I've been digging into these problems for a while as well. You do need moderation for public discussion. You do also risk bad actors in public to private discussion interfaces (recruiters, predators you name it.) My work now focuses on metadata provided about each user in advance, so their reputation and experience dictates how much others can trust them before initiating conversation.
I think what we're missing is topic-based discussion, moreso than discussion between friends. On the contrary, some of my life's closest relationships were made via discussion boards. People tend to be more civil, as well.
I don't think usenet will be the place for it (antiquated tech, semi-anonymous, not super user-friendly, etc), but its the same general concept.
I have also been pursing the problem of better online communities and better online discourse.
I have taken an indefinite break from my software engineering career to dedicate myself to this. I've been diving into literature on crowdsourcing and collective intelligence, game theory, public choice theory, argumentation theory, gamification the design of online communities. I followed your advice and ordered a copy of that anthology from Spolsky in order to get my hands on those two articles by Clay Shirkey, which is sitting on my desk now.
You know, what we need is an online community of people interested in building the next great online community.
I've been digging into these problems for a while as well. You do need moderation for public discussion. You do also risk bad actors in public to private discussion interfaces (recruiters, predators you name it.) My work now focuses on metadata provided about each user in advance, so their reputation and experience dictates how much others can trust them before initiating conversation.
I think what we're missing is topic-based discussion, moreso than discussion between friends. On the contrary, some of my life's closest relationships were made via discussion boards. People tend to be more civil, as well.
I don't think usenet will be the place for it (antiquated tech, semi-anonymous, not super user-friendly, etc), but its the same general concept.
I have also been pursing the problem of better online communities and better online discourse.
I have taken an indefinite break from my software engineering career to dedicate myself to this. I've been diving into literature on crowdsourcing and collective intelligence, game theory, public choice theory, argumentation theory, gamification the design of online communities. I followed your advice and ordered a copy of that anthology from Spolsky in order to get my hands on those two articles by Clay Shirkey, which is sitting on my desk now.
You know, what we need is an online community of people interested in building the next great online community.
Technically, there is ownership in the form of newsgroup moderators and newsgroup maintainer/creators: http://www.news-admin.org/