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Re: Message Board
At 08:06 AM 4/24/2006, Matthew.Quinn@sunlife.com wrote:
>Just wondering- is there any reason why there is no LD Message Board?
Yes, there is a reason. It has nothing to do with personal preferences.
Neither mine, nor yours, nor anybody else's. It also has nothing to do
with
technology.
It has everything to do with community. How communities form, how people
interact with each other, how communities sustain or fade out.
I started using online networked environments in the 80's. I was
fascinated
by the possibilities they offered to allow new communities to form, and
the
possibilities for new methods of communication.
Over many years of using these environments, I observed that the interface
and method for the communication had a huge effect on how people
interacted, and the type of communities they did or did not form. Bulletin
boards, group chat, instant messaging, mailing lists, video conferencing,
newsgroups, etc., all turn out differently. Even subtle things can have a
significant impact. With mailing lists, for example, factors like
bounce/digest, moderation, posting rules, even whether the "reply-to"
field
is set to the list address or the poster's address, all affect the way
people communicate in different ways. Some formats turn out ugly, and
result if a lot of flaming, or trolls, or whatever. But some turn out
wonderfully, when applied the right way.
So, the reason for choosing one interface or another should really depend
on the application and the type of communication desired. Is the goal more
of a friendly community, where people are a little chatty and get to know
each other over a long time? Is it just for posting announcements or ads?
Technical question and answers with a minimum of nonsense? Customer
support? A good place to chat people up and try to get a date? A different
format will work better in each case. Choosing the wrong format usually
results in failure.
When I wanted to start a community around looping, my goal was to form a
community. I hoped people would spend extended time there, and get to know
one another. I wanted people to share information and collaborate on
projects together. I wanted people to spend time to teach one another
about
looping. I wanted people to have serious, thoughtful, and respectful
discussions. I wanted it to last. I wanted a community of interested
people
to build the whole idea of looping into something much bigger than it was.
I had long observed that mailing lists work very well in forming strong
communities, and that is what I wanted to do.
So the fundamental format I chose for this nascent looping community is
the
mailing list. I set up LD as a bounce list, with the reply-to set to the
list address. There is no moderation, but you can't post unless you are a
subscriber. There are no explicit rules about what can be posted. There is
a web archive that saves all discussion, and makes it freely available to
the world. (there is also a digest, which I wasn't too thrilled to create
and still think was a somewhat bad idea.)
All of these choices were made with a lot of thought. Mailing lists have
continuity. People mostly don't drop in and disappear, they usually stick
around for a while. Email lists appeal to people's natural inertia. If
people do nothing, the messages still go to them. So people get to know
one
another. Email encourages more thoughtful discussion. Bounce lists are
more
active. Lack of moderation encourages more individual sense of ownership
and responsibility for the community. Reply-to set to the list makes
things
a little more chatty and fun. None of these choices were accidents, or
made
without purpose. I thought about each one and made the choice in order to
form the kind of community I envisioned.
And so in 1996 I started Looper's Delight, and a whole bunch of interested
people showed up and started communicating in a new way, and we all built
this remarkable community. Looper's Delight is almost 10 years old. We've
made good friends, we've had numerous great festivals, we've recorded many
amazing albums, we shared a lot of knowledge, we shared a lot of music,
we've gone to see one another perform, we guided manufacturers to make
products for us, we created a huge archive of knowledge, sometimes we've
argued and disagreed, mostly we've supported each other in all manner of
ways, and most important, we've developed looping far beyond what any of
us
ever thought it could be.
I'm really proud of all that. And I'm really convinced, now more than
ever,
that the choices I made in forming this community were correct. In my
world, there is no better proof than success.
So no, I'm not at all interested in converting LD into a message board. I
think that idea is destructive to our community. I also think it is
hurtful
to the group when people try to create some separate forum. It always
feels
like an attempt to split our community up. That's why the reactions from
so
many people in the community to these ideas are usually so hostile. People
like the community we have here. The don't want to see it broken up or
damaged.
And by the way, the idea that message boards are somehow more "modern" is
laughably wrong. As someone else noted, even in the 80's bulletin board
systems following that approach were very sophisticated. Email was
relatively primitive at that time, and was little better than a command
line or unix shell interface. There is not really anything new about
message boards today other than slicker graphics and php code. Most of
them
seem to be actually worse in user interface than the average BBS you could
have joined 15-20 years ago.
kim
______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint | Looper's Delight
kflint@loopers-delight.com | http://www.loopers-delight.com