Forum 5: Digital Communities Howard Rheingold Author of: The virtual community, 1993 Smart Mobs First experience? In 80s, Value of virtual community? Difficult to judge art, even more difficult to judge digital communities, several months process, translators for foreign language communities, every definition of community involves persistence communication, connection between people, develop relationships Jimmy Wales Founder of Wikipedia Reinventing encyclopedia using tech of 21st century? yes, goal was to build an encyclopedia right from beginning, this goal was holding people together free knowledge, the practical revolution freely licensed encyclopedia larger than britannica and encarta combined number of articles by language: english - german - japanese - french - polish - dutch more popular than reuters, wsj, playboy spin off projects to keep focused on building encyclopedia, wiktionary, wikibooks, wikisource, wikicommon: soon to be launched, global repository of media npov (neutral point of view) policy, avoids philosophical issues "fair presentation of what the controversy is" non profit organization a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of the world's knowledge in their own language encouraging founding of local associations how to find volunteers? first project, contacted others, was a failure, wiki later, "people found us" vandalism? happens hundreds times of day, easy to revert, a lot of questions about love, loving people, trying hard to help people become part of the community Howard Rheingold jury discussion? lots of hard decisions, deciding for wikipedia was one of the easiest, obviously strong community behind wikipedia, lots of discussion, also people getting together face2face, not only creating a public good, they're proofing that something most people wouldn't have considered possible is possible, succcessfully self correcting, many things in public spaces are least common denominator, wikipedia pointing towards collaborative possibilities online role model, what can other communities learn? clearly a point were community overcomes destructive forces Dorothy Okello electrical engineer, women of uganda network provide space for this, mailing list, website, members can share information, inet access limited to cities in africa, how to reach out to people without inet access, cd-roms, print important media importance of digital communities? important, access to info out there, make it available to members by a variety of ways relevance on a daily basis? skepticism in focus, promote access to info, e.g. sms campaign (by government?) how is twswm used? valuable medium to access info about aids, hiv, difficult issue in society, great for people to have this kind of access they can relate to uptake among teachers? lots of excitement about digital tech, opportunity to set up such a community for children to ask without worry Howard decision? multiple criteria, one of them impact on geographical community, in this case impact on health with high leverage, huge multiplier of efforts, effective in the long run Dorothy can digital communities bridge the digital divide? digital divide sits upon many other divides, access to info is key, also digital divide inside country, getting creative how to facilitate opportunities of digital media Joi Ito Founder, CEO NeoTeny, board member cc weblog community, irc, how to manage? Community self organizes, less work not more, less tracking because you get alerted, 3 types of weblogs: diarys, niches, hub/amplifiers, not difficult to manage which kind of community is important to you? community important since net category in 1995, community is a central thing online, surprised and happy about new digital communities category Nicole Oehlrich krebskompass.de, award of distinction keine medizinische info, soziale plattform, grundlegende info, diskussionsgrundlage fŸr patienten/Šrzten schwierig ehrenamtliche hilfe (webdesign) zu finden, einfache plattform fŸr menschen mit wenig erfahrung online, treffen in deutschland, šsterreich, schweiz, news aus forschung und entwicklung, chat, forum scharlatane? hartes vorgehen, bis zur anzeige auch unterstŸtzung vertrauenswŸrdige quellen, kontakte zu finden Howard quality control important issue in krebskompass.de? danger of scharlatans, misinformation, folklore, peer community of cancer patients, peer support Joi award of distinction? openclothes: several thousand people in the clothing community, working together, decentralizing fashion process, supports Howard openclothes: communities of many different kinds, support of small businesses, help cultural survival dol2day: german political community for young people, political debate and simulating political process Smart Extensions: european/african, cultural survival, enable people to communicate across river, keep musical tradition alive Joi common denominator? spirit of different sites is similar, beauty of wikipedia is simplicity new category, criteria/considerations for next year? excellence in each criteria, no entries that hit all the criteria, various layers: technical, architectural, moderation, design, impact Howard message, inspire to create or join communities? lots of debates whether digital communities are real communities, legitimizes online communities, inspiration not only for people doing similar work, but people coming up with new ideas questions --- Jimmy Wales quality control? changes are instantly peer reviewed, watchlist for personal recent changes, community monitors, researches deal with questions of sexism, racism? very strong policy, racist, sexist comments not acceptable, not accepted by community how to deal with controversial issues? policy that even people with other viewpoint can agree with what you write Nicole: erase harmful posts, sometimes contact police, support discussion Jimmy Where are the limits of the wiki concepts? technically would've been possible for a long time Joi: important to observe social behaviour, paradigm shift, its easier to fix it than control access to it, wikipedia is an example for pushing things to a tipping point Howard: show people what people are doing with tech, people in the world are growing much more sophisticated with regards to technology utility of network mapping tool in digital communities? discussion --- jury definition of digital communities: sustain relationship of people who care about each other Michael Eisenriegler blackbox community begeisterung fŸr online communities? interesse der leute mit der passenden technologie zusammengekommen spezialisierung, offene communities weniger gefragt? bbs metapher totgelaufen, es geht nicht mehr darum, die ganze welt auf einer plattform abzubilden Armin Medosch mitbegrŸnder telepolis netzpiraten, kingdom of piracy paralellen zu bbs, bŸrgernetze? vorlŠufer, aufbau einer unabhŠngigen netzinfrastruktur, aktivitŠt des netzaufbaus trŠgt zur entwicklung von communities bei bedeutung des freien spectrums? ist bedingung fŸr freie netze, gibt plŠne open spectrum auszudehnen, djursland, grš§tes freies drahtloses netz europas Dorothy Okello importance of open spectrum, networks? opportunity of free, open networks great opportunities Howard Rheingold convergence of internet, pc, mobile? demonstrations in philippenes, elections in korea, spain, increasing use of sms, cellphones to self organize, control of media by powerful interests is never going away, more people in the world have access to info via mobile phones, fundamental believe in democracy that a larger number of people have influence in political processes Joi Ito importance of community tools? everything has to be low cost, pre-weblog bloated cms systems developed, weblogs offer accessible, open cms, economic, social interests collide on open spectrum, people educating themselves instead of buying software packages Nicole Oehlrich qualitŠt des neuen wissens das in online communities entsteht? selbstregulierende Community, vielfalt an themen, inhalten, telefonsupport von admins, mods themen von lesern vorgegeben? anregungen, offene diskussion Jimmy Wales will this way of creating knowledge change idea of expertise? it may rather change our idea of credentials, outlets for other interests of people, old notion of credentials challenged Nicole kritik an medizinischem system, stŠrken onlinecommunities kritikfŠhigkeit? Ausbau des selbstbewu§tseins, kompetenz um konkrete fragen an Šrzte zu stellen Joi Ito Future of journalism (joi ito's weblog most likely a larger audience than this radio program)? first person voice, makes people care, blogs are news oriented, combination of blogs and wikis can support media, key is to understand how authority works, relationships need to be established emergent democracy? it's not about getting people to vote if there's only lying mass media, wake people up, make them aware of a voice, weblogs give them voice, it's about deliberation, participation Armin Medosch feie netze cc lizensiert, wie wichtig ist kollektives schaffen und teilen? traditionell wurde in der kultur immer geteilt, cc reaktion auf eingrenzende bestrebungen der copyright industrie, geschichtsverlust was kultur eigentlich bedeutet, lizenzen als neue ikone unserer heutigen kultur machtlosigkeit gegenŸber absoluter machtstruktur? Howard Rheingold tools to affect election process are a point of leverage Joi Ito getting people get info other than mass media will have influence on election process Michael Eisenriegler heute geht es darum, politischen entscheidungsproze§ zugŠnglich zu machen, mangel an relevanz nach au§en Howard Rheingold moveon.org? spain, korea as examples for successful use of new tools in political process to empower people, moveon.org has to prove that they can have impact on election process before getting influence on policy issues Michael Eisenriegler Social networks? Promenade der eitelkeiten, prŠsentieren seiner freunde auch um sich selbst zu definieren, wirklich viel kann man auf orkut nicht tun, mode der social networks kein langes leben weil sie nichts tun, nichts tun kšnnen, von anfŠnglichem schneeballeffekt getragen Jimmy Wales Completely agrees, no community behind these social networks, just a mapping effort, viral marketing tool, no human interaction in social networks Joi Ito disagrees, great community sections on orkut, met lots of people through orkut, friendster less interesting, tribe, linkedin very focused, people getting jobs through it, premature to write off social networks, not really communities, but they solve a purpose, surface is silly, but if you dig inside there are interesting hidden inside Jimmy Wales long way to go, from contact database to a place Michael Eisenriegler interest already going down, without useful community features in the near future they'll probably die Armin Medosch global village bringing us back into small communities? village metaphor for online communities introduces view of control structures Joi Ito Huge physical network element, introduces diversity, interest in other issues, building a bond that you couldn't have in a global scale Nicole Oehlrich finding people in similar conditions, gives people with rare diseases the chance to find people in the same conditions questions --- accountability in online communities, web of trust? technorati gives you an idea of attention, comments, q: do people care about absolute authority, personal trust Jimmy Wales: implicit web of trust in wikipedia Armin Medosch: after recent scandals this question can't be asked as 15 year ago, web of reference, misappropriation of credit in the blogosphere weblog evolvement? Joi Ito: versatility of weblogs, interesting development: del.icio.us, tagging, new media forms (audioblogging) will come up, point is that it's multimodal, we shouldn't focus on tech, but on communities we build what makes a successful community? Howard Rheingold: chances of success are multiplied if you have people with experience in other online communities, avoid ambiguity of rules as noise-reducing mechanism