In many ways an online community is like an offline community. The parallels are just harder to see because things taken for granted in the real world can be difficult to recognize online. The most important example is the ability to meet your neighbors. Citing privacy concerns, most campaigns don’t even give their supporters the option of allowing other supporters to contact them by email. This is the equivalent of a big “No Trespassing” sign. Sure, some will prefer to keep it that way, but many will understand being an active part of a community means answering the door bell. It is important to give those who want to participate, the option to do so - or there won’t be a community.
During the Democratic presidential primaries, both the Edwards campaign and the Dean campaign did just that. Through the Dean campaign’s Project Commons and the Edwards campaign’s volunteer-run Win-with-Edwards network, supporters had the option of letting other supporters contact them by email. Both systems were featured prominently on their respective campaigns’ homepage. Neither system revealed the email address of any supporter. Instead, it was a directory with names of supporters, and optional extra information they might have provided about themselves or their interests. Sorted by state then town, or searchable by zip code within a given radius, these tools let supporters find other supporters nearby and fill out an online form to send them an email. If the recipient chose to respond, they could email the sender directly at the sender’s email address, only then revealing their own email address - once trust was established.
The Edwards site provided a link in each email which could be clicked on to report abuse, or block a sender. No abuse was reported. The Dean campaign allowed their supporters to contact dozens of others all at once by checking a box next to their names. However, that soon became a problem for Dean because people started getting too many messages. This helps to show that it is still important to discourage abuse, and do things like force users to register with a verified email address. Limits can also be placed on the number of people someone can contact or how often they can do so in a given period of time. Even without these safeguards in place, both campaigns showed that supporter to supporter contact works. The Dean online community is legendary, and the Edwards staffers were repeatedly surprised when they moved into a state and found a connected network of online supporters there to help. The successes of both campaigns owe a debt to their decision to take the risk and actually let their supporters talk to each other.
Another popular tool that both campaigns used were two-way email list serves. For Dean, this took the form of yahoo groups linked to from the main campaign web site. For Edwards, when someone registered with the Win-with-Edwards system, they had the option of signing up for the list in their state. The difference between a two-way list, and the one-way lists that all campaigns use, is that anyone can send an email on a two-way list - not just the campaign. For example, if a supporter in Tucson wants to go register voters on Sunday, instead of making dozens of calls to a list of supporters, they just send a message to the list and it gets broadcast out to everyone else in the group. Anyone who is interested can contact the original sender directly to respond, or post to the main group.
These lists are by definition more vulnerable to abuse - due to the broadcast nature of the tools, but there are several ways to reduce the risk. First, an easy to use unsubscribe link should be included in each message, as it was with the Edwards lists. Second, if traffic reaches levels of more than a few per day, volunteer moderators can be appointed to review all of the messages submitted before they are broadcast to the group. Third, as with the Dean yahoo groups, messages can be posted online in a discussion group type forum, for users who prefer to read the notes online instead of getting them in their inbox. For a national campaign, a list serve could be created for all 500 or so metropolitan areas. If it’s done right, a two-way list serve can be a very effective organizational tool, for one simple reason: The more ways people can talk with each other, the more likely they will.
At the Democratic National Convention in Boston, tens of thousands of Democrats from across the nation came together for the shared experience of nominating John Kerry and the chance to meet each other. Most consider this type of interaction a good thing. No question, some abuses did take place. Fringe groups and conspiracy theorists tried to recruit new supporters. Yet these were the exception, not the rule. They did not ruin the convention and no one suggested we should stay home and watch it all on television next time to prevent the abuses that freedom of interaction at a convention allows. There are a lot of parallels between an online community and a national convention, but it’s hard to see out there in cyberspace. So the freedom of interaction at a convention is praised, but the prevailing wisdom says all this freedom of interaction on the internet is a bad thing!
The prevailing wisdom misses several points. First, that just like a convention - an online community is not only a shared experience, but a chance to meet and interact with others. Second, individuals are much more likely to take action if they are working together, as opposed to on their own. Not only can people see the effect of their actions more clearly in a group, and share ideas for more effective ways to take action, but peer pressure can also help motivate group members to stay involved. Third, just like offline groups or relationships, simple rules and common sense can prevent abuses and keep someone from hijacking the agenda. Fear of the unknown and the potential for abuse of "peer to peer" communication has so far prevented the formation of the online community we ought to be building. The only question now is if we will work to get past those obstacles, or let them stop us from realizing the true potential of an online organization this fall. The only way to get 5 million volunteers to reach out to 55 million voters is to let those 5 million volunteers work together by letting them reach out to each other, as well.
JohnKerry.com already has a feature that lets supporters find each other by zip code. However, there is no mechanism to allow them to contact each other. Not even an optional feature for only those supporters who are interested. Unlike Win with Edwards, JohnKerry.com already requires users to register with a verified email address in order to access the volunteer center. That would be an added safe guard that prevents someone from providing a false return address when sending emails to supporters. Additional safeguards could limit one user to one account, or prevent users from sending more than a given number of emails in a given time period. If someone was not willing to receive the messages at their primary email address, a message inbox feature could be added, so that someone only sees their messages when they login to their JohnKerry.com account. In short, all of the key building blocks are there, and could be integrated without much effort. The only thing missing is the realization that supporters who can’t talk aren’t a community.
Posted by Mike at September 18, 2004 12:48 AM | TrackBack