Category: General

In my last post, I mentioned that I thought it was ludicrous to try to control the spammers on your site by trying to control everyone entirely. Why? Because if you do, you will not only succeed in driving away the spammers but also your community as well. I mean would you want to live in a community where your freedom of speech was restricted? Of course not but how do you get around this problem while still giving people an open voice? Well below is not a perfect answer (because there are no perfect answers) but it is a practical and effective one that actually allows you to use the strengths of your community, the people within it, to aid you in controlling this problem as a collective group (which is what communities should be all about).

Before I describe the approach though, I want to elaborate a bit more upon the current situation of blogs. Right now it seems that when a blog has a few visitors (like my own for example), comments are low and spam usually isn’t a problem, therefore I myself can administer my own site quite easily at this point in time. As the community around a site grows though, the comments increase in number as well. This brings more awareness of the community to others “malcontents” shall we say who would like to take advantage of the community for their own purposes. Imagine them like thieves and scoundrels infiltrating a thriving growing community.

Therefore, once my site gets very popular and attracts a lot of attention, this problem will probably grow beyond the means of me administering it on my own. It would be like having a single sheriff in a massive metropolis trying to maintain law and order. It’s impossible. This is why site owners usually revert to enabling robots (i.e. spam catchers) to help them maintain order, security gates that moderate those who can speak, or an identity system that tracks their users and only allows those authorized to speak to do so. What is wrong with all of these approaches is that all of them still keep the site owner in control like some fascist dictator who doesn’t trust anyone else to control his kingdom but himself. Yet for a community to be sustainable over a long period of time, trust needs to be an integral part of it.

Ok onto the solution and this will be another one of those “Everything I Learn In Life, I Learned From Video Games”. Back four years ago or so, when I used to play Counter-Strike, I was within a clan that had their own server where in effect we were doing the same thing as people do on blogs today. We we’re creating a community. Like a blog, the more popular that our clan CS server became, the more malcontents arrived on the scene to spoil things. So how did we get around this. Again we leveraged the power of the community around us. Instead of forcing everyone to go through an “Iron Curtain” to access the server, we kept the server completely open to everyone and elevated the roles of community members in helping us keep the “riff raff” out. In effect, we rewarded and empowered our long time community members.

Basically we gave these key community members (who had been a part of the community a while already) administration access to the server so that they could self-administer the server if we weren’t there. Thus the larger our community became, the more easily were we able to administer the server because more and more people were chipping in to help out. After all, we didn’t own the community (even though we created it), everyone did. Therefore why not let everyone truly participate within it and help it grow?

Now just to clarify, people weren’t the only ones administering the server. We did have bots that automatically followed set rules to deal with malcontents who without question were breaking the rules. For example, if a flood of messages (i.e. 10 in one second) appeared, the bot would detect this and kick the person automatically for spamming. If a person repeatedly shot another person on their own team, again they were kicked automatically. The key thing to realize here is that the bots were only used when something was completely obvious. All other situations were left up to human judgement, in effect letting the community administer itself (even to the point of allowing the community to vote someone off the server).

So to clarify what I’m getting at here, instead of setting up “Iron Curtains” on your site and making them your own little dictatorship, why not instead reward and empower your long time members of your community and give them some administration rights. While a lot of blogging systems don’t include all of the tools necessary for good community-based administration (i.e. banning rights to ban spammers IP’s, notification messages to inform the master site owner of the ban, etc), you can still at the very least give certain trusted people in your community the ability to delete comments on their own, so that spam can be removed from the site. Yes, this means that someone might see the spam on your site for the short period that it is there. And yes this means that things won’t be perfect and they may be a little messy but hey that’s life. Again it isn’t perfect. The key thing is that your community can retain it’s voice and in elevating certain members you’re actually creating a stronger community because they will actually feel like they are contributing to the success of the community as a whole.

I’ve always been an advocate of getting out on the Web and commenting on other’s people sites as not only does it generate more interest on their site but it also can generate interest on your own site as well. Lately however I’ve been noticing more and more people either moderating their comments, adding anti-spam catchers, or insisting on registration before commenting. Well basically I’ve had enough of all this crap and I’ve decide that I’m tired of feeling like some homeless person on the street who isn’t allowed into the building because of the way he looks. “Buggeroff! You’ve got nothing we want to hear!”

Um, what happened to the openness of the Web? The great equalizer? People getting tired of it already? Oh well, at the very least I’ve decided that if I’m going to reply to a post or topic on another site now, I’ll be doing it on my own site instead. It’ll be like my own little rogue radio station where I can broadcast to the world on whatever topic I feel like without be censored or blocked in any way.

Update: I’ve decided to join everyone else and remove my comments too! Feels great to be part of the “in” crowd now! Wonder if Britney Spears is reading my blog now!? Maybe I should check my referrer log!? 🙂

Update: Ok enough already. Jokes over. Comments are back up. 🙂

If I could explain in one word what I’d like to see Web 2.0 permitting, it would be “interoperability”. Basically think of the Web like your computer works now. Each folder or application that you use on your computer would be like a different Web 2.0 service that you can switch to without any problems. For example, some people may use Picasa for image management on their computers while others may use ACDSee. Doesn’t matter which one you choose, both give you easy access to the same content. The same should apply to Web 2.0 services.

For example, I might be using Flickr right now for my image hosting. Yet what if tomorrow another service comes out that I’d like to use instead and I’d like to switch over to it. What would this entail for me?

1. Download all my photos from Flickr
2. Upload all my photos to my the new service.
3. Going back to all of my previous entries and changing their image URLs.

Pretty simple right? Not!  🙂

Here’s what I’d like to see with Web 2.0 services instead then to make things a little easier.

• OPML export download / import upload feature – Basically whatever service I use, it allows me to create an OPML export list of links to my images. This same OPML export file can then be imported into another service and the images are automatically uploaded directly from my previous service.
• Custom Domain Names / Aliasing – Basically a way for me to create a consistent root path to my images no matter which service I’m using (i.e. images.nollind.whachell.com), as well as the ability to define my own aliases for my image paths instead of using the services. Thus a Flickr path of “http://static.flickr.com/53/112126899_592cf8d9dc.jpg” would become “http://images.nollind.whachell.com/spring-walk-02.jpg”.

More and more you hear people saying that it is the little things in life that matter the most. I have to laugh at this because what most people define as being a little thing, I would define as being a very big thing because usually that thing has a lot of meaning in that person’s life. For example, you hear people say that it is little things like spending time with their kids that makes their day or life. Again, I don’t see this as a little thing but something huge. If that child adds so much meaning and joy to your life, shouldn’t you be spending as much time as possible with them? Again this relates to my previous post on distractions, as we all need to decide what is really important and meaningful in our life.

To be honest, working in the “typical job” of today where I would be working 10 to 12 hour days for a boss who doesn’t really care about me as a whole person is what I would call a “little thing” because it brings no joy or meaning (or passion for that matter) to my life. That’s one reason why I’m quite happy working only six hours a day right now because it gives me more time to balance my life out and do the things with those around me that provide meaning and enjoyment to my life (i.e. wife, family, friends, and yes even my wonderous feline companions who seem to teach me so much about life without even saying a single word).

Dave Seah has another interesting post entitled Five Things On My Mind that again mirrors a lot of the thoughts I’ve been having as well over the past few years.

Structure

1. If conforming to structure is hard, maybe I shouldn’t worry about it.

I’ve realized that that the trick isn’t to conform to other’s structure but instead to create your own, as only then will you be happy. Of course, the greater trick is finding out the structure that works for you.

Letting Go

2. I can’t plan the future, so I’ll make it instead and see how it comes out.

Often times I realize that it isn’t so much the need to predict the future but instead just trusting your intuition to going with what “feels” right to you. More often than not, my intuition has made me aware of the things that at the time only “felt” right but I couldn’t “prove” because I often times couldn’t fully explain what I was seeing or understanding, yet again it just “felt” right to me. Later down the road though, the proof that I needed and wanted usually did appear substantiating and making sense of what only “felt” right to me at the time. As the saying goes, all things are revealed in time. Therefore, sometimes it is more important to just start living life instead of continually planning it.

Achieving Balance

3. When I’m off the Internet, am I really fully present in the world?

His statements of going outside and experiencing the world in three dimensions is exactly how I’ve felt. The thing I realized though is that often this happens when I spend too much time inside in front of the computer. Often I’ll think back over the last few days and realize that I actually haven’t gone outside once. This may not seem weird to some people but I’m a person who loves nature and who rejuvenates when immersed within it. Therefore, not going outside, is like cutting off my oxygen supply. As I said, often times I don’t realize it until much later when I starting thinking why do I feel so crappy and cranky. I then think back to what I’ve been doing and slap my forehead to help wake myself up from my stupor. What I find really funny is that so many people are looking for these 3D virtual worlds online, yet the real world outside your window often times can offer you so much more if you just give it a chance.

Points of View

4. Do I really want people to understand me? Or is that a sign that I’m doing the right thing?

Being understood is something that I myself am having troubles with and it is one of my greatest frustrations. However, I do realize why it is occurring. It is simple really. I’m what you would call a “pioneer” or “explorer” (and I’d say Dave fits into this description as well). My intuition lets me see things that others may often not. Some times I actually call it a curse because you feel like a person at the Tower of Babel trying to explain something to someone who just looks at you like you’re a raving lunatic with no sense of reality. The problem is that I actually do see reality quite clearly. The problem is that I seeing glimpses of this new reality that often occurs with paradigm shifts. And of course with paradigm shifts (and as I’ve been repeating over and over again on my site), the future isn’t so much a change of technology but a change of thinking. Often times people won’t see what you’re seeing unless you can give them that one special point of view that lets them see everything as you are seeing it. Again the problem is to figuring out which view is the best view to present to them. I’ve explained some things to some people from many different angles, yet they still don’t grasp what I’m seeing. Therefore sometimes I just decide to shutup and let time reveal things instead (which it eventually does).

The Illusion of Time

5. Is there enough time?

I’m realizing that time is often an illusion. We make our days stressful and fast-paced because we choose to do so. Again this relates to my previous posts relating to distractions. To live in the moment and savour it, you need to let go of those distractions and focus on what you feel is the most important to you. Yes often times this can mean saying no (which is really hard for me) but when you break free, you’ll realize what I mean. It is like I said in an earlier post about looking out my window one day and seeing these white billowing clouds floating through the deep blue sky. For some reason, when I look at this beautiful view, time seemed to stand still and I felt like I could just sit their for eternity. Therefore again, your perception of time is just your point of view. Choose how you wish to perceive it based upon the values and beliefs that are important to you.

Rigidity vs Flexibility

Last but not least I want to throw in a little thing that I’ve realized recently on my own as well. Instead of living your live upon a specific set of rules, instead live it upon your a broader set of principles or beliefs. Why? Because often times rules are very rigid, yet rigidity equal death. We need to be flexibility and adaptive if we want to step into the future as it is everchanging. It is like an explorer who steps out onto the shores of a new world for the first time. All he has with him is what he carries and the knowledge he acquired over the years. Does he turn in fear of the unknown, unsure of what to do if he encounters something new or does it instead step forward ready to see the wonders ahead of him, trusting himself that he’ll be able deal with them as they arise? There are no manuals or rule books for the unknown. You just have take that first leap and trust that you’ll be able to handle whatever you encounter, learning as you go.

I remember playing Quake 3 a long time ago on a few of the maps for the game that were situation in “space” with small bridges interconnecting between the different areas of the map. For anyone who remembers playing these maps, they knew that not only did you get a point for killing an opponent but you also lost a point for falling off the map (and falling to your death below in the “void”). For those who understood the basics of these maps, they soon realised that the normal strategy of killing as many opponents as possible wasn’t the most important thing. Instead staying on the map and avoiding falling off was actually the more important goal. Often if you could just stay on the map, you’d have a far higher score than those who continually fell off or got bumped off, as some would even have negative scores from falling so may times.

Why I’m bringing this up is that I’ve been realizing more and more in my life that distractions are what keeps me from achieving what I want. Again, I’m noticing that the strategy isn’t so much to focus on your goals (which is still important of course) but to instead to focus on avoiding the pitfalls of distraction along the way to achieving your goals. This is doubly important today as there are so many wonderful distractions out there to lure us away from our goals like sirens calling out to sailors to lead them to their doom.

Here’s a quick example of what I mean. Back in the nineties, I worked for a cybercafe that had a lot of great people working there and I loved their company, as we’d often sit and discuss various things of interest during the slow points of the day. In addition, during our breaks we had the opportunity to play the latest computer games on the machines there. In effect, there were a lot of enticing and enjoyable aspects to the job. However, one of the owners of the place was probably one of the worst bosses I’ve ever had in my life. He talked to people like they were two year olds who had no concept of what they were talking about, no matter their previous experience. In addition, he was constantly rude to staff and even to customers at times (yet I’m sure he never realized this).

Anyways, the point I’m trying to make here is that it was only when I decided I would no longer partake of playing on the computers, in other words avoid the enjoyments and distractions of the job, that I was able to focus on actually getting out of that job and finding another one. Previous to that point, no matter how hard I tried to focus, I always got distracted by the enjoyments of the job and always felt that “well, it actually isn’t that bad” when in fact, yes it really was that bad. Again, how I achieved my goal was not so much focusing on it but instead focusing on avoiding the distractions along the way (which in turn kept me from achieving my goal).

I’m listening, observing, analyzing, and realizing. Sometimes you really can achieve a lot if you just shut your mouth. 🙂

No I’m not talking about a gaming company. I’m talking about a type of game that can be played in many different ways. For example, within one game you could have both FPS and RTS aspects to in the same game. If you want to see a good example of this check out the Spore gameplay video which is an up and coming game by Will Wright. Pretty amazing stuff. This is exactly what I’d like to see in next generation games but taken even to the next level.

You see in reading this post on Addicting Entertainment about Passive Web Gaming, I realized this idea fits perfectly in with this hydra game concept. For example, imagine a massively multiplayer game that basically had different gameplay aspects to it so you could interact with the game in different ways. I mean I’ve always thought it strange for example that the World of Warcraft doesn’t have a web aspect to it where you can manage your guild from there and see who’s online without actually having to enter the game. Imagine if this web aspect to your WoW guild was a sort of metagame in itself though. You could theoretically play the game from anywhere and whenever you feel you had the time, just as the Addicting Entertainment article indicated.

This would be very nice to see, as it would open up online gaming to a whole different audience of people. Even more so, it would allow friends to play collectively in the same game but in each their own preferred play style.

Wow, another interesting morning. I started pondering communities again wondering how people can work together on common goals online. Of course, as usual, I started going off in a typical direction in which I over complicated things. Luckily I realized this and knew I had to take a step back and start from scratch with the basics. So I started thinking about communities in the real world, like the one that I live within currently and I started examining how people interact within it. Interestingly enough, I came up with more questions than answers. But that’s ok though because these questions are definitely taking me much closer to the answers that I’m looking for.

People Within Communities

What defines a person in a community in real life? Conversations? Interactions? Commitment? That person is usually in one place having a conversation there (i.e. their place of work) but they may walk around the community and talk to others as well. Therefore, that person is engage in conversations not just in one location but many different ones. They probably do spend most of their time in one location though (i.e. work) but may “bump” into people elsewhere as they walk through the community (i.e. running errands, etc).

For example, a person usually works at one location but relax somewhere else for lunch to get away from their work environment. In addition, each location may be in a different environment and thus may have different social guidelines for it. The person may be polite within their work environment but rowdy at the local tavern where they each lunch with their friends.

Initiating Conversations

Another thing I wondered is how are conversations initiated in the first place? For example, I might see you talking to a shop owner in their store and get a “feeling” of your personality and character before I even meet you. Is this enough to engage you though, to join the conversation as well? I think most people hold back from joining conversations because they don’t have enough of a “feel” of the person to feel comfortable enough to engage them. Thinking about this, I wondered am I opening up with myself enough on my site for people to get a “feeling” about me, so that they can feel comfortable enough to engage in a conversation with me. Funnily enough, after writing the following questions down I realized that no people probably can’t get a good feeling of me from my site.

• Who are you?
• What do you do?
• What do you care about?
• What is meaningful to you?
• What do you look like?
• What are your mannerisms?
• What do you sound like?

What’s really funny is that in real life, if I was standing next to you in a shop, I could probably assess most of these things within less than a minute of listening to a conversation that you were in.

Anyways back to these locations within the community and people interacting within it. Basically what I realized is that a person interacts in different ways within the community. Everyone within the community contributes to it in different ways and in different areas / locations of it. But how do you define or determine if you’re actually contributing to it? Does your interaction help others in the community in some way? By answering a simple question posed by someone are you in effect helping the community (i.e. those around you within it)?

Being Part of a Community

I think started asking myself what communities am I a part of online? What do I do that makes me feel like I’m a part of them? Do I just care about them? Or do I actually contribute to them in some way? If so, how? In what way? Am I committed to others in an ongoing relationship within this community?

For example, I feel like I want to be a part of something larger that has meaning and purpose but what am I doing about it? Am I committed in this relationship with that larger purpose? What I’m getting at here is it sounds like to me that most people basically want “instant gratification” without doing anything for it. It would be like a person saying a marathon race was grueling, yet they rode it in a car while everyone else ran it. You can’t truly experience the feelings of being a part of something unless you are truly engage within it and committed to it. Thus we need to ask ourselves, are we committed to working at this larger purpose and the relationships with others that exist within it?

Finally, a few more startling questions arose which I’ll leave hanging to ponder over the upcoming weekend (as I’m going to take a little bit of time off). So how do we commit to a community then? How do we join one? More importantly, when do we feel accepted and a part of this community? At what point do we feel like we are connected to something larger than ourselves and that we are truly starting down the path of working collaboratively on something that is larger than ourselves.

UPDATE: Are our work environments communities? If so, how do they compare? If not, how do they differ? What’s missing from them?

It’s funny but I was thinking back to my idea of connected communities again. That being a collection of smaller communities that all work together on a larger common (and usually global) goal. What’s funny is that I realized that these communities actually exist today (more or less). Where are they? Right in front of you. Actually to make this really apparent, think about some of the more popular blogs on the web right now.

For example, think about Scripting News, Boing Boing, or Buzz Machine. What do these site’s do? Primarily they relay news and information of interest to them. But think about how these sites operate and interact with others, especially when something really important is happening in the world. These sites:

• relay what is happening
• relay which people are doing something about it
• relay the results of what these people are doing

For example, during the Katrina disaster these sites relayed information that made people aware of what was going on, which people were taking action, and also what was the results of that action. In effect, this is a simple yet perfect feedback system for an ecosystem. Those a part of this system help protect it, not by giving orders to others, but instead by making others aware of what is going on within the system. This is called situational awareness.

Awareness

Basically an event occurs and it is relayed to others so that they can be aware of it as well and thus do what they feel is necessary to protect the entire system. In effect, everyone works independently choosing their own means of support but they are all still working towards a common collective goal (i.e. protect the system). The best part of why this works so well is that everyone can contribute in their own way, no matter how small of the contribution, yet the overall collective effect of these small contributions is one large one. Thus everyone feels like they are contributing to something large and meaningful, even if their contribution is just a small one.

Yet in thinking about this I realized that something was missing. One important element. Why? Well as everyone knows, we’re overloaded with information today. Thus if you created a system like this and relayed every minute little detail, people would be overloaded by the flow of information. Something, therefore, is needed to make this system work efficiently so that people don’t get overloaded by a deluge of information. What is it? Meaning.

Meaning

Strong communities are formed when relationships are created between people who have a shared interest in something that is meaningful to each one of them. Meaning is therefore what binds these communities. It is what they are all about. Thus when information flows around this communities, often the information that flows the quickest through it is information that has the most direct meaning to the community. For example, if a lady in a neighborhood community told her friend she saw a dog in the woods nearby the other day then no big deal. If however she said she saw a wolf then this information would spread rapidly throughout the community because this means more to the community (as everyone is concerned with the safety of others within it).

The same thing happens online. You’ll have a site talking about this and that, day in and day out but then one day something happens in the world and the site relays something meaningful to the entire community around it. Immediately this information is relayed to other neighboring communities so that they can be made of aware of it as well, as it may hold meaning for them. In effect, this is what connected communities is about. And in realizing this, I think I’m coming to one very startling conclusion. Technology is not the foundation of these connected communities but people are instead.

People

Don’t get me wrong. Technology is an extremely useful method of relaying this awareness much faster than we could of before but it is still people at its foundation that truly make this work. If anything, I’m noticing that the leaders of tomorrow will not be those who give the orders the best but those who instead help others by making them aware of more meaningful and relative information. In effect, these leaders are like some of the more popular websites on the web today. They are like a hub, relaying meaningful information from others to others so that everyone around them is more aware of what truly matters to them which in turn allows these people to live and work more effectively and enjoyably.