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WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: March 03, 2003 Building Communities With Software (Joel On Software) -- "But requiring registration does NOT improve the quality of the conversation or the average quality of the participants. If you look closely at the signal-to-noise ratio on the Joel on Software forum, you might start to notice that the noisiest people (i.e. the people who post the most words while contributing the fewest ideas) are often the long time, hard core members who visit the forum every ten minutes."
Reader Comments...
Joel is flat wrong about message previews. a) *If* most people don't use it, that doesn't make it worthless. It serves a function for some people. I doubt he has any basis for his original claim. b) Carefully reviewing a message in the original posting window is troublesome for long messages because the whole message is not on screen all at once. The lack of a preview doesn't make me more cautious. It just means everyone has to live with my numerous typos that would have been fixed if you'd provided me a preview. c) The preview is a time to force the reader to pause and review his words. Hot heads may cool a little. Fast typers may realize they wrote gibberish. Typo gluttons may see the error of their ways. If Joel doesn't like previews, he should do like WebWord. Offer both options when posting a message. Posted by: Noel, the First on March 3, 2003 01:05 PM
Thats.... interesting. Prior to this article he made a big deal about how he was going to put something out about the message boards, but you had to subscribe to get it because he wasn't posting it online. My first reaction: I'm kinda ticked. Why did I bother giving up my e-mail address? Posted by: Lydia on March 3, 2003 03:12 PM
Hi, Lydia! Glad you told me you were posting here. Joel says he posted a "sanitized" version, and I do see that one of the topics that might have truly annoyed his current posters was left out (towards the end). I wonder if anyone will talk about that in his forum? Posted by: Anita Rowland on March 3, 2003 04:00 PM
"Building Communities with Software"? More like, "About Joel's Forum". Sure not the high-level article I was waiting for, being involved in building a community-based site. I disagree with several of his points. Email from a forum that someone has replied is a good thing. You want the person to come back to the forum, don't put the reply in the email, just send the flag. Otherwise they'll forget they ever posted. Quoting has been a good thing on other boards I frequent - especially those answering technical questions. Often the reply is just to a specific part of the post. For my money, the relatve success or failure is more dependent on the mix of people that end up building the community at a given site. A good group of people will create good stuff regardless of the features and functionality of the board. Posted by: on March 3, 2003 04:09 PM
Hey, Anita! Yeah, I noticed the "sanitized" announcement when I went back to his site just a minute ago, and I see the part you are talking about (ha!). OK, worth my e-mail address. Now to read the rest of the article... Posted by: Lydia on March 3, 2003 04:19 PM
I'm subscribed to his list, and I haven't got any email yet. Sucks. Yet to read the article, but I'm not particularly fond of Joel's forum "features". I think that for a guy who wrote a book on UI design, his only explanation for not implementing some required features is that "It's my board and I've got my reasons". Well, actually he tries to couch it as a "feature", but that's the real reason. If he had done some usability testing, he might have changed his mind. Posted by: MadMan on March 3, 2003 04:31 PM
He's pretty up-front that he wants certain annoying behaviors to be absent from his forums and he's willing to engineer the outcome if he has to by making it difficult for people to do something. (Example: leaving message threads out of the reply screen so people stop quoting what has already been posted.) I liked a lot of what he had to say. You have to admit that the forum is easy to use, even if it isn't practical for the types of discussions people normally want to have. I always thought he didn't add certain things because the forum was just a low priority. I mean, if I were in his shoes I wouldn't give further development a second thought, but FCS has added extremely useful features such as hiding the e-mail address of people who post by using a form to handle direct e-mail replies. It encourages people to post with a contact e-mail, since it would be hidden to anyone who responded to them and they could choose whether to continue the conversation off-line. Madman, he did mention that forwarding the e-mail to individuals is OK. I'll forward it to you in a bit! Posted by: Lydia on March 3, 2003 05:09 PM
I find Joels arrogance quite refreshing in his role as the Design Dictator. But, I do prefer the Webword approach, where censorship appears to be frowned upon and the views of posters seem to be taken into account. Whenever I am working on some software that involves monitoring of people I always try to apply these principles: All monitoring must apply to everyone, and all data collected must be publically available to everyone involved. This would mean that any messages that were censored would be available to be viewed by anyone. There couldn't be anu 'secret deleting' however sensible it seemed. PS. We are off to Egypt tomorrow for a week to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. This means I will be quieter for a while and won't be updating my stuff for a week or so. Posted by: Mac - Dont Attack Iraq on March 4, 2003 06:22 AM
Often usability is about fitting software to human needs or capabilities (or frailties). However, Joel shows how you can use knowledge about how people interact with systems to encourage behaviour desired by the builder of the software (in this case the discussion forum). Thinking through use cases you can see opportunities for influencing human behaviour not just fitting the way people currently behave. Sherlock rambling old Yoda Posted by: sherlock_yoda on March 4, 2003 06:43 AM
Mac, kiss the pyramids for us, and lose the accent for your own safety. Posted by: on March 4, 2003 08:50 AM
I read Joel's article, and think he has some good points to consider. I think how much you buy into his arguments has a lot to do with what your assumptions around a community are. How different would you expect the following communities to be? I think the needs of the users are different in the examples above - so the features offered might differ. (e.g. the open source project might want to integrate discussion with bug tracking) I also think the goals of the host/sponsor are different. (e.g. Lysol doesn't want to get sued because someone follows inaccurate recommendations on food safety on their site.) I think censorship can be a good thing - it improves signal to noise ratio, and helps protect the brand of the host, and the brand of the community. Censorship can get heavy-handed, but hey, the web is a free marketplace, and users can always look for other forums. The quality (and hence utility) of the community is protected by good moderators. Whether or not you agree with Joel, I think it's clear he has reasons for the way his community is designed and moderated - how many communities have failed because they just installed some BBS software and had no real purpose or goals for their community? How would you measure community success? Is it based on # of posts, quality of posts, value delivered, or freedom of expression? More rants and flame-wars usually don't mean more success in my experience. P.s. I also like the preview/post options, but sometimes I think I spend too much time previewing/editing my posts. Posted by: Lyle - Usability Guru on March 4, 2003 11:01 AM
Thanks Lydia. Anon: I won't need to hide my accent, as all the Egyptians I have met are very friendly. I think that I would be more at risk if I visited Florida. We visited Eqypt 10 years ago on our honeymoon (Gulf War I) and there was no anti-western feeling amongst the vast majority of Egyptians. A number of brave Egyptians who organised anti-war protests in Egypt have been arrested and tortured by the Egyptian Government who are very anxious to keep a lid on any internal dissent, as well as keeping on the right side of the United States. Apologies for the off-topic post. Perhaps Joel would delete it! Posted by: Mac - Dont Attack Iraq on March 4, 2003 02:28 PM
Mac, it's not the vast majority of Egyptians you have to worry about. It's the handful of militants in any country that are the concern. Even militants in Egypt who are not Egyptian. Posted by: on March 4, 2003 03:55 PM
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