Online Community: Do We Need It? How Do We Make It Happen? Part 2

By Kevin Smokler, WireTap. Posted April 2, 2001.

Message Boards are often the perfect places for youth to find community online. But it's not always right under our noses. It takes a lot of work to create a genuine environment where we can speak our minds and know we will be respected and heard. In the second of a two-part series, Kevin Smokler goes deeper into how adults can and are involved. Check our Part 1, if you haven't done so yet.

Youth and adults both seem to agree that a good message board needs a strong leader. The leader moderates, creates new discussions, removes obscene or abusive posts and bans "trolls," boardspeak for posters only looking to cause trouble. They also have to create a site with a reason for being, content that fuels conversation on the boards -- sex, politics, music, whatever. Rarely can a successful message board community exist on its own since that is more of an invitation for noise-creating small talk instead of actual conversation. The site provides something to talk about, the boards are where it's actually talked about. Derek Powazek, author of the forthcoming "Design for Community" calls this the first rule of creating community on the web.

"If you don't tie your content to your community features, it's like running two sites, one where people read and one where they talk. They usually don't mix ... Why try to plant two trees, separately, side-by-side when their roots are already connected?"

The online journal world has used this idea and played a huge part in the popularity of message board communities amongst youth. The most popular journals are running autobiographies of interesting people who write really well. Each entry, as good writing tends to, provokes a reaction and gives you something to talk about. Smart journallers know that providing a message board turns regular readers (who read and leave) into members of a discussion (who read, talk and talk some more). Even Three Way Action, a stand-alone general forum site, built its large membership from the readers of three prominent online journals.

"I'm not sure what I'd be doing if my life was boring," said Pamela Ribon, whose journal has thousands of readers. Nearly all her entries are followed by a link to the Squishy boards, which often address issues raised in the entry. And while she admits she isn't always the extrovert she seems, she does recognize that her message boards are a bit of a cult of personality, that without her, they wouldn't really exist.

"As long as people leave feeling better, I'm ok with it ... Although it is nice to wear the tiara somewhere."

When Squishy became an affiliate of ChickClick last year, the average age of its readership (originally in their early to mid twenties) plummeted. Ribon accordingly took on topics for younger readers ("How to buy a bra" was a favorite and its parallel discussion threads generated lots of posts). She's fond of both practical information and funny stories about her life because, fundamentally, while her forums are social, she doesn't see them as a substitute for real world interaction.

"We may talk about culture, movies, and music but these are thing that require us to go out. Maybe you'll see what others are doing here and think 'Cool, I want to do that too."

Oasis Magazine, an e-zine for queer youth has no message boards (yet) but has confronted many of the same issues in creating youth community online. Since 1995, Jeff Walsh has published Oasis just like a print magazine, one new issue a month. The magazine has an open submissions policy and consists of stories, poems and reviews by readers. Its most popular feature is a "Profile in Courage" of an out youth. Yet Walsh reports that monthly updates mean readers often forget to come back for the next issue or don't return if they don't find something that speaks to them. In May, he will re-launch Oasis as "a writing community for queer and questioning youth," and message boards will play a key part in his new publishing model.

"We really didn't have any way for the readers to communicate with one another except emailing and a listserv I kept for the writers," said Walsh. Youth at the new Oasis will be able to post on a central set of boards and post their own writings on a sub-site. Writers will be able to posts lists of their favorite writings on the boards and the most popular work will be featured on the homepage.

"The benefit of writing isn't in the moment, but a year from now," said Walsh. "It's when you look back and say 'Look how far I've come.' [It's about when someone else reads your work] and says 'that's me too.'"

Walsh, who himself came out online in the early days of the web, notes that message board communication has revolutionized the way youth question sexual identity.

"Message boards are an extension of the "glass closet," where you can see everything but stay hidden...In the old days, there had to be a defining moment where you had to tell someone or do something and that revealed you were gay. Now can explore anonymously, post under a false name at a message board, link your post to an anonymous Hotmail account and feel safe exploring this part of yourself."

The zine gets email messages every day thanking it for creating this safe environment. If nothing else, Walsh says, "the reason someone types in the URL is not to feel alone. If we can help in that, that's really cool." But ideally, he hopes Oasis will pry open the doors to some of those glass closets. "I want people to log off ... I know that sounds very anti-dot-com of me ... The best thing this type of online community can do is get them to the point where the site is not enough anymore ... Once they're okay being gay in the real world, then it will have served its purpose."

In order to create a level of community, you need to be able to put in large amounts of time (monitoring several dozen conversations can take forever) and have a life away from the screen.

"I put in a hundred hours a week on my sites, but I'm hyperactive like that," said Corinna. "I still have hobbies and outside interests."

Dedication like this is rare. So perhaps its not surprising that the idea of message board communities hasn't gone mainstream. After all, can one person run a forum with 10,000 members (Scarleteen has about 2,500, Squishy about 2,000), with 150 discussion topics? Yet one company, Bolt.com has taken on those kinds of numbers, as part of a bigger effort to get young people interacting online.

**********

Scoota60: Yo! Why do you think Bolt has so many members? Peace.

Taurus6944:Because it is in all different countries

Jessica Chasez19: Its just an awesome place w/ so many things to do. I love it! It's my fave site on the net!!!

GhostDogg: Because it's free.

Sweetthoughts: I don't know, because of cute guys like you, Scoota? Just kidding.

duckeyrox: b/c bolt ROX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jane Mount who co-founded Bolt in 1997, estimates their membership at 4 million members in 120 countries, almost all of them age 15-20. One named her dog "Bolt," another signs his name "I bolt, therefore I am." Yet to "bolt" around these parts doesn't mean "to leave quickly" but rather, to stick around and talk. And talk. And talk some more.

"If our members could communicate every second of every hour 24 hours a day, they would," says Mount, now Bolt's Executive Vice President of Empowerment. "When you're a teenager you've got strong opinions on everything, yet it's precisely the time in your life when you feel like no one is listening to you ... A 17 year old doesn't care what I, as a 29 year old, has to say about Eminem. They care what another 17 year old has to say."

Figuring this out early on, Bolt launched a set of message boards to stimulate user discussion on their most popular topics. Today, that's about all Bolt does: give its youth audience newer, slicker ways to talk amongst themselves, from taking surveys and polls, to sending Instant message style "Bolt Notes" to signing another member's "Tag Book." Yet plain old message boards, a technology older than the web itself, remains one of Bolt's most popular features. Theirs receive about 20,000 postings a day.

"Boards are the most public tool we offer, because you broadcast your opinion and anyone can respond to you ... As a teenager, you're always looking for a chance to speak out, whether it's to find someone who says 'Hey I'm like that too,' or to express your opinion to someone who disagrees with you."

Bolt members flirt, fight, meet and swap at the site. Spend enough time there and you can certainly find posters that are overjoyed to have found fellow hardcore punk fans because they're the only ones at their high school. Many claim to have made friends across the globe because of Bolt. But talk happens on such an enormous scale that youth must work twice as hard to find the neighborhood in the Bolt megalopolis that suits them. Community is there somewhere. It's just not the first house on the block, waiting with an open door. Or as Mount puts it, "This is not some super quaint space where everyone's nicey-nice all the time," "It's supposed to be like the real world."

"When message board communities, they become like cities, serving our needs in different ways," says Hagen who was a host at The Well, one of the original message board communities, before signing on with Cafe Utne. "Just like you may live, work, and shop in different neighborhoods, you need to the find the discussions that suit you best, whether they're jokey, serious, or really personal."

The smaller subworld of youth message boards can create a little universe -- warm, fun, with an implied level of respect -- when the real world seems cold and uninviting. Yet it only exists when you're logged. They can help you live in the world, but not reject it.

Kevin Smokler is the publisher of Central Booking.com, an online community for lovers of books and reading.

              

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