Tools of Engagement: Links and Notes for Discussion

Minnesota Public Radio got a lot of things about online community right with this "Idea Generator" project.

As I mentioned yesterday, tomorrow I'm giving a session about online political coverage called "Tools of Engagement: It's a Conversation, Stupid!"

I've been collecting a lot of "string" for this talk, and I won't pretend I have it thoroughly organized. That's fine -- I tend to mostly improvise my sessions based on what the attendees need and want most at that moment.

Here, then, are a bunch of links to site I'll probably want to mention tomorrow...

E-MAIL LISTS & FORUMS

Bare basics: If nothing else, you can use Google Groups or Yahoo Groups to run public or private e-mail discussion lists. Personally I prefer Google Groups because it gives you the feed option. Both services are free -- so you'll want to back up your subscribers and content occasionally if you rely on them.

For larger, high-traffic lists, you might want a hosted service. I recommend Mail-List.com -- it's dependable and reasonably priced. (Most hosted list services are priced sky-high for marketers.)

Forums: There are lots and lots of forum tools here. ThinkOfIt published a good catalogue and links to reviews. Several of my geek mentors recommend XMBforum, Vbulletin, PHPnuke. I highly recommend using forum or list tools that allow users options for feeds.

Examples: TrailCentral is an XMB forum. Also, the Fredericksburg, Va. Free-Lance Star has an excellent forum: FredTalk.

One to watch: Right now, Slate.com is reworking its political discussion forum, The Fray, to make it more usable, versatile, and easier to highlight the best contributions. They've been having a very constructive, creative community discussion on how to do that, and should be launching the revamped Fray soon. Apr. 2 Slate podcast on Fix the Fray. I like the Fraywatch feature, which highlights the best contributions from the online discussions

BLOGS

Blogging is one of the simplest ways to start cultivating community. They key is to view it as a conversation, rather than a publication. if you build a community around that blog, it's easier to leverage it for other purposes.

Good examples of political news blogs: Colorado Confidential uses blogging tools and allows comments, but is more of a publication -- but still very good. TPM Muckracker (a spinoff of the popular Talking Points Memo) uses a blog to attract a community to do crowdsourced research projects.

Then of course there's Micah Sifry's Personal Democracy Forum, which combines a blog with other online tools to run a vibrant online conversation about politics.

YourHub is an interesting hybrid approach. It's a network of community sites where anyone can post. The back-end is basically a highly customized bloglike content management system based on PHP-nuke. For each community they publish a print edition with the best online contributions from local writers. Community outreach is a big part of making this work. I blog at YourHub: Carless in Boulder.

Recommended tools: Too many to list them all. But there's really no need to "roll your own," just pick a good one and customize it. My favorites are:

• Server-side software: WordPress. It's free, and it's ,ore versatile and less cumbersome than Movable Type, another popular option. If you're not a geek, you'll need help getting either installed on your server and configured.
• Hosted service: Typepad, the professional package. Very inexpensive, very usable and customizable. You can map your own domain or subdomain to it. This blog you're reading right now is a Typepad blog.

Make sure you enable comments, and engage in public discussion through comments on your blog and to others' blogs (strategic commenting). Moderate them as needed, if problems arise. I recommend requiring simple registration with a working e-mail to comment to discourage casual trolls and spamming, but many disagree with me on this.

Get your own domain or subdomain for your blog. This makes it much easier to spread the word and for people to find you. It also gives you more options for switching to a new blogging tool or service should the need arise.

Consider team blogging. Often, blogs are more engaging and easier to do if you have a team of core contributors. This is how I run Poynter's E-Media Tidbits. For a more sophisticated approach, check out Newsweek's OnFaith panel blog.

Get your feed out there! Make sure your site's feed(s) get submitted to all the major blog search engines: Technorati, Icerocket, etc.

WIKIS

Banish the L.A. Times wikitorial disaster from your mind! With all due respect, I don't know what they were smoking when they hatched that idea. Do not consider that a representative example of wikis. Here's some discussion of this from Tidbits.

Wikis don't have to be a free-for-all. In fact, I think they work better when there are various grades of permissions, etc. For a more controlled wiki approach, check out Citizendium.

Wikis are collaboration tools. They're best used to create consensus or develop a catalog of ideas, coverage, etc. So if you're doing a wiki project, get clear about what the goals are and work with contributors to create consensus.

Wikis are an especially good way to track issues, which is good because all too often election coverage obscures or confuses issues.

Good examples of political/community wikis: More Perfect is a wiki-based effort to involve the public in creating and collaborating on laws and policy. Here's a recent Berkman Inst. podcast about MorePerfect. The Sunlight Foundation's Congresspedia is also a brilliant example of collaborative online political resource-building.

Also, Politicopedia is an intriguing wiki about Utah politics and legislature. (More about this from the Wall Street Journal.)

On the small scale, the community/citizen journalism site iBrattleboro (VT) offers a wiki of community resources, including on local government and various local issues. See the iBrattleboro Community Brain Trust.

Recommended Wiki Tools: Hands down, the best I've seen for usability (a big issue for wikis) is SocialText. It's not free, but it's so worth it. Get it if you can.

MediaWiki is the basis of Wikipedia and many other popular wiki projects. It's free and open-source, and it works well enough. However, I'm not crazy about its usability. Still, it's a decent tool.

There are hosted wiki services, too. Zoho offers a pretty decent free hosted wiki tool. This can be a good enough place to start, if you have no other wiki options and minimal tech skills.

Think Bliki. Personally, I love sites that belnd the blog/wiki approach. One of the best is Minnesota Public Radio's The Future of Small Towns idea Generator. Very cool, I'd love to see more of this.

GENERAL ADVICE

Priorities: Community and goals come first. Then choose technology to suit these -- and to suit your resources (including available time, money, and your own tech skills). Don't get locked into a specific tool just because your IT team already has it. Be willing to use third-party options, including hosted services for forums and blogs, etc.

Don't let IT block you. It's sad, but I see this happen a lot: The content/community team wants to try something, and IT resists -- or makes it such a headache you give up. IT (whether technology or bureaucracy) should never, ever get in the way of connecting with your community. If they say "no," make sure you can go around them to third-party services. It helps to have top-level management support to do this.

Make friends with geeks, whether in your company or in the community you attract. Look for geeks who are also news junkies (in this case, politics). They should have already been involved with developing or participating heavily in various kinds of online communities, especially open-source software initiatives. They should be able to teach themselves anything, experiment and learn from it, and be genuinely jazzed about your project. If you can't pay them, don't expect them to be at your beck and call -- but reward them with ample praise and alcohol/caffeine/food/video games as warranted.

Don't exaggerate conflict & quality risks. Yes, some people do say nasty things online. They do sometimes  start flame wars. They do sometimes lie, misrepresent themselves and the facts, and try to bait others into fights or defensiveness. Also, the majority of what gets posted in any public conversation probably won't be of a nature or quality that news pros are accustomed to. That's all part of the game, but there's no need to fret over it. Remember to focus on the good stuff. Highlight the best of what's produced by your community, and spread the word about it. All the problems of community can be handled -- usually quietly, behind the scenes, and with less fuss than you might expect.

Use open-source tools if you can. These tend to offer the most options for customization.

Don't start from scratch. It's always easier to join existing communities and coversations, rather than start new ones from scratch. View other communities, blogs, etc. as potential collaborators, not as competitors. We really are all in this together. For instance, to gain an engaged audience for your political content with significant social or environmental angles, try cross-posting content to SocialEdge.

User profiles are useful context. It helps transparency to have users create a profile that not only provides info they choose to offer, but also aggregates all their postings and comments. That way, if someone does nothing but flame or complain, that's pretty easy to see -- and to consider their contributions in that light. Poynter does this: A bit too onerous, I think, but still very useful.

Never kill community. Whenever you're lucky enough to attract an engaged, diverse, constructive, lively community, realize that is golden! If a project is ending or staff is moving on, don't kill the community -- hand it off, give it a new purpose. Better still, ask the community's guidance on new directions. Definitely don't do what Philly.com did with Dan Rubin's popular blog, Blinq. (More on that.)

Put yourself out there right now. Online media is not a spectator sport. Start participating now in existing forums, blogs, wikis, chats, social media (Digg, Twitter) even environments like Second Life. Once you start engaging with people that way and get a little used to how those channels work, you'll start getting lots of ideas about which might suit you and your work best. Experimenting and learning doesn't all have to be about what you do on your site.

...Whew, that's enough for now! I have to run down to catch the opening lunch for this Knight New Media Center Seminar I'm in Los Angeles for, Election '08: Covering Politics in Cyberspace.

I'll probably be adding more links to this post, so stay tuned!

Comments

[billg]

If you follow that link to Movable Type, you'll see a download button that links to a free copy of MT. That page's design is new, but the free download has been there for a long time.

Lots of reasons exist for choosing Wordpress instead of Movable Type, and vice versa (both have issues under heavy load, it just shows up in different places), but for anyone planning on investing a great deal of time and energy in creating and maintaining a professional site, then the price of the software ought to be relatively unimportant.

[Amy Gahran]

Thanks, Bill. I didn't realize that! Thanks for the update.

- Amy Gahran

[keith]

Dear Amy,

Another website which may interest you as it aims to give the general public a voice and in a fun way at the same time, is yoosk.co.uk.
I should declare an interest right now as I am one of the co-founders, but as a recent start up we would be very interested to hear your comments about the site as we would welcome feedback from a person who has been in the field of citizen journalism for some time.
We are currently only at the Beta testing stage, but if you have time, please stop by and check the place out - if you have any suggestions for development or links, please feel free to share.
Many Thanks,

Keith

[Chris Heuer]

Was looking for some new thinking / material for a presentation I have to give this week and a workshop we are giving in June - this is really great work Amy. The simplicity of your opening line about blogs is particularly spot on.

Thank you for sharing, and congratulations!

Chris

[Matt]

Amy,

This is a topic close to my heart! Keeping comments on is so important, but many wiki tools either don't offer comment functionality, or lack a sufficient Captcha feature to keep out the spammers.

You mentioned Citizendium as a good wiki solution for exercising some control. EditMe (www.editme.com) is also a great option for if access controls are important. It's one of the only solutions that offers full-fledged user and group management and access control lists. Of course, this is all optional, and out-of-the-box provides an extremely easy to use wiki site.

Matt