Here’s a phunny story how ‘lectronic telephone—from a community listserv (Park Slope Parents) to a newspaper (the New York Post) to a globally plugged in blogsite (Gawker)—can create some interesting ideas about hyperlocal news and community—and how I got swept into it….

Over the last year, the folks who run Park Slope Parents, a terrific Yahoo!-based group (actually two groups with corresponding but not much used websites), decided they were overworked, and—since they are volunteers—underpaid. PSP has to be one of the best electronic communities I’ve ever been part of. The Yahoo listservs—one about parenting, the other for classifieds—are free of abuse, commercialism and flames, and the community just seems to grow and grow—it now stands at nearly 7,100 Brooklyn parents, who, despite the best efforts of Gawker to portray us as over-protective parental narcissists—ok maybe we’re a leeeeetle bit overprotective—use the boards to get info on everything from “help! my baby won’t sleep” to “i need a divorce lawyer” to “i need a nanny” to “i have 2 pair of size 3T boys shoes to sell” to “we’re having a stoop sale this weekend.” As they say at the site my wife works at: “We’re not perfect, we’re parents”—and the same is true of PSP. It’s a real, functioning, and by large protective community. It ain’t perfect or purty, but it works—and it couldn’t have been built without Susan Fox’s focus and dedication.

A year ago, Fox and her core group of volunteers, announced—with no group discussion—that they were moving the classifeds listservs behind the website wall. Not a paywall, at least not yet (although they soon announced fees for real estate postings), but the clear intention was to begin booking revs from the website. The hue and outrcry (remember this is Park Slope) was pretty immediate, and three weeks later, they backed down, reopening the Yahoo listserv (albeit preserving the fee for real estate listings).

Flash forward a year. About a week ago, Fox and co once again tried to mount the revenue question. This time, starting (again) with an Announcement from On High—i.e., without any attempt to solicit comment from the user base ahead of time—the PSP folks again declared their intention to take the groups down from Yahoo! and move them behind a paywall with a $25 annual fee. There are literally pages of reasons why they might want to do this, and the debate has been pretty intense. Although it was kind of dumb to merely announce via ukase this rather momentous change, I give Fox props for defending the idea.  But that still doesn’t mean I agree with her.

No to moderators

I certainly don’t begrudge Fox the right to make a living from her baby. I just don’t want to pay $25 to be part of it. And I don’t like her old media way of handling her community. A good part of why PSP works for me is that it has the freewheeling, open electronic ambience of a broad set of people—without being too small. Critical mass, in my experience, really does amount to something when it comes to social media, especially when you’re actually trying to sell something or have vital needs at stake. (In many instances, there is no “too small.” For example, I was user 11 when EchoNYC was started in 1985, and watched it grow from 11 to 50 to 500 to 1200 to nearly 5000—and I can definitely say there were diminishing returns after 500, but that’s another story…)

My biggest objection to the change wasn’t about paying the $25 but rather the idea—the big idea behind the subscription—that moderators need to be paid to keep the site from deteriorating into a Babel of baby-crazed Park Slopers: debauched dads, monstrous moms, crazed real-estate agents, and loony stroller-obsessed lesbians: that is, the entire LoserGawker stereotype.

Here’s what I wrote on the listserv:

I’d like to add my voice to those who believe that PSP should remain
as it is—a self-assembling, self-organizing community.

This isn’t the first time the PSP folks have made this mistake. Last
year, they tried, unsucessfully, to move us (and we are an “us”) to a
walled off web site where it was envisioned they would be able to
collect either advertising or subscription fees to subsidize the hard
work of its moderation staff (and supposedly add new features and
functionality through a walled off community.) This year, clearly
having thought the issue through less—because both Yahoo and Google’s
group rules forbid “sale of access” —they are trying to replace our
work as a community with their own.

Notice I said “our work.” Let there be no doubt: Susan Fox and Rachel
Maurer and all the administrators have done a terrific job. They
invented this. They grew it. They’ve enabled the self-assembly of an
organic community to turn into a very real online community. They
deserve nothing but kudos. Their hard work and moderation has laid the
foundation for this list to remain free from advertising, free-riders
and commercial exploitation.

But the reality is that the community exists because of us. Moderators
help, but we are the community. And as we’ve seen over and over in
electronic communities—and I’ve been involved professionally and
personally with online communities since 1983—whenever self-assembing
communities assemble, moderators organically spring up to safeguard
the open community interaction.

To put this another way: Moderators aren’t the key to making PSP work,
participants are. We are. The moderators who want to be paid now will
be replaced through our own interaction. Don’t misunderstand:
commercial exploitation and “bad posting” is also an organic
phenomenon of online community. However, if we were to move our
community to a new platform, over time, new moderators would emerge to
take the reins of self-censorship. This is essentially the Wikipedia
model, where (as Clay Shirky writes in his brilliant Here Comes
Everybody), “a few users account for a majority of the edits, even if
they make up a tiny minority of contributors.”

Charging for community will naturally result in a smaller and less
useful community over time. It flies in the face of the natural
lifecycle of parenting. Parents need PSP most when first having kids.
By the age of 3 to 5—pre-school—when kids are a little more
self-sufficient and parents a little more confident, there’s less need
for electronic community to tell us how to deal with cranky babies who
won’t sleep. Similarly, classifieds drop off after the pre-school
years: In the early years when parents need the basic newborn kit,
classifieds are a lifesaver, but as babies turn into pre-schoolers,
classifieds drop considerably—probably because people either throw
away or donate old clothes, but recognize they can repay their early
investment on scarce baby stuff bought only a couple years ago.

It may well be that the walled-off paid community that Susan and the
current PSP want is just different from what some/many of us want.
Something free, self-policing, and perhaps intended for a wider
parenting lifecycle. Something that also allows us to share more
including photos, videos, and more. Something that is selfsupporting
via Google Adsense. That community can be started in minutes, for
free, via Ning.com. I’m not interested in being a moderator or a
founder, but if there are enough people who are interested, maybe this
is the time to experiment. Please get in touch if you feel similarly.

I got about 15 responses from that. And yes, I did start a Ning group—with Ning, PSP becomes a real social community, and the listserv rides right along—but I wanted to test the waters first before opening it up. Besides which, as I said, I have enough on my plate right now…

From farfel to Ning

Around 2:30pm yesterday, just as I was putting the finishing touches on the Passover farfel my dad had requested for our seder—check out the awwwwesome recipe in that link—the phone rang and Jennifer Fermino from the New York Post was on the other end. She’d interviewed a few other people about the raging (har) controversy on PSP, and wanted to talk. Of course I explained that it was pesach, but as soon as I finished the haroset, I gave a call back and told her pretty much what I have here…which was then followed by the Gawker version which is even less illuminating. (By the way, add some brown banana to your haroset for an extra hit of flavor, texture, and yumminess.)

So now’s the chance to open it up social media friends. What is the value of moderation? Do the lowered transaction costs of communities rule out or rule in moderation? How big is *too* big? How do we balance the interests of communities with the financial interests of those who run them? What pay model (forget business model) do leaders of ad hoc communities deserve, if any? Are moderators replaceable? What’s the value (in ROI terms) of a moderator? Of a user? Does self-assembly and self-organization really work? Yes, it’s true, Wikipedia is written by a tiny number of people and there are people there who make it their point to be editors—but they aren’t paid. So many of these questions are at the heart of community and hyperlocal news media generation. What lessons can hyperlocal news sites, whether it’s outside.in, the New York Times, or the Tim (now-of-AOL but-of- Google til last week) Armstrong-funded Patch Media learn from this p’tit brouhaha?

And lastly, is there anyone out there with good CSS skills in Park Slope who wants to have some fun with me?

UPDATE: Before I’d even finished this post, I looked at the Ning account and realized that even though it was private, people had already been signing up. That’s enough indication that there’s a need to be filled for me. So I completed the design, and sent out a notice to PSP—they actually sent it out!—and since 6pm tonight, there’s been about 10 new members an hour. If you’re a Brooklynite parent,  please join us. Come visit http://parkslopekids.ning.com/?xgi=dhZER7n and get acquainted.

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