The Art of Hosting Good Conversations Online (1998)
rheingold.com
rheingold.com
Here's my list of the best ingredients to facilitate good online discussions:
- Smaller, niche communities that allow people to talk about common interests instead of just scrolling through shallow, forgettable, crowd-pleasing posts - A voting system that lets better comments get more visibility - A website design that prioritizes discussion over pure content aggregation, which does things like providing moderation tools - A good headline for the discussion to start with. The starting point matters a lot. It helps when there is strong discouragement of editorialized and sensationalized titles. Good discussions usually don't result from a post featuring a provocative or polarizing photo or meme. A discussion is more likely to be good if it starts with a neutral title or an open question. - It's better when there is complete transparency and openness about exactly what is allowed or not allowed, encouraged or discouraged, and what gets you banned. People care more about a community when the rules are enforced fairly and predictably. Otherwise they get resentful.
However, I feel like there is some upper limit to the number of users a group has before content starts going downhill. So perhaps it's a double-edged sword.
By now, the world has moved on. People now a days seem not to care much. They'd rather keep on easily dump general content onto each other via one-click whatsapp sharing, etc.
- Smaller, niche communities that allow people to talk about common interests instead of just scrolling through shallow, forgettable, crowd-pleasing posts
- A voting system that lets better comments get more visibility
- A website design that prioritizes discussion over pure content aggregation, which does things like providing moderation tools
- A good headline for the discussion to start with. The starting point matters a lot. It helps when there is strong discouragement of editorialized and sensationalized titles. Good discussions usually don't result from a post featuring a provocative or polarizing photo or meme. A discussion is more likely to be good if it starts with a neutral title or an open question.
- It's better when there is complete transparency and openness about exactly what is allowed or not allowed, encouraged or discouraged, and what gets you banned. People care more about a community when the rules are enforced fairly and predictably. Otherwise they get resentful.