Governing online community behavior 

On the newest Gillmor Gang, particularly in part 3, the guys talk about commenters behaving themselves, the need for community rules to govern behavior, and how anonymity makes people say things they wouldn't say to your face. I agree but I still think that the message board world, and certain moderated mailing lists and usenet groups figured this out a lot of this stuff years ago.

There are niche communities where real names are the norm, and rules about not getting personal work very well. You don't need any new technology to do this, but interaction does have to be managed. Maybe Steve should get Howard Rheingold on as a guest to talk about his older (pre-crowd wisdom) work in online communities and how the lessons learned there can be applied to interaction on blogs.

From The Virtual Community

One important social rule was built into the software that the WELL lives inside: Nobody is anonymous. Everybody is required to attach their real userid to their postings. It is possible to use pseudonyms to create alternate identities, or to carry metamessages, but the pseudonyms are always linked in every posting to the real userid. The original PicoSpan software offered to the WELL had an option for allowing users to be anonymous, but one of Stewart Brand's few strong influences on system design was to insist that the anonymity option should not be offered.

iTunes only and fear of RSS 

Don't you think HBO and others are shooting themselves in the foot when they offer iTunes as the only subscription mechanism for a podcast?

What would it hurt to put in a little link to the feed? I suppose somebody decided it would start uncontrollable screaming fits.

Believe it or not, there are still a lot websites that don't display an RSS feed, even if a feed is available. I know the internal argument. It goes like this:

- Let's not offer the feed because I took that link and I thought something was broken.

- Yeah, but millions of other sites have the same kinds of links for the people who do understand what it is. There are lots of things some people don't understand on the internet, but that's not a good reason for denying everybody this convenience.

- Well, I just don't think we're ready yet.

Getting into Entourage 

I didn't think I'd especially enjoy HBO's Entourage series. But my son likes it, and I like to find things we can watch together, and I usually like HBO series, so I rented the first season.

It's not the Sorpanos but I like it well enough to go ahead and watch the rest of the series. I don't relate to the kids, but the business part is interesting. I lived in L.A. for three years in the middle 80s and the Hollywood vibe is everywhere.

Even in the PR firm where I worked, where we didn't have entertainment clients, the industry was always in the air. PR people there forget how to do creative campaigns for accounts with budgets big enough to hire a celebrity spokesperson. It was like there was no other way to do publicity. You'd go to a brainstorming meeting and all the ideas would center around "Who can we get?"