

Lucas, at least cynicism is better than apathy, I guess. If I am from a school of sociological thought, its Institutionalism, recongizing how institutions shape social interaction greater than any other force. Code institutionalizes, especially code that is hard to change.

Kathleen, neck well stretched, but not stuck out. Thanks for passing on a little practice.

All, I do promise to update the framework, that's the idea.

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