Guided conversation is good. At Ugly Research, we’re always looking for new ways to approach the discussion dilemma. Our passion is helping people explain things, and an online community is one of the most important places where that happens. We like to call controlled discussion a guided conversation. By asking contributors to support their statements with well-founded arguments and facts (and by moderating comments), WYJU is guiding the conversation and raising the level of discourse.
Some suggestions. What more could WillYouJoinUs be doing? They could structure the expert analysis and community comments even further by setting expectations for how participants make their claims and provide backup information — the way it is now, although users are asked to support their points of view with well-founded arguments and facts, nothing in the design of the site requires them to do that. Instead of the free-form comments currently allowed (see example below), the site could designate a place where people:

• Make summary statements, saying explicitly what actions they advocate (or oppose),
  and explain what results they expect.
• Identify what type of supporting information they have: Data, examples, personal
  experiences, observations, and other evidence.

For example. An online community can set expectations for how people make arguments and provide supporting information. Take a look at our demo project, designed to guide people’s conversations by following a defined format: Each contribution associates a specific action or occurrence with a particular goal, outcome, or result. Supporting information is required to back
up each contribution. This type of back-and-forth corresponds to Level 3 of our Tiny Soapbox methodology — a way to guide how people explain things.

September ’09: Tracy Allison Altman on fighting information overload.
Ugly Research’s founder, Tracy Allison Altman, is a member of the Information Overload Research Group. In this article, she talks about some of her favorite strategies for reducing its negative effects: tiny soapboxes and fuzzy slippers.

Information overload conceals good ideas and slows innovation. By setting higher expectations for how people put together their information, you can avoid low-value content and place less burden on the perople who receive the information. Here’s an approach I’ve used successfully:

1. Treat it as a design problem: Focus on quality, not quantity.
Too much information flow is a serious problem. But poorly designed, low-quality information also deserves our attention. The process of presenting and finding innovative ideas will always be messy, but things could improve. Many people still write monolithic, free-form narratives that smother key points, even though better options are available. Formats can be designed to divide content into easily digestible, XML-tagged chunks that can later be combined into comprehensive documents -- technical documentation organized according to DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) is a good example. Methodologies that generate so-called atomized content increase reusability and make better search results possible.

2. Organize information around ideas. I like to use the “idea” as an organizing principle to foster innovation, improve transparency, and relieve information overload. What do I mean by that? An idea is a discovery, recommendation, or finding that links an action or occurrence with a specific outcome — this could be a recommended action linked to an expected result, or a completed action linked to its actual outcome. To make this a reality, you can design patterns and user interfaces to structure information around ideas.
At Ugly Research, I use a methodology called Tiny Soapbox. Each tiny soapbox has three key characteristics: It conveys a concrete idea, it provides evidence to support that idea, and it does all this in few words. By requiring a certain amount of rigor in the presentation, Tiny Soapbox reduces information overload by filtering out unsubstantiated ideas.

Example, please. The above graphic shows how a software product manager, Cathy, is explaining a business idea: She’s recommending that her company adopt a freemium pricing model. She fully expects this action to result in more paying customers. As backup evidence, Cathy references a research report. This example is especially tiny — the recommended action and expected outcome are represented with small graphics, and the supporting evidence is displayed in a mouse-over. The methodology doesn’t necessarily mean creating something this concise, and all sorts of graphics can be used. Specifics depend on the context: For instance, ideas about medical treatments might be presented very differently from recommendations for a software architecture. What all tiny soapboxes do have in common is that they are at-a-glance views of ideas, findings, or insights.

Energy Policy Strategy & Implementation. The Tiny Soapbox approach can be applied to public policy issues, too. The above example is advocating that the United States adopt a cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gas emissions.

Get the combo. But the process doesn’t have to stop there, with a single person’s point of view: Soapboxes can be combined to capture a range of ideas within an online community, as shown here. Eventually a diagram will emerge to represent a set of ideas on a complex subject.

Brevity + Patterns = Good Stuff. Twitter has its problems, but I like how it limits people’s contributions to only 140 characters. However, good ideas deserve more: We need structure to make innovation happen faster, and that’s why we organize content around specific ideas. Others are doing similar things to manage information. Sales management is a good example, where they structure information around individual opportunities. This allows people to quickly focus on the highest quality prospects, and controls chaos by organizing details around an associated opportunity. Another example is software design patterns, where developers create reusable structures and group them into categories depending on their functionality.

3. Put on fuzzy slippers. As the saying goes, "It’s easier to put on a pair of slippers than to carpet the world." I suppose that’s a folksy version of Gandhi’s "Be the change" quote. Something we all can do — starting right now — is set good examples. When someone’s developing information for us, we can guide them in how to present it most effectively, emphasizing the key ideas. And when we are presenting information to someone else, we can assemble it so the audience gets its essence right away.
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Want to suggest a discussion topic? Email us at soapbox@uglyresearch.com.