1. Kevin Marks on May 2, 2005 7:26 PM writes...

Is 'getting an IRC client to work' the barrier that makes it elitist?
IRC backchannels have 2 interesting characteristics that contrast with real-world groups :
They are effectively parallel - unless traffic is very heavy, people aren't interrupting each other in them, and they aren't interrupting the speaker.
They don't require proximity, so you aren't just muttering to your neighbour, you can talk to people in the back of the room from the front or even people hundreds of miles away (as I did at SCS by having an open iChat AV link to my colleagues in SF, so they could watch the speakers and comment in the backchannel).
And I need to finish my 'who I met at SCS' post too...

2. Alfred Thompson on May 2, 2005 10:32 PM writes...

I read Korby's blog earlier today and wondered about the "back channel" comment myself. I lurked on the irc of the Social Computing Symposium on the second day. I wasn't one of the "popular kids" who got an invitation to the event so hanging around on irc was as close as I could get. This conversation is taking place in the open but most people, like me, are missing vital context to this discussion as we were not at the SCS2005 and the origional conversations that started the discussion. So was the face to face meeting the back channel?

3. Jake L on May 3, 2005 5:29 PM writes...

"He feels that the software should ;announce; private meetings that form in that way, and I disagreed."

Couldn't agree with you more. One of the big ways that people establish intimacy with each other is by talking about other people behind their backs. Perhaps it seems distasteful. But perhaps paradoxically I think it can actually be a very important part of relationship building.

Ultimately, all cultural is about establishing an inside and an outside. This happens at all different sorts of scales. I think a social software technology is probably going to be more useful if it acknowledges this and allows for it, rather than trying to impose what is ultimately a moral/ethic judgement about the value of such conversations. If the tool is there, people don't have to use it. But if it's not there, then people's options are being artificially limited.

4. Andrew on May 3, 2005 5:33 PM writes...

Look, if people--of any age--are sitting gossiping and snickering during in a room when they ought to be paying attention, then that's a problem. It doesn't matter if they're doing it via whisper or IM. In a classroom of kids or a conference full of grownups, it's rude as hell and it nearly *always* reinforces the feeling of insiders vs. outsiders. It doesn't matter if you didn't *mean* to seem elitist or exclusive, but as long as others legitimately feel excluded, then there's a problem.

This is not to say that small private conversations of any kind should be limited.

But if there's a perception that a valuable conversation is *only* happening in the backchannel, it's the responsibility of the event organizer to pull it out into the foreground so that everyone can benefit. Anyone who's attending conferences where they feel like the real action's taking place on some invisible or inaccessible level should complain to the moderator or whoever.

Am I the only one annoyed by the use of the always-scare-quoted "kids" to refer to those people perceived as "popular"? It's really patronizing.

5. Alex Schroeder on May 4, 2005 7:08 AM writes...

In a discussion, breaking away with some pals and having a back back channel discussion is immediately obvious to everbody else and sends a signal. Doing it unannounced on IRC no longer sends that signal. I think this is the key difference. I haven't worked our for myself whether I like it or not.

6. Korby Parnell on May 6, 2005 12:46 PM writes...

I was in Santiago, Chile a few years ago and ran into a professor on sabbatical from the University of Saskatchewan who was writing a book and drinking warm Chopp (half beer, half fanta).

I asked him to describe the thesis of his book in one sentence. He replied, "AI exists when you can place two computers in two rooms separated by a wall, deny them access to power, and they figure out a way to communicate with each other."

If “intelligent” beings really, really want to communicate in secret, they will figure it out pretty quickly. My assertion was and is that we should not enable back, backchannels by default in most social software applications.

In the context of instant messanging applications, which are pure, unadulterated social software applications, I believe that users must be able to silently create back, back channels. Because Instant Messenger and other chat applications are intended to provide for conversational exchanges, they must mimic real life social patterns faithfully, lest users flee to the competition.

In the context of email applications, which are one step removed from real life communication patterns, my assertion that we should not provide for the creation of back, back channels, by default makes more sense. As a software developer myself, decisions like this often come to down to degrees of gray. If I'm developing the next version of Microsoft Outlook, how hard should I work to educate users about the potential use of Bcc… as a way to talk behind a recipient’s back? Do I create mouseover text for “Bcc…” with a special link into a “Blind Carbon Copy Etiquette” help topic? Should I create a Bcc intro topic and make it available to users through one of those annoying “Tips and Tricks” pop ups? Should I emboss the ‘b’ in Bcc.. slightly, to call it out, relative to To… and Cc…?

Absolutely not.

Liz, if I were a PM on the Outlook team, I assert that I should NOT work very hard to enliven users to the existence, utility, or use cases of Bcc… because doing so exposes organizations and people (my customers) to social hazards and 'knowledge leak’; that they would rather not deal with. If 80% of a company's employees don't know how to use bcc, cool. I can live with that. Email is now a mission critical part of almost every business. By implication, this means that the fine folks who are purchasing Exchange and Office licenses en masse don’t want the bcc backchannel to be readily discoverable.

It is interesting to note that the latest version of Outlook hides the bcc bar, by default. Why? I dunno. Real estate concerns? Lack of usage? Lack of understanding and confusion? Or maybe it’s because backchannels are not appropriate or of ultimate utility in the business world.

Do people miss it? Sure. It drives me nuts. But my parents could care less. They never used it anyway. If they want to tell somebody something on the sly, they just send a different email or walk down the hall.

The further you get from pure social software and the closer you get to knowledge management software, the less important it becomes to empower 20% of your customers to gossip about the other 80% and the less imperative it becomes to make the creation of back channels easy.

In my next blog post, I plan to provide another example to support my claim that back backchannel features should not be emphasized or made highly discoverable by default in social software applications.