Running your own online discussion groups

Black Issues in Higher Education, May 5, 2005 by Reid Goldborough

At their best, online discussion groups expand your business and social contacts, exposing you to information and opinion you wouldn't find otherwise, as well as worldwide camaraderie. In one discussion group I frequent, however, the camaraderie was recently shattered when the moderator decided to ban one of the regulars because of continuing inflammatory and insulting posts, which continued despite complaints from members and warnings from the moderator.

It was an agonizing decision for the moderator, and though members for the most part agreed with the decision, the group consequently erupted into an analysis and debate about the incident.

Among other things, instead of discussing the subject matter for the group, people speculated about the mental status of the offending person. "There's a lot of anger in him, which is very sad," said one person. Another said that she liked him, and yet "the rising level of antisocial behavior has me worried for him." Online, such situations are sometimes inevitable.

Online discussion groups can be either unmoderated or moderated. With the former, people for the most part are flee to speak as they wish, with group pressure as the main constraint. With the latter, people have to speak according to tighter rules and guidelines or risk having their posts censored or their participation banned completely.

It's easier than ever to form your own online discussion group today, whether you do it through your organization's Web site, from your own personal blog or with the help of Yahoo Groups, a part of the Yahoo conglomerate of Internet services that also includes Web searching, e-mail accounts, online shopping and auctions, news and weather, and more.

Yahoo Groups is a free, advertising-supported service. Creating a group is easy. Yahoo's automated system walks you through the process, even providing a handy way to send e-mail to people inviting them to join.

Yahoo recommends that you first look through the Yahoo Groups directory. This will let you know if there's already another group like yours, which may or may not cause you to rethink creating your group, and how to categorize your group if you do create it.

People can participate in your Yahoo Groups via e-mail or from the Yahoo Groups Web site, although e-mail participation is faster and more convenient. You receive messages from other participants just like any other e-mail messages, but when you respond, your messages go to everybody in the group.

Being a group moderator is tricky, however. Some moderators look at themselves as lords of mini-fiefdoms, abusing the power that moderation gives them and heavy-handedly ordering people around, or else warning participants not to do anything to anger them.

Successful moderation requires a light touch and a heavy dose of tact, empathy, patience and self-effacement. Russ Allbery, a system administrator at Stanford University who moderates several Usenet newsgroups, has put together a FAQ (short for Frequently Asked Questions) sheet about moderation <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/modpitfalls.html>, and offers these sage words of advice for would-be discussion group moderators:

"Are you able to be infallibly polite? Or at least know when you need to cool off a bit before responding? Remember, people expect anything they post to be approved, and you're going to have to reject some of it. They're going to be upset about that. Quite frequently they're going to be angry. Sometimes very angry. You don't get the luxury of losing your temper."

Rejecting posts is inevitable. Joel Spolsky, designer of FogBugz <www.fogcreek.com>, a project management program for software developers, has this to say about online discussions:

"Any public discussion group elicits antisocial behavior from a small number of disruptive users, whether through boredom, maliciousness or the desire to perpetrate a scare. As soon as you delete their posts, whether they're spare ads for mortgage refinancing or simply off-topic, people like this will log on under a different name to complain about censorship and prattle about their First Amendment rights."

Spolsky continues: "This creates a secondary effect of well-meaning people who didn't see the deleted post quoting Voltaire and complaining about censorship as well, and the downward spiral begins. If this happens too much, it will drive people away."

To avoid such a tragic spiral, Spolsky advises moderators to politely explain to participants why their post was inappropriate and, if possible, to move it to an off-topic area, away from the main discussion.

Reid Goldsborough is a syndicated columnist and author of the book Straight Talk About the Information Superhighway. He can be reached at reidgold@netaxs.com or <www.netaxs.com/~reidgold/ column>.