Architecture Matters: the Death of Inclusive Discussion
I told you in the last post I had a response in mind to Ray Ozzie. ;-)
Last weekend, Ray Ozzie, CEO of Groove and creator of Lotus Notes, VisiCalc, and other archetypal software packages, posted an interesting take on blogging called Architecture Matters: The Rebirth of Public Discussion. In this he writes:
“[B]logs accomplish public discussion through a far different architectural design pattern. In the Well’s terminology, taken to its extreme, you own your own words. If someone on a blog ‘posts a topic,’ others can respond, but generally do so in their own blogs, hyperlinked back to the topic’s permalink.”
I read this and my first reaction was “That’s a pretty dead-on description of the difference.” And, in fact, I still believe that. It is a good description of the difference. Where I depart with the Oz is in the conclusion arising from this difference. Ozzie says
“[B]logs represent a radical new approach to public discussion – one that, in essence, completely and naturally ’solves’ the signal:noise problem, and does so through creative exploitation of a unique architecture based upon decentralized representation of discussion threads.”
The alleged “signal:noise problem” that Ozzie refers to is more commonly thought of as flaming, bickering, sniping, ad hominem attacks and the other low-level rhetorical tactics that people use when intelligent engagement of ideas fail.
Basically, Ozzie is saying that because the only way to respond to a blog (absent a commenting feature on the blog entries) is to post a response to your own blog. The discussion participants can hyperlink each others permalinks, and readers can leap back and forth between web pages to follow the discussion.
The implication is that this process revives, in some sense, the art of discussion that has been killed off by flaming and “noise.” I have to say I’m surprised that Ray Ozzie, of all people, would take this approach. The man basically singlehandedly invented the idea of groupware and generated not one, but two companies around collaborative tools.
Ozzie only obliquely mentions the negative aspects of this blog-centric means of discussion:
“The downside? Well, part of why people like getting together is that unintended consequences can be quite rewarding. And there’s a danger that the self-selecting environment of a given blogging community might limit unintended outcomes.”
I would argue that the potential problems are more significant than Ozzie’s two-sentence evaluation indicates because “public blog discussions” (for lack of a better term) are inherently exclusive. This exclusivity has two faces: incidental and intentional.
Incidental exclusivity arises simply from the fact that it’s harder to find out who is responding to you. In a centralized discussion forum, the replies are “attached” to the initial message — the idea of a “thread.” As long as the original author revisits the forum, the replies will not be missed (although they may not be read!). However, in a public blog discussion, there are only several methods to discover that someone is attempting to engage you in conversation. Your respondent might notify you themselves (via email for example). You might discover responses through referrer logs or through services like Blogdex or Daypop or Movable Type’s TrackBack. Perhaps someone else notifies you.
In any event, the threshold for response discovery is much higher. It’s harder to find out if someone has responded to you. For example, this weblog is not very highly read. I doubt Ray Ozzie will ever even know about this response. (Feel free to click on the link to his article in the first paragraph a few times — maybe he’ll notice it in his referrer logs. ;-)
Intentional exclusivity is potentially more sinister. Unlike a discussion forum, the author of the initial message can actively inhibit his/her reader’s threshold for response discovery. You just choose not to link to your respondents; you act as a filter. This is what Ozzie was talking about — the ability to filter out the noise. The danger is what is considered “noise.” I would argue that some, if not most, weblog authors filter out a lot of the posts that are critical of them. They just don’t link to the people who are taking them apart piece by piece. They are managing their own threshold for inclusion. By not linking — raising the inclusion threshold — they are raising the discovery threshold for their readers.
Most discussion forums are either entirely open or open once you have passed another threshold — a community membership threshold, such as subscribing to a listserv, joining the WELL, creating an account on Slashdot, etc. In many, if not most, cases these community membership thresholds are fairly low. While public blog discussions typically have no community membership thresholds, they replace these with inclusion and discovery thresholds.
The key, important difference is that control of inclusion and discovery thresholds in public blog discussions reside with the original blog post author. The reader and/or respondent have very little power in this relationship. On the other hand, in discussion forums, once the community membership threshold has been passed, the inclusion and discover thresholds are basically non-existent. The power in the relationship resides with the reader/respondent.
So then. I think what we are talking about when we talk about public blog discussions is an architecture that creates “discussions” that are decentralized, but are therefore also self-selecting and exclusive. Unlike Ozzie, I wouldn’t consider this a rebirth. Is USENET annoying because of the spams and flames? Sure. So are lots of other centralized discussion forums. Some communities stagnate if not cared for, just like in the physical world (see The Natural Life Cycle of Mailing Lists which also applies to other online forums).
Blogs have their uses. I wouldn’t be posting here if I didn’t think so. But do they offer an improvement over discussion forums? Unless you’re talking about a blog with an embedded comments/discussion feature, I tend not to think so.