# Fully open online discussions are low quality because of trust and context Open annotation projects and open discussions tend to be low quality. Why is this? Open discussions either feel like people taking turns monologuing or getting into irrelevant rabbit holes. These two failure modes happen because there is so little shared context. Most people don’t have the time or inclination to build the relevant context or help newcomers build their context. Twitter (and Facebook to a lesser extent) manages to minimize the need for context because they atomize discussions. Tweets are often self-contained and Tweet linking is is structured in a way that makes following the context chain relatively easy. There are also social norms - subtweeting is considered gauche. Note that these two failure modes also happen in real life for the same reasons. The chances of it happening online seem harder because its more asynchronous and you can’t read the nonverbal cues in the room. There is some possibility that offline discussions are just as bad as online ones but we don’t notice because it’s just nice to be around other humans. ### What are some things that might account for offline discussions better that are not just artifacts of being around other humans? * Often people are related somehow - either all invited by the same person or at least friends of friends * The place itself suggests context. A talk to a small group of people in someone’s living room is different than a mixer in a VC office is different than a meetup at a bar. Walls of text don’t give much context whether they’re on Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, Telegram, or IRC. Actually, IRC might provide a little context - “you’re all hardcore nerds.” * Offline groups tend to be convened around tighter topics than online groups. Online groups are something like “people who like science!” While an offline meetup would be “Discussion of this particular aspect of marketing.” * You can actively see how much people engage with what you’re saying and how they’re reacting to all the other people, all separate from the words being said. Non-verbal observation enables you to build context. * You know that everybody is engaged, which encourages you to really think about what you’re going to say. Offline, if someone isn’t engaged it’s obvious that they’re looking at their phone or staring off. Online, the *default* is non-engagement: chats are mostly asynchronous and even if you’re fucking video chatting 50% of people are checking twitter . * Groups of people can seamlessly break apart and come together - conversations have more delineated start and stop points ### How could an online discussion become high-quality? * Introduce each person to each other person directly so they understand what they have in common and why they should care * Enforce high-quality profiles that pop up whenever someone mouses over * Have synchronous times, when everybody knows they should come together * Have a context setting document for a synchronous time. Think amazon meeting memos. * Keep discussions under Dunbars number * Have a way to track shared interactions across the internet * Somehow replicate the break apart and come together mechanics of conversations - some platforms have tried to do this * Cultural norms * Whenever you post a link, you need to provide context - instead of “<Link> Thoughts?” , “<Link> I think this is interesting but I don’t have enough expertise to judge whether it will be impactful in the near term. Could someone with more experience in this area weigh in on whether this is legit?” * “Yes, and” >> disagreement * Really think hard about whether you’re contributing signal or noise (this is of course hard because at the same time you don’t want to stifle legit discussion) * Call out riffs * “This might be out of left field but it made me think of…” * Couple assertions with evidence * Couple thoughts with where you’re coming from * Never assign thoughts to other people ### Examples * Washington Post reporter who was also an advocate around sexual assault tweeting about Kobe Bryant right after his death ### Related * [[Context is important and underrated for knowledge transfer]] * [[The less shared context you have the higher the coordination costs]] * [[More context can decrease the signal to noise ratio of communication for people who already have that context]] * [[Online conferences have different affordances than in person conferences]] * [[Online communities could enable designed serendipity]] * [[An online community that works -scene]] * [[The Polymath Project: Lessons from a Successful Online Collaboration in Mathematics]] * [[Most online communities feel impotent]] <!-- #evergreen --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Fully+open+online+discussions+are+low+quality+because+of+trust+and+context) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Fully+open+online+discussions+are+low+quality+because+of+trust+and+context)