Best Discussion on Forums Yet?

The US dept for Education in investing in researching discussion forums in education.

It's lovely being stretched to think in new ways about forums.  In this discussion we've been chatting about how forums challenge the conclusions of top philosophers and psychologies about 'authentic' discussion because they have the ability to 'transcend time and space' and involve many contributors - features of deep conversation which were not easily available in the past.

The discussion is in the 'Education Online Communities of Practice Managers' Network' on linkedin.com and it's called 'Do online discussion forums produce genuine conversation?'

Why are people so abusive on forums? - Forums which defend agendas.

Introduction

This post is an attempt to give some insight into the behaviour of moderators and the experiences of participants in forums which are not lightly and impartially moderated due to the specific interests (usually commercial) of the organisations which own them. 

The insights conveyed here are all based on real conversations, but they are heavily disguised to preserve the anonymity of those who are helped me in this research.  Therefore I cannot offer a verifiable account.  Instead I offer observations and insights which others may or may not find useful.

What's the agenda?

                                                        

You would have thought that if Al Jazeera could manage the appropriate light moderation of the comment streams on their websites, then anyone could.  So why don’t they?

The most obvious reason is that the discussions may serve a commercial purpose, such as direct sales of particular items.  I spoke at length with a former participant in a major forum where moderators hosted pools of participants, getting to know them in real life as well as through their participation in discussions. 

  

Moderators earned commission on products sold, so they were particularly keen to recruit participants who would buy items recommended and to dispatch those who questioned recommendations or suggested alternative products.  Unwanted participants were dispatched through a wide variety of tactics, from them being ignored or receiving only unfriendly replies through to systematic lies being spread about them to the easily led participants through the personal message system (to encourage mob bullying), bannings and the deletion of their comments.  

Sale of products is not the only commercial agenda which may drive abuse in forums.  Forums can be used to build traffic to a website which is commercially profitable in ways not directly associated with the content of the conversation on forums.  It is well known in many circles that some participants in forums are not authentic participants but are instead ‘trolls’, that is contrived participants who are there to provoke discussion.  It is generally thought that a highly antagonistic comment will attract both readership and comment to a forum and therefore to the website on which that forum is based.  

While there is clearly some truth in this, it is also clearly true that such provocation, when it is inauthentic and sustained, tends to alienate authentic participants who enjoy exploring a balance of views.  It is my observation that forums need a significant proportion of contributors who enjoy the exploration of multiple perspectives and who naturally adopt the kinds of behaviour I described in my first blog on this site to operate as non-abusive forums.  Where forums are maintaining a specific agenda such participants are not welcome as they naturally tend to explore and invite views which balance the views defended by the forum.

What are the consequences of a managed agenda?

If you get involved in a forum where people are posting unpleasant things about you which are not true it is natural to start to suspect that those people who are posting lies are deliberately involved in a conspiracy against you.  However it seems that in general many participants in abuse have no awareness that the things they are told about other participants are untrue (because they trust the person who is feeding them lies) and they feel they are simply responding to the situation ‘as it is’.  

I think it’s reasonable to suggest that being part of such a forum bears similarities to being part of a cult, most importantly in terms of the challenges participants face when they begin to become aware of the discrepancies between the way some participants are portrayed and the reality.  The stresses contributors endure as they encounter these tensions are substantially more difficult to overcome if both their online and offline social activities are with participants in the forum.  These issues are also complicated if the participant who is becoming aware of the behaviour of the forum has previously been involved in the abuse of other participants.  

It’s worth asking why people who become aware of the dynamics of forums don’t speak out.  That they may be ashamed of abuse they have been involved in themselves is one reason.  That they care about other participants and recognised the extent to which they are dependent on the forum is another and a third is that this issue is simply not yet understood by society – so it is difficult to make people understand what you are talking about.  To find evidence of them speaking out it's most productive to look in other forums, which reveal startling insights once you know what you're looking for.  If you're not concerned about a specific forum but want to explore this subject more generally, it's worth just asking around.  It's startling how many people have been involved in abusive forums. 

It’s also worth bearing in mind the extent to which the moderators, who could be blamed for the abuse, may also be trapped in the system.  They may be ‘overseen’ but managers who intervene to ensure they do not deviate from required behaviour and they may feel trapped and unable to improve or leave their employment by their financial obligations or other forces.  They are also likely to be aware of the rapidity with which people can be systematically discredited in cyberspace and be worried that this may happen to them if they speak out.

Conclusions:

If forums are trying to maintain a specific agenda for the purposes of the organisation to which they belong they often become abusive.   The abuse of individuals may be deliberately organised by moderators or it may occur because participants who know how to create non-abusive conversations are excluded from the forum. 

A key symptom of this kind of behaviour existing on a forum is that there are extensive rules which are used against some contributors in ways which are clearly designed to dissuade those participants from contributing further to the forum (rather than to inform them as to how they could constructively participate in the forum) and are not applied to others. 

What next?

In future blogs I will attempt to explore;

- what happens when forces external to the organisation owning a forum seek to influence the views expressed on it 

- issues associated with moderators who exhibit inappropriate behaviour which is not directed by the organisation which owns the forum.

- the issue of anonymity and 

- steps organisations which have forums should take to ensure those forums are not abusive.

Mozilla Festival Notes on Cyberrhetoric

Cyberrhetoric

Workshop led by Rebecca Hanson at Mozilla Festival: Sunday 6 Nov 2011 2pm.

(retrospective notes including points raised by participants)

For the purpose of this topic, mass online discussion is discussions in forums and discussions in the comment threads to newspaper articles, blogs and the like.

Cyberrhetoric is art of posting in disciplined ways designed to make mass online discussions thrive, to militate against the repeated expression of strong opinions which are not grounded in evidence and to defuse abusive behaviour.  It is not the art of winning arguments – in fact it is quite the opposite – it is the art of diffusing arguments and turning them into vibrant discussions where participants with a wide variety of perspectives enjoy the opportunity to explore many deep aspects of a topic together.

For cyberrhetoric to work forum moderation needs to be light and impartial.  If the moderation of the forum is partial, a well poster who is well informed on issues which touch the sensitivities of the partial moderation and who applies the disciplines of cyberrhetoric is likely to threaten and/or diagnose the partialities of the moderation so abusive behaviour may increase and/or the participant may be banned.

It helps if the mass online discussion is structured so the participants who are prepared to share relevant information about themselves can easily do so.    It’s also helpful if mass online discussions either have either a PM (personal messaging) system or they have indentations within the thread to allow personal conversations.

Bilal Randeree from Al Jazeera described their moderation strategies at his fireside chat which were along the lines of – if a participant flags a post it disappears from their view.  If (4?) participants flag a post it disappears and goes to the moderator who reinstates it if is disliked because it holds a strong view but deletes it if it uses inappropriate language or is spam or clearly breaches T&C.

Some general rules of cyberrhetoric

Never attack the person.  Always comment on an aspect of the discussion.  It doesn’t matter if lots of people were extremely abusive to you and you were only slightly unpleasant back.  Don’t be!

Be clear who you are addressing in every part of every post.  Use the PM system or indentation to explore issues relevant to you and one other participant but not to the whole discussion.

Never assume you know (or post as if you know) someone else’s position.  People’s points of view are very complex and context specific and in mass online discussions they are often developing or changing.  If you want to know someone’s point of view then ask, don’t assume.  (Don’t “straw man” them).

Hang around the discussion and try to answer all questions asked of you.  A few times a day is ideal.  You’ll need access to a keyboard. 

Hold no sacred cows or at least as few as you can.  Be prepared to be changed by new evidence and deeper insights.  If you have them don’t hide them.  Try to state them and live with them openly.

Off topic/related topic discussion can be useful, especially if it involves the exploration of a real example which illustrates an aspect of the discussion.  In general if a conversation is getting stuck this is a useful device to try.  If the conversation is losing focus and becoming chaotic post only on the original theme and ignore all side topics until coherency is restored.  Be aware of the etiquette here.  You should defer to the opening poster (OPer) if they are directing the discussion.  If they are not and there is a dispute regarding whether the conversation should meander or should stick to the original theme, sticking to the original theme wins.  If no one objects to a conversation drifting then it’s fine for it to drift.

Some good types of posts

Say what you think people have said (but not in an accusatorial way).  Because of the missing body language cues people have rarely come across as they think they have.  Here is an example of a good post structure:

*Name*: It sounds like you’ve said *whatever*.  It that what you intended to say?  If so could you explain why you think that?

When you want to make a point, find an internet reference for it.   Make your point and provide the hyperlink to your source.  This invites deep analysis of your evidence while an unreferenced point invites another unreferenced opinion:
Here is an example of a suitable post:

*Name*: You have raised concerns about China’s control of the world’s supplies of neodymium and how this might impact on the future costs of constructing turbines.  You may be interested to note that there has recently been a very substantial discovery of neodymium reserves in Afghanistan:http://www.livescience.com/16315-rare-earth-elements-afghanistan.html

Back down and apologise.If you behaved in an inappropriate way or you have changed your mind, apologise or state your change of mind clearly and then move on.  E.g.:

*Name*: I regret my comment to you which has offended you and I apologise to you for it.
You raised an interesting point regarding *an aspect of the topic being discussed*......* move on to your point*.

*Name*: You are correct in saying that I stated *whatever you said*.  I would like to clearly state that I no longer hold that view.  My opinion is now that *whatever it is*.

It is fine and often necessary to repeat yourself.  Make your point in a slightly different way each time.  If people have not read your link and their comments indicate that they should then say so and say why it’s so important that they read the linked article.

Ignore all the bluster and abuse and create a reply which extracts a valid detail from a post and interacts only with that.

Help people with strong views you don’t necessarily agree with to express themselves clearly.  People often have fears which have got out of control and this helps to bound them and make them easier to discuss.

Here is a genuine example of a reply which illustrates those two points:

Carol:
Rebecca: Can you hear me laughing at your stale impudence?
Even your beloved Wiki lists the many acts of aggression against Israel from its neighbors.
Or is Wiki part of the brainwashed system that's controlled by the Jews and US?

Reply from Rebecca:
Which particular points regarding the aggression against Israel are you trying to make Carol?
Please could you list and reference them?
Wiki is fine.

The arrival of a new entrant into the discussion is often an excellent time to write a post which summarises key points arising so far.  Reviewing a conversation is a useful thing to do.  Important links you posted soon get lost in the depths for active discussions so it is useful to refresh them both so new entrants see those key links again and because you become expert at finding them rapidly whenever you need them.

The image of the dysfunctional dinner party

No set of rules is ever perfect and I used this image to try and humanise the experience of being in a difficult discussion forum so that when the rules fail you have a mental image to fall back on. 

You will annoy people.  You will write posts you regret. You may well get upset and annoyed. Conversations may rapidly move to topics which you have never talked about before and which you find emotionally difficult to engage with.

 You will feel again and again like you’re making progress with someone’s extreme views only to find you’re not.  You will probably need to take time out.  You may need to leave or put some distance in time between writing your posts and posting the. 

The consequences of your involvement may be that you find a new friend in one of the other participants and that can be a wonderful outcome.   

However careful you are in your posts, it takes time to get to know the community of posters in a discussion or who comment on stories or blogs.  Some people find lurking helps, but I find people often respond differently to me to how they do to others so it’s less useful.   I simply make a start and work away at getting to know them slowly.  If you’re commenting on a blog it helps to comment on most posts for a while so that the community of regular posters begin to get to know you and you get to know them.

My background is in teaching challenging classes of teenagers and that’s clearly one of the reasons I feel so comfortable in chaotic and confrontational forums.  It takes time to become comfortable in situations where people are being strongly opinionated and aggressive towards you.  Be kind to yourself and accept that it may take you a long time to adjust to this environment.  In the early days kids and communities behave as if you won’t be around for long and my deliberately test you out to see if you can hack it.  Just sticking around long enough for them get to know you is often important.  When you start to get some successes – some people suddenly shifting from being abusive to being brilliantly insightful – you get an energy from it which inspires you to carry on. 

A couple of discussions you may like to look at:

A recent discussion which has inspired me has been:
on > linkedin.com
in the group > TED: Ideas Worth Sharing
on the thread > Why would/ should Palestine not request to be permenant member for UNO?
(The TED group is an open group so if you’re on Linkedin.com adjust the window in the top right to search for groups and you should be able to find it and view it directly)
It’s inspired me because it took a long time to make it productive but it has become extremely informative place to be.  It also makes me believe that the days when owning the media gave individuals tremendous power regarding what would be believed are nearly over.   The thread does not, of course, show the substantial number of personal messages which passed between participants in the thread.

This example from John Redwood’s blog shows how I interacted with both him and the commentators on his blog to shape a discussion which far more deeply informed his original post on the day he made that post.  My interaction (as Rebecca Hanson) starts just over half way down the page.  http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2011/10/21/popular-and-unpopular-greenery/

Next steps for me:

Following discussion at the workshop I have set up the twitter handle:@cyberrhetoricwhich I will use to make posts relevant to this topic. 
Please do follow it and please do interact with me on it as I have no idea how to use Twitter and need to learn.

I have also set up a blog for cyberrhetoric here
Where I will post this and other documents, notes and information.

I intend to write further on both cyberrhetoric and other key related topics – such as the benefits of mass online discussion and their applications to the enhancement of democracy and the generation of intellectual capital.  I intend to publish any such articles on Scribd. com where you can find this earlier article: http://www.scribd.com/doc/55142332/Exploring-Discussion-Forums  which explores the history of discussion forums as well as my personal journey into using and coming to love them.

I’d like to take this opportunity to offer my sincere thanks to all who took part in the cyberrhetoric workshop.

Rebecca 9^th November 2011