(by Rich Cowan, with assistance from Audrie Krause, Dan Yurman, and Art McGee)
When anyone on the Internet is allowed to join a liberal, progressive, or community-oriented online discussion, sparks often fly. Even in a case where most of your members share similar views, it is not uncommon for ideological debates to dominate. As maintainer of an email list, how do you prevent endless exchanges which overwhelm the list or digress from its main purpose?
You may find that a few of your subscribers are unaware of proper net "etiquette"; that their posts are too frequent, or too long. Or you may have people who are perfectly aware of "netiquette" but who are only involved in the list in order to disrupt the discussion.
History has shown that when political discussions on the Internet are effective, they get attacked and subverted. The attacks are perpetrated by ideological individuals who criticize every point and every assumption, to the extent that a constructive discussion is no longer possible. For example, on the ACTNOW-L campus activism list in 1994, there were 100 messages posted per day for a few weeks debating libertarian positions on gun control. This activity effectively forced people interested in having their mailbox free for discussions about student activism to take themselves off the ACTNOW-L mailing list. Readership fell off 70% during this period.
From experience with the email projects of the Center for Campus Organizing, it is usually necessary for owners of lists addressing political issues to preserve a mechanism of control to prevent the discussions from getting out of hand, driving away subscribers. Either you need the ability to unsubscribe someone and prevent them from subscribing, or every message to the list needs to be screened for relevance.
The former method works fairly well for discussions of 200 or fewer people. Above that threshold, your list will be likely to become a target for "spamming" or disruption. For this reason, we recommend that you screen messages individually on larger lists, especially during a time of political conflict. A reason the screening method has gained in popularity since 1997 is that people "booted" for disruptive activity can simply can simply go to yahoo.com, get a fresh new "free email" account, and resume their disruption under a new identity.
Other ways that a list facilitator can preserve an even flow of discussion include:
o Limiting postings to no more than one per day per person. This forces list members to wait for commentary by others, an provides an opportunity for people who are able to check their email only once a day to participate equally with those members who are online 10 hours a day.
o Set the list to default as a "digest" if your list software permits. This will cause all the messages in one day to be delivered in one large "batch" every 24 hours. The Hanford Watch list, dealing with controversies involving cleanup of radioactive waste, uses this approach. It makes the volume of 8-10 messages per day more "digestible."
o Some email list software will allow you to automate limits on the frequency of posts, and set maximum lengths for messages that can be sent. If many of your members are using modems to retrieve their mail, this can help prevent overwhelming them with large attachments.
THE CENSORSHIP DILEMMA
Often a decision to "boot" or to even have guidelines invites accusations of censorship. Again, this is a straw argument. An email discussion is a forum that is usually set up to serve the purposes of an organization. When a for-profit corporation sets up an internal listserv, naturally they are going to want to have some control over it. I may not like it, but the reality is that is why I can't go onto the listserv of the board of directors of Monsanto and start posting emails about the need to label genetically modified food. Nonprofits and community groups will want to be a little bit more open, but openness has limits. If we are trying to talk with activists about electing a candidate or closing down a waste incinerator, it is unrealistic to think we can succeed if operatives funded by our opponents are allowed to enter and disrupt our conversations.
Censorship is a more appropriate label when authorities that have jurisdiction over our organizations (federal government, college administration, central Church council) tell our groups what they can or cannot print or post.
How do you determine "relevance" of an email post? You establish guidelines. Below is a sample set of guidelines you can review, possible with your initial list subscribers, so that later on decisions to screen material out are not viewed as "arbitrary."
Whatever guidelines you choose, be sure that you clearly communicate the purpose and subject matter of your list to your subscribers. This means that any promotional announcements about subscribing to your list, web pages with subscription instructions, confirmation messages, and even automated message footers should all include a brief statement that clearly and concisely describes the subject matter of the list. (For example: The purpose of this list is to discuss ways in which citizens can organize to ensure that public tax dollars are not spent to fund private schoools.)
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SAMPLE GUIDELINES for ____________________ list
A message to this list may be judged inappropriate if it is:
o not relevant to the subject of the list at hand.
o dated (no longer relevant)
o a shameless self-promotions or fund-raising gimmicks.
o a personal attack (it is o.k. to criticize someone's ideas, but not call the person stupid.)
o too long (i.e over 20K, sometimes this can be set automatically)
o part of an endless back and forth argument that has grown tired
o part of too-frequent postings by the same individual (i.e. more than 7x a week) unless that person has made an extraordinary contribution (the Mailman list software may soon have this feature)
o a local event of local interest only
o already crossposted to 6 other discussions
Last Updated 8/2002. See also the excellent article by OneNW
If you have suggestions for additions to this page, please write us at techtip @ organizenow.net .