anonymity

"A society or community without individual accountability cannot function."

So says Scott Karp in an older post on his blog, Publishing 2.0

A commenter responds: "Welcome to 2.0"

Well I hope not. I've been coming to the realization that part of the problem with Web 2.0 is the general quality of the conversations. The primary driver of this, in my opinion, is anonymity. The usual conversations in blog comments are snarky and can get nasty. It often degrades the quality of the conversation. Anonymity gives people the false courage to attack people in a way that they would never do if their identity were known. Kinda like real life.

If we are going to progress where the quality of the content is based more on the quality of the conversation that ensues, rather than just the article in itself, will anonymity get in the way? I tend to think so.

the pressing need for quality filters

I don't know whether to get excited or bummed out when I start thinking a lot about a subject and developing my original thinking on it and then stumble across others who seem to be on the same track.

Steve Rubel writes about the Attention Crash on his blog Micropersuasion.

The post rings very true for me - my personal struggle with the amount of input and my ability to process everything is directly what started me thinking along the lines that I needed to find new ways to apply a filter for quality. In thinking through the issues as they relate to me personally, I realized that many people must be going through this and started generalizing my personal thoughts to how the new media was going to need to evolve and adapt or else face a mass extinction of attention.

So what will the new quality filters be? Will they evolve from the current platforms or will they come from innovative new platforms? Will they represent a further advancement in the media landscape or a retrenchment to older models, albeit on a digital platform (i.e. paid subscriptions for digital content.)

For one thing I am going to subscribe to Steve's google shared items so I can use him as a quality filter.

good article on transparency and leadership

I've had this bookmarked for about a year. It was a great read then and a great read now.

The See-Through CEO by Clive Thompson, Wired Magazine