Hosting good conversations: House Rules!

Three ways of providing users with more control in an online community.
1. Ensure the rules are explicit and easily accessible.
2. Fostering a strong connection between participants, e.g. providing a welcome email and encouraging contributions from members in a non-threatening environment.
3. Offering users the opportunity to provide feedback and to contribute easily.

Three interesting Rules written by Howard Rheingold in the Art of Hosting Good Conversations Online 1998.

1. Enable people to make contact with other people. In this course of study we have been visited many online meeting places where we are encouraged to make contact with others, this is especially true in the CSU Interact Forum.
2. Create conditions for ongoing collaboration that return individual effort with a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. This course of study encourages people to share what they know and their thoughts about their learning in online meeting places. Ultimately we will all benefit as we are learning from each other.
3. Make newcomers feel welcomed, contributors valued, recreational hasslers ignored. When we first went online we were encouraged to introduce ourselves this is a great ice breaker as we can all see what we have in common and all our contributions are valued or at least it appears that way.

Rules for social enganement and document sharing.
I think that the rules need to be very closely aligned. It is important to not harass people, be offensive, copy people's work without permission and publishing private documents in unintended places. When it comes to stalking and spoofing I think it would be more applicable to online games and forums that in documents.