==

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?

The Christian is to be a demonstration of the existence of God. But if we as individual Christians, and as the church, act on less than a personal relationship to other men, where is the demonstration that God the Creator is personal? If there is no demonstration in our attitude toward other men that we really take seriously the person-to-person relationship, we might as well keep quiet. There must be a demonstration; that is our calling: to show that there is a reality in personal relationship, and not just words about it. If the individual Christian, and if the church of Christ, is not allowing the Lord Jesus Christ to bring forth his fruit into the world, as a demonstration in the area of personal relationships, we cannot expect the world to believe. Lovelessness is a sea that knows no shore, for it is what God is not. And eventually not only will the other man drown, but I will drown, and worst of all, the demonstration of God drowns as well when there is nothing to be seen but a sea of lovelessness and impersonality.

—Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality

I absolutely love how Schaeffer speaks of communication in True Spirituality. I included this quote here because of the growing importance of dialog in our Christian presentation. Broadcast is no longer a satisfactory method of communication on the web. People want to gauge authenticity; years of televangelist infidelity and political power-plays by the quote-unquote Christian Right have demolished our credibility. Now–perhaps more than any other time in the history of the church–we must declare the Gospel with our lives and not simply our words.

Leonard Sweet: Post-Modern Pilgrims. Two favorite words used in the context of the Web are connected and community. In fact, the two words have become one in the new word connexity. Both eBay and Amazon.com say they are in the ‘connexity’ business–making connections and building communities. Both demonstrate that the Web is less an information source than a social medium…A true Web site is a gathering place–a watering hole that people will go to so that they can meet other people who go there. Kicking these ideas around made me remember how exicited I was the first time I read Leonard Sweet.

Killing the Buddha: Manifesto. We refuse to accept the internet as a world wide shopping mall. We know intuitively it can be a sort of Talmudic cathedral, a tool of transcendence made of words. We’re here to build it. If the end result looks more like Babel than the City of God, so be it. Babel, after all, came close. Would that I could be this clever. :) Via the Disseminary.

What if the real attraction of the Internet is not its cutting-edge bells and whistles, its jazzy interface or any of the advanced technology that underlies its pipes and wires? What if, instead, the attraction is an atavistic throwback to the prehistoric human fascination with telling tales? … In many ways, the Internet more resembles an ancient bazaar than it fits the business models companies try to impose upon it. Millions have flocked to the Net in an incredibly short time, not because it was user-friendly–it wasn’t–but because it seemed to offer some intangible quality long missing in action from modern life. In sharp contrast to the alienation wrought by homogenized broadcast media, sterilized mass “culture,” and the enforced anonymity of bureaucratic organizations, the Internet connected people to each other and provided a space in which the human voice would be rapidly rediscovered.

—Christopher Locke, The Cluetrain Manifesto (dead tree, free online)

Jordon Cooper: Technology and the Church. Outreach Marketing personifies the analog worldview that the church still has. A quick look on their website show their products, door hangers, JUMBO door hangers, signs, and banners. In their and much of the church’s eyes, outreach and communication is paper based and analog. Still trying to figure out how to reach the last generation instead of the next one. With each day the gap between the analog church and the digital culture continue to grow wider.

Thomas H. Walker: Creating a Congregational Web Site That Is a Venue for Mission. A very year-2000 justification for Christian web communities, but not a bad place to start. Via Dale.

Owen Briggs: Design Rant. ‘Separating Style from Content’ This phrase is a semantic minefield. Some people hang up when they hear this. Can we relax a little? The people who say this do understand that form and function are part of each other. It’s humbling to see that Owen wrote this a full two years ago. This is an excellent overview of the differences between traditional media and the web for the aspiring web designer.

A. K. M. Adam: Technology for Congregations Part Two. Starting a congregational conversation online opens up a tremendous means for collective self-discovery.

Dale Lature: Creating A Congregational Web Site. People of theological communities, people of the Church: sit up and take notice. ‘Get a Clue.’ Tell our story, and start by telling yours, and encourage others to do the same. We can do this. Many people have. Let’s put some investment into increasing the value of the network by bringing our faith to bear on it. Lets ‘be present.’ That takes more than putting our bulletins and calendars and directions to the Church–and even our sermons on a web page. We need pictures, people, their stories, and the chronicles of our journey with a God who calls us to penetrate at all levels of society. Lets not be ’strangers’ in the culture that is cyberspace. I would love to see from Dale a more thorough explanation of how we use the web to connect our stories to the message of the Gospel (note: some minor editing in this quote).

Alistair Begg: My Times are in His Hands (talk at Cedarville University). I say to you again: one of the distinguishing features at this point in history of the Christian, is not simply our continual trotting out of our testimony, but is the distinctive way in which we view the passing of time and the events of life as they confront us.

Ever get the feeling that you need to be consuming less and creating more?

We talked for a bit to discuss what we did know, like what sorts of applications he was using to edit the audio and what bitrates would be most appropriate for encoding. Once we got into the logistics of distribution, though, the details get hazy.

Delivery methods was a topic of discussion as we debated the merits of streaming media versus MP3 download. As far as we knew, streaming the media versus downloading the media should be about equal in bandwidth cost. In the one case, you’re pushing bits across the wire at a moderate pace to accomodate the listener, in the other, you’re pushing bits across the wire as quickly as possible–in both cases, though, you’re pushing the same bits across the wire, right? However, if a listener wants to listen to the same content again, streaming requires they use the same bandwidth over again (which probably means we should charge them again), whereas a download lets the listener listen locally and save us the bandwidth.

Control over content, though, seemed to be the biggest issue when it comes to the streaming vs. download debate. With streaming, redistribution is not an option, unless the user goes to a lot of trouble to capture an analog version. With download, though, the media is freely redistributable. I think with these sermons we’ll want people to share them with others, in which case downloads seem to be the better choice because people can use their own bandwidth to do that (posting on web sites, P2P, email, etc.).

Payment models are another tricky issue. We talked about the “walled garden” approach to hosting where the user can see what is available for download, but can’t get to the content until he or she was authenticated with an ID and password or a credit card. Essentially, since this is a non-profit, we just want to cover the costs for bandwidth used–something along the lines of 99¢ per download, maybe less. We also talked about the option of a subscription-based model where the user pays a one-time fee of $10 with free access to everything.

We also struggled over the question of a home-brew solution vs. a professional service. Home-brew solutions (buying our own server, configuring it, administering it, etc.) tend to be cheaper, but cost a lot of time, where as professional services tend to be more expensive, but come with specialized support. My inclination is to go with a service, because the headaches of administering a server can be many, especially when one considers securing the site. Incidentally, this is why I’m using a professional web hosting company for hosting my blog–I can just tell them when something breaks, and they fix it.

I would really appreciate feedback from anyone who has an opinion about any of this stuff–real world narratives of your own experiences are welcome. Discussion on media formats (such as RealMedia or Windows Media) are also encouraged. Thanks!

h4. Update

The feedback on this has been very helpful, thank you. I’ve done some surfing to determine what’s already being done out there in terms of media hosting by other similar organizations. The results can be found in this table. RealMedia Streams are the most popular on my informal survey, but MP3 Downloads are a close second. Also noteworthy is the fact that big media formats are really driven by third-party hosting (such as OneSource) where as the organizations that seem to manage their own content (InterVarsity, Truth for Life, Ligonier) are more partial to MP3.

Storyboards

I’m placing these up-front because pictures have a way of explaining things a lot quicker than words—especially when I’m writing. Incidentally, I did these mockups in Microsoft Visio 2002, a program for which I’ve found much affinity. Vector graphics rule, and if I had attempted to do these mockups in any other graphics package, it would have taken me at least twice as long.

he first diagram is my mental picture of the Ironworks home page. It’s simple, and perhaps too much so, but I thought I’d get it out there. The couch thing is just meant to be clever, not gimmicky or confusing. The image would have to eventually be a real picture rather than clip art, of course. I’ve had this idea running through my head that goes something like, “Ironworks.org: the rooms are virtual, but the relationships are not.” Something like that. The whole site should be an expression of “realness” rather than “trying-to-be-real-ness.” In other words, there will be no “Church Family, Relevant Faith, Real Life…” banners. The content to the right of the diagram is a teaser excerpt from Don Everts’ Jesus with Dirty Feet, a book I highly recommend. Since I gave the book to a friend, I had to copy this page out of the preview content at Amazon. :) At any rate, the underlined elipsis at the end of that excerpt would lead to more Gospel content.

The second diagram is what the user will see after logging into the site. This is the content-rich portion, obviously, with links to different parts of the site including message boards, calendar, people’s profiles, etc. The home page, currently displayed, would have “news” items, as well as summary information in a sidebar. This will be especially helpful for our calendar application, as users will be able to see upcoming (30 days in advance or so) events, including birthdays. The Who’s Online portion shows any other users currently logged into the site and allows the user links to chat with them.

Meeting

Notes from the meeting on 3/12:

==

• Requirements & Brainstorming
  • Calendaring (ext): a shared calendaring system
  • Profiling (int): the ability for people to save and share personal information (such as birthdays, email, etc.)
    • Editing
    • Viewing/Exporting
    • Secure
  • Message Board (int): um, a message board
  • News Blog (int/ext?)
    • Events
    • Scripture for Bible Study
  • “Static” Content (ext?): content that doesn’t change very often
    • About Us/Vision/etc.
    • Gospel
    • Worship
  • Open Source: free, community-maintained software
    • Repackagable
    • Cheap
  • Chat (int): um, chat software
• Possible URLs (pronounced: yerls‘)
  • iron-works.net, org
  • soulfoundry.org
  • iw.org, net
  • iwcommunity.org, net

==

Technology

From a feasibility analysis perspective, this all is do-able given lots of time and resources. We have neither, which is why I want to use a prepackaged CMS system. As I had mentioned previously, I’ve been keeping an eye out for such systems. My initial inclination was to go with a package called PostNuke, which seemed to offer all of the things that I’d mentioned in my previous blog. However, I caught wind of some unsettling information about PHP Nuke—the code on which PostNuke is based. The first of these was that PHP Nuke is apparently very hackable. I had visited one site that was supposed to be about PostNuke development and discovered this image on the site, indicating that the site had been broken into. Lovely. The feeling that PHP Nuke was easy to crack was further confirmed when one of the Slashdot editors made a subtle joke in a recent post about PHP5 (read the “from the…dept” tagline).

If that wasn’t enough, I also read an announcement that PHP Nuke is going closed-source with the next rewrite of their code. I understand that they’ll still give it away for free, but it struck me as a reactionary trend on the part of the developers to think that closing the source code for PHP Nuke will make it more secure. This is one of Microsoft’s arguments against Open Source software in general, and it’s generally an unfounded notion. Suffice it to say that I am thoroughly dissatisfied with the *Nuke platform.

But, then I go to Ryan Abrams’ site last night and discover that he’s done another overhaul. It appears that he’s installed a completely new content managment system called Plone—a package I had not heard of yet. According to the Plone site, the software will let the architect do a lot of things that are listed in our requirements for the Ironworks site with a minimum of fuss. Some things are not mentioned (such as a message board or chat), but this looks promising—I recommend watching the presentation by the Government of Hawaii about midway down the page. Ryan, if you have any insight as to your experience with Plone, I’d be interested to hear it!

Web technology was built in order to close this physical divide. It’s about connecting people who would otherwise have no business knowing each other because of physical constraints of time and distance. Email, instant messaging, bulletin boards, blogs…all of these technologies help to fill that void. So the techlogist’s question is: how can these technologies be pulled together to represent the voice of a particular community as accurately as possible?

Now, I know the problem that begins when discussing an idea like this—because I’ve experienced it. When a bunch of people get together to discuss a technological solution to a problem, it’s always an intersection of what’s desirable, what’s feasible, and what’s possible. What’s possible is that we could build this gigantic, incredible, open-source community tool and quit our jobs and just consult on this new software and get famous. However, that’s not really feasible, nor is it even really desirable. I’ve sat in meetings where the guy with the vision goes on and on about the possibilities of the project until you go crosseyed, because he doesn’t get that it’s way outside the realm of feasibility.

I don’t want to do that. Instead, I want to build this site for purely selfish reasons. Among them:

1. To post a community calendar where people can add their own items and get notified by email automatically when an event is coming up.
2. To contact Rich Prudenti and Tom Wilkinson without worrying about phone bills or time zones.
3. To post up a Bible study on Monday so people can come prepared to discuss by Friday at their option.
4. To have conversations with people I don’t get to see as often as I’d like.
5. To let people update their own freakin’ contact information and let others see, print, export and mass-(e)mail each other.

These all are my desires for the system (feel free to add to the list!). It’s interesting—and frustrating—that not all of these things can happen in the same package, though. BBSes or Blogs only lend to conversation and not so much to calendaring or profiling. In fact, several technologies that I’ve looked at seem to have a very limited scope in this regard…no one has effectively built the de facto, extensible online community portal tool. The most notable examples of what I’ve seen so far are as follows:

• MovableType - my beloved blogging software. It does a great job at letting people post and discuss conversation topics, but doesn’t present a very structured community model (ID/password, etc.).
• MimerDesk - the most encouraging lead I’ve had so far (scope the hot features), but it focuses mainly on the groupware aspect of a “community” and has a complicated install process that requires root access to my server—which I don’t have.
• PHP Nuke - if there is at least a runner-up for the title of de facto open-source community portal software, PHP Nuke is probably it. The lame part is, though, that every PHP Nuke site I’ve run across so far looks like total garbage. I just skip right by sites that look like garbage or their example sites look stupid. It makes me say to myself, “Okay, so this is what you expect me to build with your software?” Anyway, maybe someone can explain to me why PHP Nuke doesn’t totally bite.
• phpBB - gets honorable mention for wide use as a BBS, but that’s pretty much it.

I’ve also come across portal)ZINE, which bills as a portal about open source content management, but I’ve yet to get any really useful information out of the site.

So, from a usability standpoint, are there any other features that should be added to my list above? I’d be really interested to hear back from Ironworks members, pastors or leaders who have similar interests, or anyone who currently has experience in building or maintaining such a site. From a technical standpoint, are there some technologies that I’m missing? Any tips on Googling for this information (typing “open source community portal software” in Google only gets the portals about open source software, not sites that develop open source portals!)? Any feedback is appreciated!