Recent conversations with friends about web communities got me thinking about the arguments against open dialog. Initially, these paragraphs were going to find a home in my ongoing “Best Practices” guide to religious web communities, but the essay turned out to be strong enough to stand on its own. Enjoy.

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Like bonsai trees and gardens, good conversations must be pruned and cleared of weeds if they are expected to remain healthy. A continual–and valid–concern about opening up your web community to the Internet is the possiblity of abusive language. Like diseased and self-destructive aberrations in plant-life, abusive language has the potential to poison the whole conversation. This is, of course, the biggest challenge to open, democratic language: what do we do with unwanted speech?

Before delving too deeply into the question, let’s take a moment to sort out some feelings on the topic. Dialog is a scary thing. Conversation with close friends and family over matters of spiritual importance can tighten your stomach and can soak your palms with sweat, let alone spiritual discussion with a potential untold number of strangers. Dialog leaves you open to learning about diverse points of view–even to being proved wrong. For many, this idea strikes to the very core of who they are.

Some congregations don’t want to know about the “them,” “out there.” They don’t want to hear dissenting opinions because they might have to rethink positions long cemented years ago. These congregations are only interested in hearing the same, flaccid messages they’ve become used to over the years; the only conversations they’re interested in having are ones that can be controlled. Inviting speech that might be harmful or opposing to their views is about the furthest thing from their minds–these things interfere with building a “safe” livelihood where the word “ministry” has become a horribly disfigured synonym for “moralizing.” If this is your congregation, stop reading now. This essay is not for you. Go build a website with your doctrinal statement and potluck dates instead–there’s really not much more you have to say.

Still reading? Good. Unfortunately, churches like the one described in the previous paragraph do exist, so there’s reason for such disclaimer. When we consider dialog, we must go back to the reasoning behind our motivations. The goal in facilitating true, authentic conversations with people is an expression of how much we care about them. People, as I’ve noted previously, want to know that their opinions and who they are actually matter to us. In dialog–as is always the case when it comes to loving people–there are risks to be taken. Do you want to matter to people of this generation? Do you want to express to them that they are important to you? That their concern and pain and spiritual interest really means something? Then, provide opportunities to talk with them and not at them.

A helpful analogy to your concerns is to think about taking your congregation into an urban setting for an open-air service. There are risks involved. You may meet people who are flat-out offensive (think of the demoniac in Mark 5). You may encounter personalities that haven’t been sanitized and childproofed of their offensive speech and behavior patterns. But, just as with the analogous open-air service, taking risks to provide opportunities for dialog and community in the “hinternet” shows that you care. That you’re aware of the dangers, but you’re willing to try to make it work anyway. Perhaps moreover, it shows that you believe in God. People take notice of such things.

Now, for the empirical data. Our Story, my personal family weblog, will round its first year of publication this November. Over the course of this past year, this site has become a functional home for discussion of things that matter to me. It’s “in the wild” and, thanks to some foresight in building the site and some trendy technical discussion, drives no trivial amont of traffic–in the ballpark of several hundred visitors on a daily basis. Of course, the number of people that actually comment on the site is dwarfed in comparison to the number of visitors: we’ve received a little over 550 comments over the course of a year. In the entire lifetime of the site, only a handful (no more than ten, and probably closer to five) of the comments have been removed for content that I had classified as “unwanted.” That accounts for less than 1% of the comments received. Of that handful, only one comment was removed because of a link to pornographic content. That accounts for less than two-tenths of a percent of the total comments.

What does that all mean? Well, in short, it means that the concern about unwanted speech, while warranted, becomes a straw man when used as an excuse to avoid conversation. The overwhelming majority of people who have commented on Our Story have actually wanted to be part of the conversation. The remainder were looking to make a fast buck, but were quickly thwarted in their efforts. And, when I say “quicky,” I mean it: offensive comments were removed from the site within a couple of hours, and all of them were removed before I had to be notified of their presence.

There are strategies to minimize the opportunity for people to inject unwanted speech into your site. The most important of these is to set ground rules. Be explicit about the circumstances under which comments will be removed (for example, see our content policy). Then, assign responsibility to a capable few to moderate the discussion. You may notice that, as your site continues to grow and develop, a small group of faithful devotees will frequent your site and leave a majority of the comments. Seek out a couple of trustworthy people in that group and ask for their help with moderation. They’re already visiting the site, anyway–give them the opportunity to serve. Some site policies close commenting on older content after a period of time to help minimize the need to police the whole site. This is quite acceptable.

A final word of caution. I noted that only a handful of comments were removed for “unwanted” content. This does not, however, include comments that were critical of my writing. Nor does it include opposing viewpoints or even comments accusing me of being a big idiot at times. Those comments stayed. Dialog with integrity means allowing people to disagree with what you have to say. This may challenge your–and your readers’–opinions and beliefs. Let it. Your commitment to transparency adds weight and validity to what you have to say. Your site will be noticed in that you make a commitment to your content by accepting both praise and criticism. You will earn your readers’ respect.

Don’t just talk to people. Converse with them. Your sincere desire to hear what they have to say will make a difference.

h4. Postscript

In rereading this post and discussing it with Scott Greider (yes, that Scott Greider), I realized that readers may confuse my intent in instructing fear-driven congregations to build websites with only their “doctrinal statement and potluck dates.” If you read carefully, I’m not actually denigrating the practice of brochure-ware websites. I mean, if you got me alone in a room for fifteen minutes, I might admit to you that I think they’re almost totally useless, but I wouldn’t belittle churches that simply don’t have the resources to devote to a full, community-oriented web presence.

Rather, it’s churches that pride themselves primarily on their moral and cultural distinctions from secularism that get my ire up. When the church wastes her time by drawing lines between people who listen to Pearl Jam versus people who listen to Third Day, then she has utterly and completely lost touch with what it is to care deeply–first for one another, then for the world. Such congregations don’t even have anything meaningful to say from the pulpit–why go to the trouble of building a website?