The Art of Hosting Good Conversations Online
By Howard Rheingold
WHAT AN ONLINE HOST WANTS TO ACHIEVE:
* The ongoing goal is civil discourse: all kinds of people having conversations and arguments about a variety of subjects and treating each other decently.
* Authentic conversations -- from the head, the heart, and the gut.
* A feeling of ownership. Participants become evangelists.
* A spirit of group creativity, experimentation, exploration, good will.
* A shared committment to work together toward better communication, better conversations. If this is achieved, nothing else is needed.
* A system where people figure out where the conversation is going, by themselves, and settle conflicts among themselves.
* A place where everybody builds social capital individually by improving each other's knowledge capital collaboratively.
GOOD ONLINE DISCUSSIONS:
* Enable people to make contact with other people.
* Enable people to entertain themselves rather than being just the passive consumers of canned entertainment.
* Enable people to create a gift economy for knowledge-sharing.
* Create conditions for ongoing collaboration that return individual effort with a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
* Provide a way for people to get to know each other beyond their usual masks.
* Make newcomers feel welcomed, contributors valued, recreational hasslers ignored.
