Slide 45
Slide 45 text
Body Language / Subtle Cues
Tweak-able Architecture
Rich Identity & Connection
Motivation
=
Cultivation
Moderation
Most social software we’re familiar with is on the listserv/usenet model: threaded mail/post discussions.
But there are limits to that model. For one thing, it arose in a very homogeneous community of engineers, academics, etc, who
all knew one another professionally in one way or another, and who had a sort of cultural baseline they were communicating
from. Any further etiquette emerged over time in the online culture (this is all pre-1994 or so). Anyone who was getting on the
Internet in late 80s up to about 93 remembers the tons of stuff the community had you read before you felt like you should
even post! (One origin of FAQs)
Then the floodgates opened, and frankly broke the old model. But we’ve mostly been stuck with threaded discussions or real-
time IRC-like chat for 15 years.
Gradually the more forward-thinking sites started having more nuanced feedback mechanisms, so the community can police
itself to a larger extent. This is just like in real-time conversation, where body language can mean so much. You don’t want to
have to use the baseball bat, when a rolled eye or a crossed brow will do the trick. Software is getting to where it can do some
of that body-language work for us.
Also, the architecture needs to be tweakable -- again by arch, I don’t mean the labeling and taxonomy alone but how they
service the structure and channeling of human activity on the site, as well as user permissions, what is surfaced and not
surfaced by the system (do users see who made negative comments too or just the positive ones? is karma score made
available for everyone to see or is it a private score for the user’s eyes only? if someone adds a friend do you let everyone see
they were added or is it just between the users? what algorithm is in use for determining karma?) All these things need to be
able to be adjusted as you get to know how your particular community works in it over time -- because they’re all different
culturally and personality-wise, as well as the kind of work they do.
Also, Rich Identity/Connection is important: the more invested someone is in their identity within the community, the less likely
they will be to act like a jerk and lose credibility. Their ‘avatar’ (usually just a profile page!) needs to allow for enough rich
connection and identity expression that they can invest deeply... and feel a connection to the avatar that they don’t want to
disrupt.