"We need both spaces: private ones, public ones and in-between ones.
This is about discussing how we can best use Internet resources for these various aims.
And to discern when when we're doing what."
It's been proposed that we keep a private space for the day-to-day business of our community life, and a public one for things of a deeper, discussion character. And the latter might go well on a blog.
As I see it, those situations occupy two of the cells in the matrix below.
There are the public and private arenas. On another dimension, there are the pragmatic and the philosophical.
I think it's possible to validly fill all four.
For example, we can have public events served well by a calendar.
And we can have discussions where we feel freer to speak when we know just who is within our walls.
The question of "the room we're in" is one that particularly interests me.
I believe it's important to think carefully about our audience before we construct a site or post to it. Today, I found a church web site in Melbourne which uploads its weekly news-sheet as a PDF. A convenient way to get its news out to everyone in the congregation - but also to everyone else! It included private phone numbers of church members.
There's also the boredom factor. If what we publish is partly in-house, partly of general interest, how do we manage the mix, so that there's always enough to attract the passer-by? The Salvation Army magazine, War Cry, tries to be a mix. Is it successful?
4 comments:
I think David is spot on with his matrix and I think defining what goes into each section and who can access it is going to be the big task for us (which is obviously why we are having this discussion). A community that has an online presence needs to juggle what is appropriate for private/internal discussion, and for public notices, interaction if it is truly going to be an appropriate forum for a community that also operates online.
I think there are 2 things to consider here:
1) What information belongs where? ie: details and location of events, discussions based on personal opinions, personal information (such as illness and prayer points) may belong. What belongs on email (egroup)?, what belongs on a forum/blog, what belongs on a website, and then what belongs in the private and public realms etc
2) Drawing the distinction on who is able to access what information. This could be typically divisive for newer people or visitors if you shut them out from the real ‘interesting stuff’, at the same time it could allow a clearer understanding for the Burwood-User on what the appropriate content of emails/discussions/news is if they know who has access to the information, notices, messages which has been a concern of mine in the past.
For me the distinction should be Private areas (both philosophical and pragmatic) are only accessible and usable by Burwood-Users, which should only be members of Burwood-Croydon UCA. Perhaps new people could be given viewing rights or temporary access, but I think a line needs to be drawn somewhere, and if we allow for open access in the Public areas, then its not so bad to have more private - and dare I say it - ‘exclusive’ areas for members. Of course this opens up a discussion on membership which I am happy to explore in another place.
Using David matrix model (and his ‘room’ lingo which I like) my thoughts are that we should base our information sharing on three levels in which there are various rooms (how architectural is my layout J):
Level 1: Email
Room 1.1: Pragmatic/Public: Email responses to website enquiries with; a) an automated personal message from the ministers (or perhaps it is personally scripted?); b) church office contacts; c) service times; d) activities that are being run. Anyone visiting the website can make an enquiry and receive an email from the church main address with this information on it.
Room 1.2: Pragmatic/Private: Egroup (such as the current YahooGroups that also includes file sharing, calendar functions etc) which is hosted by us at www.burwoodcroydon.unitingchurch.org.au. This is used mostly for announcements and reminders of events, prayer points, possibly even weekly updates on Discussions topics taking place (but not the discussions themselves) and links to these. (not sure if this can be automated or has to be managed manually?)
Level 2: Website
Room 2.1: Pragmatic/Public: a) Regular updates on news and events (wide church events not individual groups and details of peoples homes etc); b) information on churches and services times and locations; c) information on missions and activities that people might like to get involved in; d) links to discussion pages which are public forums
Room 2.2: Pragmatic/Private: Password and Username access to files, calendar, private discussions forums etc
Level 3: Blog/Wordpress/Forum
Room 3.1: Philosophical/Public: Forum/Blog/Wordpress that is open to anyone in the world who would like to interact, ask questions about us, discussion issues with a church, debate issues and support things noted in the media or projects we would like to publicly support. This might involve discussions based on current affairs and where we as a church stand on these issues, allowing other people in the world to hear and see our point of view as Christians in Burwood and to respond to us.
Room 3.2: Philosophical/Private: Forum/Blog/Wordpress where we can discuss as David has indicated, issues that relate to personal opinions, discussion about how we as a church are relating to the world around us, how we can contribute to things. This would be closed to members of the church (and possibly giving viewing rights to new people who aren’t yet members). A recent example of this has been the short discussion on the CDP.
Room 3.3: Pragmatic/Private: Discussion pages for members of the church who are overseas, or have left our area as a way of keeping in contact, continuing community, and learning from their experiences in a new place and as part of new communities.
Anyway, a little more food for thought J
Andrew Friendly Robot
Thanks for all that thought!
I agree with those two guiding questions.
On the second, I'd question whether people would be happy with public 'read' access to their otherwise private writings. Personally, I am more concerned about the public airing of something I thought I said in private, than I am about preventing a stranger from saying their piece. (Granted, though, that the latter can also become a problem.)
I don't really believe there's as big a distinction between "website" and "blog/wordpress/forum" as there may appear to be. Clearly, blogs and content management systems sit on web sites. It's the "extra" they represent that I'd like to explore. I read up on O'Reilly's "Web 2.0" after hearing Derryn speak of it. It represents different things to different people, but there are probably some resonances with the distinction we're seeing between "website" and "blog/wordpress/forum". Personally, I think there are two things that entice about the latter:
(i) the invitation to engage interactively;
(ii) the promise of doing so with flair (formatting and images without too much techno-pain).
The conservative and lazy side of me likes to insist that the old e-groups/SmartGroups/Yahoo! Groups/msn Groups/Google Groups model delivers quite effectively on (i). Discussions get recognised as threads and organised simply by replying to the sender. The engagement hurdle is even lower than for the blog/wordpress/forum model, because people can choose to use their favourite e-mail program - offline, if need be - to contribute, just as they would if they were replying to their grand-child or whatever. From a management point of view, the all-in-one nature of the community group means a single set of access controls, so administration is very simple. But of course, the everyday (notices, reminders) gets mixed up with the matters of lasting interest.
Where the traditional groups fall down is in area (ii) - the area of image and other formatting. SmartGroups used to allow HTML formatting of mail sent from the email client (like Outlook, etc.). Yahoo! Groups only allows you this if you post from the web site, and basically their rich-text 'beta' is just for doing some limited formatting niceties. Images won't upload, as far as I can recall.
[On e-mail-enabled websites: Mailspaces has changed its name - it's now got a "Web 2.0"-style name and look - "Jiglu". I understand you can add attachments to its mail, and they're looking into adding a calendar, although it's not there yet. This model continues to interest me, because it acknowledges the continuing convenience of e-mail, whilst utilising additional web-based tools to tame its messy nature. It tries to organise mail by tags as it comes in, and then you can impose order using a wiki. I'm not sure that it's the answer for a group like ours, but I'd like to keep a watching brief on the concept!]
One reason I'm writing this comment here is to see whether I'll be alerted to it, as I've set up an "Active Bookmark" in Firefox. I still think nothing beats an email in my one big Inbox for quality-of-alert (save for an SMS, which if I want I can setup from my Inbox). But this is my test for what changes I'll see in my browser after a change to this blog.
I didn't get an alert from posting last time. A "Live Bookmarks" button was already on the bookmarks toolbar (entitled "VerandahChat"), and it now included all the comment entries (including the new one), but there was no alert to show that something new was there. "Wizz RSS" is a tool that I've had on my Firefox browser for a while. In previous versions it was too hard to get moving. Just now, I accidentally hit its shortcut key for a new window, and saw options re notification. So this may work better. But it does mean that a lot of effort is required just to 'stay in the loop' on a conversation you've become interested in.
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