links for 2006-03-08

• “Guess What City Managed to Turn Free Wifi into An Issue of Class?”
  Article about proposal for free wireless internet in DC

E-Democracy and Online Civic Infrastructure

It seems to me that on the web the people who make the biggest splash aren’t always successful. Think about all the spectacular .com failures who had all the money, fame, and dreams in the world. The reality of the Web 2.0 mini-boom we’re experiencing is that the big success stories - Flickr, TheFaceBook, del.icio.us - were built by people who think deeply about the details and sweat the small stuff.

People have been talking about civic issues — politics, news, community life — online since the early days of the internet. Yet I know of none who have thought longer and deeper about how to foster a high quality discussion online than the people I’ve met tonight. This evening I attended a presentation hosted by Steven Clift from a small Minnesota group that has been doing some interesting things on the web called E-Democracy.org. For the last 10 years they’ve been developing high quality civic online discussions on the internet - over both email and web.

While the scale of what the group has done is very small and the technology not very glamorous (they have in the past used Yahoo Groups and a variety of listserv technologies — more on this in a minute) I am truly impressed with how much they have thought about something which I fear gets short shrift online: quality and inclusion. The group has implemented a variety of methods to try to build geographically specific (first state, then city-based) nonpartisan, inclusive, civil space for online discussion. “I feel like we invented the city park, and I want every city to have one,” said Steven Clift, one of the group’s founders. They are shooting at launching 100 forums this year, and telling 1 million people.

The core of their project is something they call the “online issue forum,” where they seek to develop “geography-based, multi-topic, non-partisan online public spaces where citizens with diverse perspectives and backgrounds gather for online discussion, dialogue and deliberation on real public issues.” So yeah, they’re experts at small online forums. So what’s the big deal? Well, for starters their little Minnesota project is gaining some surprising traction. They’ve established a high quality niche in Minnesota, and the leaders have traveled the world sharing their experience. Most recently, several local governments in the UK sought them out to create forums in their cities.

I’m also excited because the simple reality is that while there’s a lot of lip service given to “self policing communities” online, they can be elusive when dealing with emotionally charged topics like politics. When this blog was a popular site about Ann Arbor I would often ignore the comments, which would spiral off into vitriolic, unrestricted exchanges. One very intelligent local journalist told me he loved my blog but didn’t post comments because there was so much “machismo.” He was right: the blog worked because I was able to hold the central stream of discussion in a consistent and level manner (for the most part), and the comments didn’t always work because there was no mechanisms of restraint. Now, this may sound a bit odd from an ACLU-er like myself, but I am not an anarchist: sometimes people should sign up to speak or wait their turn so that the voices of all can be heard.

This was an issue we have grappled with on DCist over the past year and a half: while we want to have totally free discussions in the commenting, how should we handle personal attacks, libelous comments, or even mentally deranged people? We have developed a subtle approach which involves acknowledging and diffusing critics (Steven from E-Democracy called this tactic the “smother with affection” approach), interjecting when we needed to clarify our position, setting and consistently enforcing policies, and, when necessary, deleting posts or banning IP addresses.

It turns out the e-Democracy people have been thinking about these issues quite deeply for a while now, and have come up with some electronic talking sticks that are quite simple. Here’s their first two rules:

• Sign Posts - Use your real name.
• Limits on Posting - Two per member per day in most forum charters.

Steven explained that they think as much about the lurkers who are reading the site as they do the people posting because, after all, most visitors are just reading and do not post regularly. The first rule provides accountability, necessary for a civil environment. (There is always a role for anonymity — but that’s what the rest of the web is for.) While the second ensures a reasonable flow of debate that enables the most people to participate, not just the most active.

All of this may be fine and good, but if it stopped here we would simple have some expert forum moderators. The technical angle is interesting. They very quickly realized the ideal platform to host a high-level civic discussion combined both the “push” of email with the permanence and accessibility of a website. Forums which don’t email members about new content are often neglected, and it’s easy to lose - or skim over - email. Thus, they spent much of the last ten years moving from one imperfect platform to another, stopping along the way at several common ones like Yahoo Groups.

Over a year ago my friend Emily (from Echoditto) told me about an idea she had which was website software which would seamlessly combine an email list with website content management system, so that if you were on the email list or on the website you would see the same content, perhaps organized according to category. Eerily, the software I heard the e-Democracy folks have been working on develop almost exactly mirrors that solution. Furthermore, like a blog the layout is elegant and simple - the conversation is linear, predictable, and well-organized. The >>’s resulting from email are hitten, posts are clearly signed, and all of it is neatly archived on a public website much easier to navigate than Yahoo Group’s archives. For an example, check out this thread from their tech support forum. The tool is something they stumbled across in New Zealand called GroupServer and they have spent some grant money the group was provided to pay the developers to add new features and customize the software to their needs. While there isn’t a very large development community they have released the software as open source, and hope that other people use it for their own purposes.

Some of the most interesting material I found was in their section about starting issues forums. They have used some of the money from the UK to write a 60-page guidebook (PDF, 3MB) about some of the finer points of how to foster constructive online communities. I told you they went deep. Now it just seems they need a little entrepreneurial fire from what they referred to as the “advocacy” community. While I suppose the number of people engaged in an online community will be less than would be interested in a civic blog (like ArborUpdate or DCist), the numbers they talked about were quite low. If they are able to push the technology out to more people and more places, I think some quite remarkable things could happen. All of this talk of local discussion forums got me thinking about Mlive.com’s “Town Talk” forum and the “community” section of Craigslist. Clearly, if these very imperfect tools are being used so heavily I think there is a niche for well-run civic forums in addition to local blogs in the emerging online civic infrastructure.

The evening got me thinking about a variety of topics which I may or may not get to in a timely manner including the potential uses of technology and public input in urban planning decision making (hello, masters’ thesis?), how the popularity power curve is a misleading way to think about the web, re-posting and revisiting my ‘Cool Cities and Blogs’ posts, and a survey of DC’s emerging online civic infrastructure …

links for 2006-03-06

• Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus
  Just found out about this today. Internet policy.
• Center for Democracy & Technology
  Group I want to learn more about.

links for 2006-03-05

• D.C. Idiotarod 2006
  Hipster shopping cart race with costumes. March 11th.
• ‘American Gothic’ in D.C.
  The famous painting will be in DC for the first time in more than 40 years. Check it out at the Renwick gallery from March 10 through June 11.
• National Museum of The American Indian
  Interesting mosaic of photos of the museum on Flickr.
• The Washington Oculus: D.C. Parks Slowly Strangled By Vines
  Mike has a point: Rock Creek Park has a vine problem.

PR and Blogs

I’ve been thinking about PR and blogs quite a bit lately after giving two presentations on the topic. For both I emphasized two general approaches: to understand and strategically engage the blogosphere, or the larger task of utilizing the medium yourself for promotion purposes. During one of the presentations I found myself giving several examples of how companies have successfully engaged bloggers. The first was the Sprint Power Vision Ambassador Program which is sending free phones to bloggers to generate buzz for their new multimedia phone technology. Another company, Soda Club, sent me a free soda-making machine to test for DCist. I know of at least one friend who purchased a machine as the direct result of seeing mine in action, and I have no idea what impact it had in DC after I ran the review. With over 10,000 hits a day and many more using the archive, even if they sold just a handful in the city their initial investment would have paid off.

The last example is one which has put me into a small ethical quandry. As a result of DCist I was added to the distribution list of addVice Marketing, a Brooklyn company that does outreach for several indie bands including Bloc Party. Their promotion work involved occasional emails with concert dates, photos, and MP3s (take notes kids — all of this is material for blogging) and also demos and new release CDs in the mail. For the CDs I found in my mailbox, I would take a listen and rip the tracks into my iTunes for the music I liked. Until last week I had no desire to blog about the music: it was either already heavily promoted on DCist (Bloc Party), or not exceptional enough to warrent mentioning. However they recently sent me a CD by a British band named the Guillemots that has piqued my interest. Their eclectic sound is quite good and I found myself listening to a couple tracks in particular — “Trains to Brazil” and “Whe Left the Lights Off, Baby” (you can hear both on the band’s Myspace page) I found it somewhat troubling that I would definitly not have heard of them until much later, if at all, if it werent’s some hipster MBA’s in Brooklyn. Alas.

Also, in the off chance some PR types come around here, I can’t resist listing some tips. As a result of my affiliation with DCist I have had the opportunity to witness a lot of PR professionals trying to work with blogs. I have a few suggestions:
1. Don’t send me a PDF or Word attachment unless the text of the document is in the email as text. And on that topic, I prefer plain text to gaudy rich text.
2. Don’t format your emails in an unprofessional manner. Just because email is “hip” doesn’t mean you can skip the a salutation and a brief note of introduction. Who are you, and why are you writing?
3. Don’t send me a press release. We will rarely publish them unless it is newsworthy in its own right, so just send me the who, when, and why.
4. Send links and photos. Virtually all blogs are a series of links explaining and interpreting information. It makes it easier for me (I can link to your site for more information) and provides me the raw material of the blog.

915 Rhode Island Ave. NW

Ever since I moved in basically across the street from this property, I have wondered about it. The high, barred windows and tightly boarded windows and doors give it an institutional and vaguely hostile feel.

A little internet snooping turned up little information on the property. DC city government’s online property sale database (which includes all sales from 1999 to the present) doesn’t contain a record for the address. The property assessment database lists its owner as Howard University and its value for 2007 as $631,750, with the existing structure contributing $159,820 to the total. The database also includes tax payment information since January 2005, and lists several payments to the city by Howard.

A Google search gives the impression the address has housed a physician’s office, insurance agent, and perhaps even a place of worship. All of this has made me begin to wonder how many other unused properties Howard owns. Sandwiched between a residential YWCA facility and Shaw Junior high just two blocks from the Metro, I have no doubt the property could interest a developer, or be better utilized by Howard University.

Anyone on Eventful?

Yet another web 2.0 social website, this one for events like upcoming.org but a bit different. I just joined.