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I'm really unsure of what the right approach for me is, and would like to hear opinions of people.

Last month, I created http://ForPune.com, a website for questions and answers about Pune. It is catching on quite nicely, and has garnered 161 questions in just over a month, and most of the questions have good answers. A nice community of regulars and irregulars is building around it. I, as the founder-cum-moderator-cum-administrator, and the other early active members of the community will end up defining the character of the community – by subtly or explicitly encouraging or discouraging certain behaviors, and by making some people feel welcome and some people feel unwelcome. For example, questions that seem like thinly veiled attempts at self-promotion quickly get voted down by the community. And that's a good thing.

However, consider the following sequence of events on this question. Regular user @drbhooshan does not believe in homeopathy and left a sarcastic answer. I have also in the past made no secret of the fact that I don't believe in homeopathy. So I tweeted that I found the answer funny. But @sroy_sroy (in a DM) and @kshashi called me on it. To  quote @kshashi:

You cannot create a community by discouraging a genuine participant. http://bit.ly/8XpKAu

This is an important and valid point. Irrespective of what I and drbhooshan think of homeopathy, the question was a valid and genuine question, and there were valid and genuine answers that were useful to the original question. In that mix, drbhooshan's answer was not the correct answer, and deserved to be voted down, instead of voted up. Truly, a community is not created by discouraging a genuine participant. I repented. (Although the system does not allow me to undo my +ve vote, since a certain amount of time has already passed.)

But now, I'm wondering. As a moderator/admin I have a greater responsibility towards making people feel welcome. But for that should I be really hiding my personal opinions? On the one hand, I can argue that the community deserves to see the real me, not a carefully crafted, all-welcoming, well-rounded, PR-approved persona. On the other hand, if the real me is a misanthropic jerk, then a community will never really get formed. So where do I draw the line? How do I separate my moderator/admin duties (which should be impartial and based on published site guidelines) and my personal opinions (which should have the same weightage as any other user). Since everyone knows I'm the moderator/admin, can I really ever be 'any other user'? Any suggestions? Experiences?

(Note: This post is not intended to be a pro-homeopathy vs anti-homeopathy discussion, so please keep that aspect out of your comments, as it will unnecessarily distract from the main issue I'm trying to bring out. Thanks.)

Posted via email from Navin’s posterous

These are excerpts from this O'Reilly Radar post by (Jim Stogdill | @jstogdill). He's talking about how the real time internet is addicting, and that's not necessarily a good thing.

I swear I'm not a Luddite. I'm not moving to Florida to bitch about the government full time and I'm not in some remote shack banging this out on an ancient Underwood. However, I guess I count myself among the skeptics when it comes to the unmitigated goodness of progress. Or at least its distant cousin, trendiness.

The article rambles a little (intentionally, I think) but has lots of beautifully crafted paragraphs. Like this one:

This all began with these lingering questions: "Why are we conference attendees paying good money, traveling long distances, and sitting for hours in chairs narrower than our shoulders only to stare at our laptops? Why do we go to all that trouble and then spend the time Twittering and wall posting on the overwhelmed conference wifi? Or, more specifically, why are we so fascinated with our own 140 character banalities pouring down the stage curtain that we ignore, or worse, mob up on, the speakers that drew us there in the first place?"

Touché. Even I'm guilty of this one.

Then he talks about what real time addition really is:

Email was the first electronic medium to raise my clock speed, and also my first digital distraction problem. After some "ding, you have mail," I turned off the blackberry notification buzz, added rationing to my kit bag of coping strategies, and kept on concentrating. Then RSS came along and it was like memetic crystal meth. The pursuit of novelty in super-concentrated form delivered like the office coffee service. Plus, no one had to worry about all that behind-the-counter pseudoephedrine run around. "Hey, read as much as you want, no houses were blown up in Indiana to make your brain buzz."

It was a RUSH to know all this stuff, and know it soonest; but it came like a flood. That un-read counter was HARD to keep to zero and there was always one more blog to add. Read one interesting post and be stuck with them forever. In time keeping up with my RSS reader came to be like Lucy in the chocolate factory with the conveyor belt streaming by. From my vantage point today, RSS seems quaint. The good old days. I gave it up for good last year when I finally bought an iPhone and tapped Twitter straight into the vein. Yeah, I went real time.

Now I can get a hit at every stop light. Between previews at the movies. Waiting for the next course at a restaurant. While you are talking to me on a conference call (it's your fault, be interesting). When you look down at dinner to check yours. Last thing before I go to sleep. The moment I wake up. Sitting at a bar. Walking home. While opening presents on Christmas morning (don't judge me, you did it too). In between the sentences of this paragraph.

Don't  tell me you don't see yourself in those paragraphs! And did you think about why you do all this? Here's why:

I tweet into the void and listen for echoes. There it is now, that sweet sweet tweet of instant 140 char affirmation. Feels good. RT means validation. I think I'm developing a Pavlovian response to the @ symbol that borders on the sexual.

Read the whole article for a very interesting second half where he discusses real-time and the singularity.

Posted via email from Navin’s posterous

This post was triggered by this exchange between @netshrink and @sarikaphatak on twitter.

@netshrink said: "Why does every woman want me (the doctor) to tell her husband to do things she wants him to do eg. exercise, not drink, come home on time"

and @sarikaphatak replied: "@netshrink that's called 'Sonarane kaan tochane' 🙂 you have much more cred than the so called 'nagging'. effectiveness needs to be studied"

I have also been in a similar situation (i.e. situation similar to @netshrink's) often, except that instead of woman and husband, in my case it is typically mom and child. It's either a school kid who's probably not studying as much as the mom wants him to, or a college student who is partying too much, or in some cases son/daughter of marriageable age who is rejecting the parents' matrimonial suggestions.

The mom ends up telling me: "He will listen if you tell him."

You know what? Most probably, I'm not going to tell him.

The reason your kid listens to me is because I don't nag him about every damn, trivial thing that you feel compelled to improve in your kid.

The reason your kid listens to me is because of the 100 things that I feel like telling him, I only tell him 3, and keep the remaining 97 to myself. Because, frankly, (and this is true of everything in life), of the 100 things that you worry about, only 3 are really worth worrying about.

No, I am not going to tell your kid to read "educational" books instead of the "trash" he reads. I think the "trash" he reads is fine. No, I'm not going to tell your kid to not play the obscene 'Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.' There's nothing we can really do about it, and might as well focus on ensuring that he grows up with the correct values, inspite of playing GTA: Vice City. No, I'm not going to convince your daughter that she should agree to marry that nice Software Engineer in New York, who makes a lot of money, but is not interested in movies, or books, or sports, or travel. The reason your daughter listens to me is because I don't give her stupid advice like this.

Indian mythology has this interesting concept. Sadhus and rishis acquired great powers through penance, but their powers reduced every time the were used. Hence they had to be a little careful before using their powers and randomly cursing people. That, I find is a very useful piece of insight – your power increases when you don't use it, and decreases when you use it. ("No, I am not going to use my blog to promote your event, because if promoted every silly event, then people will stop reading my blog. I can only promote events that are really worthwhile.")

Now, if I could only follow the above advice when parenting my own kids…. but damnit, it's too difficult to do on a 24×7 basis!

Posted via email from Navin’s posterous