mymarkup.net

Dan Gillmor skriver i ett öppet brev rätt ärligt om misslyckandet med att driva "citizen journalism"-projektet Bayosphere (som nog läggs ner; Gillmor har ju gått vidare och grundat ett Center for Citizen Media), både affärsmässigt, men också vad gäller kvaliteten hps innehållet. Här är några av lärdomarna:

• Limiting participation is not necessarily a bad idea. By asking for a valid e-mail address simply in order to post comments, you reduce the pool of commenters considerably, but you increase the quality of the postings. [...] there appears to be a correlation between willingness to stand behind one's own words and the overall quality of what's said.
• Citizen journalists need and deserve active collaboration and assistance. They want some direction and a framework, including a clear understanding of what the site's purpose is and what tasks are required.
• The tools available today are interesting and surprisingly robust. But they remain largely aimed at people with serious technical skills -- which means too ornate and frequently incomprehensible to almost everyone else.
• Tools matter, but they're no substitute for community building.
• [I]t bears repeating that a business model can't say, 'You do all the work and we'll take all the money, thank you very much.'

(Tack Bengt O. för tips!)