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I agree. Communities are not built. The passions that hold them together already exists. It will be your job not to bring people together so much as to remove the barriers that keep people apart.
I may have my grumbling points about social media but this is a really good move - again congradulations and the very best of luck.
all the best you corporate dude you
I will have daniel call you
This is very exciting news, the Globe & Mail recognizing the future of Web 2.0 and your intimate knowledge of this intriguing media.
Looking forward to you reaching out to the 'new' community!
fly with it
d
It will be fascinating to see how the new online community impacts the content of the print version of the Globe.
( And congratulations Matt! Lets hope the Globe finds the resources to do this right. )
PS that image was on a "team building" seminar workshop (I was forced to) attend... lol
Congrats,
geo
You'll be great. Don't underestimate the potential impact you can make with this. As I just read in Seth Godin's new Tribes, never use the word "opportunity" ... "It's not an opportunity, it's an obligation."
Most importantly: have fun!
Mark
Though I follow a number of bloggers, you are one of my "must read" bloggers due to the great info and insight you provide into the world of Web 2.0. As such, I'm excited about watching you implement many of those technologies at the Globe.
The key to community? Given our success, I hope I'm qualified enough to offer you my key ingredient - close interaction between the provider and its members. You need to really get involved with your contributors and give them that personal connection that keeps them coming back.
If you'd ever like to pick my brain, give me a buzz anytime. If you'd like to sit down and think about partnerships, I'd love that too.
Go get 'em. You are going to do great things.
Regards,
George
Also kudos to your superiors for realizing the potential that communities and social media have for the future of their business.
Good luck in this new position.
I am sure that all within your readership wish you well and recognize the serious (and seriously complex) task you have been handed.
As someone in the US, it had been several years since I visited the Globe and Mail online. I was pleased to find that the restrictions, registrations and paywalls that had always hampered my read have apparently been set aside. One wonders if you might have been some influence in this regard on CTVglobemedia.
BTW, I will be in Toronto November 12/13 for the Startup Empire Conference. It would be great t meet you in person.
Cheers,
Don Dodge
Wishing you much success, 'thewie.
- Stu
That's great - if you weren't trying new and innovative things for the paper, everything would pass. You can't experiment without some chance of failure.
Good luck with this, Mathew. I know you're the man for the job,a nd I look forward to continuing to read the Globe and Mail.
Very exciting though M...if they are truly committed to doing it and it happens, the Globe could be more than just a powerhouse content provider in Canada but Globally. Looking foward to seeing what you end up doing over there.
(but really, can you get the horrorscopes back on the crossword puzzle page?)
I'm looking forward to following as you define your new job.
1) I'm very impressed that the Globe has the gumption, guts, and insight to start this. Newspapers of the future won't be made of dead trees.
2) You are definitely the right person for the job, as you've been deeply involved in this world for years.
Congrats!
Let the link love begin.. you've got mine!
I'll be watching and collaborating on the new voices that can come from the new community that you build.
Big Congrats!
Can you really create community when people are being shut down and silenced? But I realize my plea with silence the ranters...maybe have comments sorted into two 'streams'...:-)
Dude.
Sweet.
=)
x
david
Congratulation and Condolences!
You must have sweat bullets over this decision, as it does represent a profound opportunity in terms of shaping the direction of a medium that has spent many years being in the proclamation business. I hope this works. Because this really is the future of reporting and journalism.
On the congrats side is the management decision to create such a position and your acceptance. Some folks may get the idea that such a position is a no brainer, being an extension of what you are already doing here, but as your postings, comments, and replies have shown, even when we have been on opposite sides of an issue, you have always handled these exchanges with class. Here is hoping that continues.
On the condolences side, I hope that you do not get turned into a list mom for some short sighted attempt to increase circulation, like having to moderate a debate between butter and margarine, or get stuck being a talking keyboard for editorial policies shaping debate rather than encouraging it.
Congratulations!
Congrats Mathew!
Best of luck!
Your new role sounds exciting, but also important to the discussions which take place so vigorously at the Globe.
Tell me, is there any way to have email submissions checked for name and location? Some people make up ridiculous names and places, and even though their comments seem interesting and sincere, we have no way to know if they are being upfront.
peace,
Jim Kelly
M'Chigeeng, ON
Through ITunes, I subscribe to CUNY lectures, FORATV, The Institute for Ideas and The Aspen Institute. I'm looking for other sources in and out of ITunes. I go to these forums, and each forum gives me direct access to analysis of topical issues from internationally recognized persons. Persons who pose questions also tend to have genuine credentials.
Some problems with what you're trying to do that I see are:
The newspaper isn't delivering the best content for either fast breaking news or analysis.
Comments to news stories, especially with heavy anonymous moderating, is not an adequate basis for community (On other forums everybody knows when moderators have deleted a post or thread or banned a member).
The moderation standards have the effect of dumbing-down comments. Quoting sources seems to trigger filters, while making obviously false or unsupported assertions is prohibited under the rules. It's a catch-22.
Active comments sections to stories frequently are suspended with no explanation and restarted without the original comments. The site continues to accept comments during suspension, which do not subsequently posted.
I'll stop here.
Of course, it is often difficult to fit quality content into a space of 2,000 characters for a complex subject, However, the effect of comment management does seem to further reduce content and leave comments that are mainly sloganizing, ideological ranting and personal slagging. Myself, I don't write to interact or receive feedback. I mostly write to practice generating content--within my abilities and talents, for better or worse and I know my on-screen proofing is horrible. I don't expect my comments to be posted, but I do need to find interesting things to think about.
Increasingly, I'm not finding many things of interest in either the stories or the comments, and the overall nature of the comments seem unattractive as a community. I'm coming to think of the comments as similar to the radio talk show buz (a variation on a carnival freak-show, according to a newsman friend). Cynically, I wonder if the comments work they way they do so as to maximize site traffic, and therefore advertising revenue. The fact that I could think of such a thing is perhaps more telling than the truth of it. Rightly or wrongly, seem to be feeling a bit manipulated and so I'm picking at things and in the process I found alternatives that seem more interesting.
But really, it all goes back to content. If you start with a content empty story, such as Flaherty's Panic blurb in today's Business Section, how does anybody expect that comments to such as story will be anything but what they are. Taking such stories and comments together, there seems little content and little interest. thee also seems little community feeling except perhaps for ideologues and the socially bewildered. Unfortunately, I am describing how the G&M is coming to be branded for me.
I don't know. Good luck with what you're trying to do.
Today I posted a comment to the auto bail-out story as a test. I mainly wanted to pass along a link to a video of a panel of economists speaking on "What is Capitalism Good For." I believe that what I wrote is beyond any stretch of breaking the moderation rules and was relevant to the subject. My post has not appeared.
It might be good to think of what kind of community exists if an anonymous force decides who gets to speak and decides what everybody else gets to read. Such things seem the roles of parents. If members of a group are deprived of their own adulthood of deciding what they wish to witness or ignore, what is the nature of community? It might also be good to think of the role of the media in supposedly free societies. Is there a watershed between role and entertainment, for example.
Basically, the effect of how the forums work at present is aa a community of exchange bounded by anonymous censorship. Talk forums that have endured do not work like this. The moderation on these forums is visible and highly so. The forums take responsibility for their censorship. Something that is written is posted and then censored. A form of community seems possible. It might be good realize that no discussion is possible without censorship but community as we think of it may be compromised if Censorship is not visible. It might be good to think about what is the purpose of the Censorship here.
But, in my comment I am again only practicing to generate my own version of content. Any change that might happen in the forum is now too late for me. There are too many places where I can practice within the bounds of civility, post my stuff and be left to be read or ignored by the other members at their discretions.
My view is that we have in our culture an agonizing flood of information but a crisis of meaning. The writer, van der Post, wrote much the same over 30 years ago, and also said that we have kept the Descartes but thrown away the Pascal in our modern culture. Perhaps that is why meaning remains a scarce, precious and hoarded commodity today. Katherine Weymouth said much the same thing recently during an Aspen Institute forum.
We drown in information. News events are information. Opinions and attitude are information. Most media communications and especially advertising, is information. Information is what we protect ourselves from in modern times. We talk directly to each other as peers in communities. Sometimes in communities we might find some meaning that goes a bit beyond ourselves. Such meaning could be called content. It is the stuff of community.
As you can see, I am entirely self-indulgent and inclined toward the fruitcake, and now I am out of here. The business model performs admirably.
You might think about trying to put some meat around this idea of community. Regards.
regards, bernie