What communities would you start?

or as we're starting to refer to it in Canada - EAL

EAL...not a bad idea...

Actually, I'm sort of serious.

Putting aside customized rules for any community I will be looking for the following and creating one if it doesn't already exist or the one(s) that exists has rules I can't stomach:

Books
Science Fiction/Fantasy
Politics
Conservative Thought
Philosophy
TV Series
Movies
History

I'm fairly sure each one of these (with the possible exception of Conservative Thought) will be covered by at least one community so it will probably come down to the rules.

As far as rules & regulations, I prefer few, but I think there will have to be some mechanism for getting rid of true trolls or people who just can't control themselves. I would think that some form of voting system would work. Any member can request a vote by making his or case. The person under consideration will have the opportunity to make his or her case. Both people will have one opportunity for a rebuttal and then the vote will be taken over a pre-set period of time (e.g. 7 days) A minimum number of voters would be required, and if 2/3 of the votes are for expulsion, out the door the person will go. Just thinking out loud and on the fly here.

There wouldn't be any set in stone rule that would result in immediate expulsion, and anyone could make a motion to expel someone for any reason they are willing to put in writing. I would expect and count on the community members to reject a motion that was based on something like "The person has atrocious grammar," or "This person has a condescending attitude." I do think that a true troll or absolute asshole would be quickly recognized and given the boot without requiring an extensive case to be made. If those who lose the vote don't like the outcome they will decide to stay or leave and that would probably help to avoid further disharmony.

What would be the difference between the Politics group and ConflictingViews?

I'd like to see a group for political debate where name-calling was censored but there was no ignore function. Anybody who voluntarily ventured into the zone would be agreeing to be confronted with views that they disagree with, with their only option being to civilly state their disagreement.

I'm hoping someone else runs it though. I don't like being in charge of things.

Any live chat rooms?

Gearhead Room

Perfect Society

No Moderation Allowed

Bitch Fest

Sorry . . . so far, only corpses have shown any interest in a chat room.

Only after we saw Meebo.

There are a lot of ways communities can differentiate themselves, it could be either subject matter or culture (rules and ways of doing things).

I think I want to start ConflictingViews as a community for debate of all things (not just politics) and politics for all political discussions (not just debate) but in practice the communities will evolve to form their own identities.



I'm not sure that blocking will be a feature that can be turned off per-community but I want to try to start a super civil society too to see how that goes.

It's something I have considered but it will have to have enough interest in to be worth building out (to do it well, at least, nobody uses the 5 minute version up now).

I would absolutely hate to see a "history" community. We get enough loonies in here now, as it is. We'd get flooded by Hitler lovers, patriotic types trying to claim that their nation's military is the best in the history of the world, and any number of people who have done some superficial reading and now consider themselves expert. It would be disgusting. I'd rather see historical topics in a general feed--or better yet, i'd rather just go read a reliable author on history or biography or policy studies, than to wade through that morass of drivel. Really, history gets as warped, or more so, than politics. Probably, that's because people drag out bogus historical claims or ludicrous conspiracy theories to bolster their political bias. I don't know how you'd be able to moderate it fairly. A member posted a claim in a largely dead thread to the effect that the ambassador to Japan and the Secretary of the Navy knew about the plan to attack Pearl Harbor in January, 1941. Hell, even the Imperial Navy didn't know that Yamamoto had begun planning such an attack in January, 1941. In fact, the man Yamamoto assigned the task of planning the attack only returned to Japan from sea duty in January, 1941. It was clear to me that this member's source (the member did cite a source) was unreliable. I suspect the author of the source had read some FDR/Pearl Harbor conspiracy claptrap and used it for his book, without checking the source, or without even caring if it were accurate.

How is such a community to be moderated? Apart from the usual mud-slinging and name-calling you get in history threads (really, it's as bad as or worse than political threads), who has the time to run down the reliability of the sources other people cite? Somebody once started a thread to say that Rommel had said he could conquer the world with two divisions of Australian troops (or some equally ridiculous figure). After raging hotly for a few days, it settled down to being a trip wire for the occasional fanatical patriot from Oz to show up and vilify anyone who has expressed any doubt on the matter. Exercises like that a full of people who don't care about sources and citations. They just want to brawl.

I won't be participating in any history community.

I would guess that most people who want to start a history community won't want to be arbitrators of truth but rather of tone and other rules, trying to arbitrate historical accuracy is an exercise in futility.

You're missing the point. The vile name-calling arises because people get worked up over the supposed accuracy of their narrative. The member who posted the Pearl Harbor allegation had already personally attacked me, Walter and JoefromChicago, and put us on ignore. I don't claim that we're any of us oracular sources, but people seem to take their view of history with the same seriousness as religion or politics--and get just as nasty when contradicted.

Moderate for civility? You'd soon have almost no one participating.

I think I get the point but would just approach it differently, I get that it's a contentious subject matter but so are a lot of other things and while it certainly is not easy to moderate such things, controversy also drives engagement (which is a harder problem for many communities to solve).

I'm sure I'll start a history community if it doesn't exist (and I hope you change your mind about participating, as you have plenty there to contribute) and the way I'd go about it is not much different from the way a2k does.

It doesn't seek to arbitrate the veracity of points of view, and only decides what level of tone is allowed. Frankly when the new site is ready with blocking, threaded conversations, and user selection of communities I would not bother getting into too much of the name calling either as users will better be able to avoid that if they want (or not).

The challenges you describe are real, but also inevitable in all but the least polemic of subjects and any forum is going to have to deal with it. I think your point is a good one but would tweak it, moderating any such community is a pain in the ass. Participating in them much less so and you may change your mind about that part. I don't blame anyone for not wanting to moderate a community, it's mostly not fun stuff to do but the reward comes from fostering a cool community (if that floats your boat and all).

I've noticed in the two (professional) history communities that many forget: history is from historia, meaning inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation. Even there you got since a couple of years all these "what would have been if ..."-threads.

I hope, Set will be participating in that new community.

I'm trying to figure out how this is going to work. It's probably all been hashed out in your other thread, but I found that thread confusing and stopped checking it.

Let's take relationships as an example. A2K has a relationships forum, or community of folks who are interested in supporting relationship issues posed by new members. Do we then also have a number of other relationship-focused communities started by various individuals that all look to provide relationship support to new and incoming posters? Or, do you envision someone starting their own communities for subjects that aren't already covered within the general A2K site?

I think the scale of the problem is much greater than with any other subject other than politics. I might even go so far as to say it's worse than politics. I hardly ever post in political threads any longer, and won't even read in them if i see that there are a lot of contentious people in them. But this is much worse in the history threads. Australians show up, as one example, and just excoriate anyone who has had the temerity to doubt the claim about Rommel. You get pretty much the same with the American civil war. But this is not about points of view--this is not political ideology, and when people attempt to prop up their political ideology with historical narrative, they're either badly misinformed, or willfully lying.

People come here, and have done for years, including foreigners who have some kind of bizarre grudge against Lincoln, to accuse him of starting that war. Apparently, millions and millions of Americans assume that's the case. But this is not a point of view. It is a factually false claim. Southerners began attacking and seizing federal installations in January, 1861. A southerner, John Floyd, as Secretary of War was shipping arms to southern armories in 1860 without the prior knowledge or consent of Congress or President Buchanan, and in violation of the law. Lincoln was not inaugurated until March, 1861. If you tell people that, some of them get hysterical and make wild accusations, and personal slurs. After a dozen years, i'm just not interested in that kind of crap.

EDIT: The entire Pearl Harbor conspiracy story--a modest cottage industry--besides being hilariously illogical, is completely contradicted by solid evidence. It is not about points of view--in that respect, it's not like politics. You can allege that someone is a dishonest politician, and you might come up with rock solid evidence. Saying that he or she is dishonest because of their political affiliation, however, is a point of view. Some subjects rely on evidence--points of view do not.

But... what if someone is wrong? Can you really accept that?

A2K has different tags/forums and covers various subject matters and will continue to do so. However one big deficiency of this setup is that users can't choose whether they want to follow any particular subject or not. That results in a lot of unideal cases such as topics about which the general user community doesn't have any interest and is too niche to get off the ground (e.g. most technical subjects have only gotten a lot of folks cracking jokes about not understanding it and thusly never attract anyone who wants to discuss it).

There are a lot of other downsides of this all-in-one approach (though there are obviously upsides as well) so when the ability to create your own community is here there will likely be similar all-in-one communities as well as communities that focus on a particular subject matter (e.g. "relationships") or particular culture (e.g. "anything goes").

In short, I expect communities to be created both for subjects that we cover as well as ones we don't and I expect that as a result of this there will be more overall engagement on the average subject.