Methods of online discussion
After my last article expressing a desire for a Hacker News-esque community for the dataviz world, Robert Kosara raised an important point.
I agree with @mrejfox that we need a central place for vis news, but not convinced Hacker News is the best model. - @eagereyes
In emails I exchanged with Bryan Connor around Data Driven News similar questions were raised. Is the Hacker News model really ideal?
So I think it will be helpful to go through the methods of online communication and identify what they have been used for historically and their upsides and downsides. Perhaps there really is a better community to model after, or we might need to combine the positive aspects of different examples.
IRC
IRC networks like Freenode and the channels within have often been used by hackers to rally around a technology or shared passion. I’ve been saved by a smart stranger on IRC after hours of beating my head against a bug with an impending deadline more times than I’d like to admit.
Pros: Because the conversation is real-time, people feel like they are hanging out. People get close. Often if you have a problem, you can talk about it and someone has already solved it or will help walk you through solving it.
Cons: IRC tends to create clique groups, weighted towards those who are most active in the channel. Sometimes it’s hard for new people to feel comfortable jumping into a conversation or asking for feedback if the channel doesn’t go out of it’s way to encourage that. It’s hard to check in occasionally and understand the thread of conversation and keep up with all of the discussions. Arguments in real-time tend to devolve.
Mailing lists / User groups
Mailing lists like http://groups.google.com can be very useful for organizing around a concept or technology in similar ways to IRC. These groups can be more focused on technical help like D3's google group, finding gigs or freelancers like Data-vis-jobs, or general concepts like Augmented Programming.
Industry-specific mailing lists like the NICAR-L mailing list for computer-aided reporters can be an incredible resource for newcomers, with experts talking frankly about techniques, new technologies, and technical debates.
Pros: With many similarities to IRC, mailing lists make it much easier for users to stay appraised of what’s happening without dedicating a lot of time. Emails encourage more thoughtful discussion, responding to specific points, and writing longer more in-depth explanations of opinions.
Cons: Mailing lists are another group where it can sometimes be intimidating to jump into a conversation, especially if there are a few people who regularly talk about different issues. Reading through email threads is not necessarily the best way to consume discussion.
The dataviz community on Twitter is large and pretty comprehensive of the major figures in our field (I suppose the number of industries that can’t say this is dwindling anyway). Hashtags like #DDJ (data-driven journalism) and #DataVis are great sources of data, projects, and occasional discussion in our industry. If you pay attention, you can pick out the jewels of wisdom in the flood of information and that is invaluable.
Often the best discussions have no hashtags though, and occur between two or more influential figures, and you will only see the discussion if you follow the right people. Sometimes you might see the snippet of a conversation, and to understand you must follow the thread of tweets back, which can be time-consuming.
Pros: If you followed the right 50 people talking about dataviz, and just read every link they posted for 2 weeks, you’d be ready to start taking on pretty much any dataviz project. You’d probably laugh a lot too.
Cons: 140-character critiques on projects that took days or weeks to make is a recipe for disaster. You have to do the work to follow the right people and then pay attention for information that is important to you.
Private communities
It’s been over a year since I began working with some friends on an idea called the Mainstem Collective which came from our desire as fellow freelancers and friends to share techniques, resources, and critique. Essentially this is a private mailing list where we can talk shop in private, as frankly as we would in person. This is always my first stop for feedback, often before a project has even been released, and that type of venue for feedback is incredibly valuable.
When I was living in the Bay Area it was easy enough to show people works-in-progress on my laptop, but now living in New York I find myself wanting to discuss things with colleagues in a similar way despite them being across the country.
Pros: Members of private communities have the comfort of privacy to have very honest discussions. Criticism is more in-depth, and sometimes harsher (for the better).
Cons: Obviously all of the information from these communities is opaque to newcomers. The information and discussion is not free. This is a cardinal sin of the internet. We owe it to ourselves to share information freely so we can all improve as quickly as possible.
News sites / commenting
I recently wrote about how I think the dataviz community needs it’s own Hacker News-style site. I think that Hacker News, and it’s design cousin Designer News are great examples of industry-centric communities as websites. Discussion is sparked by links, usually a blog post with someone’s idea, or opinion on an ongoing discussion in the industry, or a new piece of technology, or a new technique. These links seem like they are the focus of the sites but they are really just the jumping off points for discussions (or that’s how I think it should be).
Pros: Sites like these make it easy to stay up-to-date on what’s happening really easily. You could check the site once a day, and because the most active topics are at the top of the page, you will probably know what people will be talking about over coffee the next day. “Did you see X on Hacker News?” is a pretty common refrain. We need a center of discussion like this for our community.
Cons: Communities like this tend to develop a bit of groupthink especially if an issue is controversial. See any discussion on Flat Design on Designer News or PHP on Hacker News. Having links as a jumpoff for discussion encourages an echo chamber feel, and ulterior motives like a desire for page views can sometimes clog things up. I think that careful curation of the links on the frontpage is incredibly important, whether it’s done by a smart moderator or using a system of up and downvotes.
Forums / bulletin boards
Forums have fallen out of fashion, which is appropriate for something best exemplified by shit like phpBB. Efforts to improve things, like the Discourse project, might change that. Forums put the focus on the most important thing: the discussion, and make it accessible to anyone who wants to see it or join in. The line between forums and mailing lists are blurred by Google Groups because they make discussions that would previously be hidden in an email chain available on the web.
