rheingold's brainstorms: rheingoldian writing

A culture that springs entirely from you will not scale. But you do need to set some examples and get the party started.

We tend to associate rules with formality and stiffness, but in our “I Am Here” days we found that rules created intimacy. Each of us on his or her own was no match for the coding geniuses at Google and Facebook and Snapchat. But once presence was enshrined as a rule, a one-day-only attempt—temporary, humble, inclusive—overcame the power of the mac

Hobbes’s assumption that people are incapable of coexisting without authority implies that human online interactions on news sites would benefit from signage, structure and incentives to participate in a deliberative way.

You probably want to set at least one (and no more than three) remarkable rule for your community.