Three different modes of restricting discussions
In my neighbourhood there are a bunch of different groups whereby people can exchange information with each other:
- the Facebook group
- the WhatsApp group re security
- the WhatsApp re general questions
- meetings of the Residents Association
- meetings of the parish meeting
The RA for the neighbourhood has been run down, leaving us with the online and face-to-face commercial and governmental -mediated forums.
Needless to say, the Facebook group is an absolute sewer, dominated by advertising and delusional witterings that just would never occur face-to-face.
The three differences as I see it arise from the online discussion being unchaired, unmoderated and partly pseudonymous. So you have people talking past and over each other. But specifically, the absence of a chair means no enforcement of:
- when people can talk (making sure people take turns)
- what subjects people can talk about (staying on topic)
- what they can say about those subjects (potential for censorship)
It's the final of these three looks like the problem: the chair gets to shut down things he/she doesn't want discussed. In practice is this really done not by minimising the time people say things the chair doesn't want heard, but by giving excessive time to people who are NOT saying such things, no matter how boring irrelevant or longwinded they are. "Oh, we'll now switch from taking individual questions to taking questions in threes."
There really needs to be something that lacks Facebook's pathologies, whereby neighbours can have an asynchronous discussion that isn't censored or talked out.