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warren ellis
BAD SIGNAL
Microcasting, Message Boards And Social Networks
It's very trendy right now to talk about how email is broken, snapped into
uselessness by spam. What people are just now realising is that blog
commenting has gone the same way. Some kind of bot has been devised that
loads up commenting systems with spam. But I think it hit the rocks before
that. More people on the web means more trolling. To the extent that more
and more blogs are shutting off their commenting systems due to, one
example of many, extended personal abuse (which is what killed
boingboing.net's commenting system). To the extent that some message
boards have actually shut down while trying to deal with people determined
to destroy their conversation space.
There is one possible answer to this, but lots and lots of people don't
like it. You might call it trusted participation.
Years ago, someone came up with the "hot tub" system. This was based on
one guy's plan to control behavior in his back yard hot tub. It was
electronically gated, and he gave his friends unique security codes to open
it. You could give your code to friends so they could get in -- but if
they pissed in the pool, the code was deleted, so you couldn't get in any
more either.
There have been message boards based on the same system -- give your entry
code to anyone you like, but if they fuck up, you're all locked out.
Kind of harsh. But it enforces a certain standard without, as we did on
WEF, having six volunteer enforcers watching the place, or the kind of
Karma Police operation they have over on Slashdot. It's low-maintenance
through brutality. The problem with it is that message boards with broad
agendas, or adspace to sell to pay for the hosting, need a faster
throughput of new people than hot-tubbing might provide.
What would be useful is some kind of system that allowed people to present
themselves for entry somehow. So that the boardrunner can see who's coming
in.
Tribe.net gives you the ability to set up message boards. If you select
the "moderated" option, people have to ask to get in -- they have to set up
a profile describing themselves, and then one-click a request to
participate on your board. The boardrunner gets to look over your profile
and decide if you fit the bill. This also allows the boardrunner to see
who your friends are, what your connections are, that kind of thing.
As the net changes and gets noisier, people are going to have to change
with it to maintain its use as a space for the exchange of ideas. This
could prove to be the great use of social network systems/Friend Of A
Friend webs. If someone pitches up on my doorstep at Tribe.Net, I can see
who they are and who they know, and make a fair guess as to whether they're
a freak of nature or not.
This can be mapped out to a free-standing message board -- I would like to
come in and participate or read, and here's my Tribe.net ID, or my
Friendster profile, or my Orkut page, or whatever. Your FOAF passport,
maybe.
And that might go a way to securing the signal-to-noise ratio of an online
community supporting microcasting. It goes a long way to maintaining the
agendas of a board without heavy moderation. Moderation comes too, but
filtering the participants does a lot of the heavy lifting.
Dreamless.org was a message board founded by Josh Davies, the
Praystation.com guy. It was for designers, and it was gated. Like WEF, it
seems that it became a victim of its own success, and started eating into
Davies' time. But while it was running, it was by all reports very
important and very useful. It's a working precedent.
The argument against this is usually that the net was intended to be a free
conversation space, and that gating off spaces goes against its intent.
Obviously, I don't agree. And further, I think the evolution of the net
has outpaced early intents. There are people out there who freely admit
that most of their time on the web is spent attempting to fuck up the flow
of message boards. Pro trolls, would you believe. For those of us who
want the net to effect cultural leverage, I think it's way past time to
acknowledge that not everyone has a useful opinion and putting up a message
board isn't an invitation that you want to deal with children's shit. If
someone wants to sit down with you and your friends, they need to prove in
some basic way that they're not going to spill their beer down their
fucking shirt fronts.
I have a feeling that you can't talk about social networks without talking
about social skills. I have a feeling that maintaining the net as a
communications system over the next few years is neither about technology
or policy -- it's about basic pub etiquette.
(But then, I probably would, wouldn't I?)
-- W
