The presidential inauguration is less than a month away and the NPR social media desk is kicking it into high-gear to figure out how we can get all of you involved in our inauguration coverage. We're also looking for some techies who can help make it happen.
After our successful VoteReport experiment last month, in which we work with bloggers around the country and invited the public to submit reports on their voting experiences, we're hoping to do something similar for the inauguration. Some of our partners in the VoteReport project, including Dave Troy of Twittervision and mapping guru Andrew Turner, are volunteering again to help re-purpose the VoteReport tools for the inauguration. We've also got some new folks involved, including American University journalism professor David Johnson, and I'm sure others will come on board in the coming days and weeks.
Among the things we've got in mind:
Inauguration '09 citizen journalism iPhone app. Dave and his colleagues created an awesome iPhone app for VoteReport that allowed users to post audio and text reports online and have them plotted on maps, using the iPhone's GPS capability. We're thinking of adding on to this app so that it could also allow users to attach inauguration-related photos or perhaps even short video clips. One idea that was also suggested was to allow an iPhone user to save their reports on their phone and post them later, in case AT&T's data networks are jammed on January 20th. We're also thinking of giving users the ability to submit their email and phone number so NPR reporters can contact them in case we want to use their audio in one of our stories.
Mobcasting. During VoteReport, Dave set up a bank of telephone lines that allowed users to call in and record a voicemail about their voting experiences and have it posted for all to hear online. Given that not everyone participating in inauguration festivities will have iPhones, we want to do what we can to make sure that any phone line could be used by you to file a report from the field.
Twitter and tags. Many of our VoteReport participants used Twitter as their primary method of sending in reports, and we expect that to be the case for the inauguration. We're planning to track all Tweets that are tagged either #dctrip09 (for people road-tripping to DC) or #inaug09 (for Inauguration Day itself). We'll then be able to display all the tweets as they come in. People can also use these tags when they upload to sites like Flickr, YouTube, etc, so we can aggregate that content as well. (Though you shouldn't use the # sign when tagging on Flickr or YouTube - that's just a quirk of tagging on Twitter.) Of course, we'll have to encourage people to use those tags in order for them to work, so we'll need your help getting the word out.
Texting. For people who want to send a text message but don't have Twitter, we hope to have an SMS shortcode available. Fingers crossed.
Maps, maps, maps. Thanks to the hard work of Andrew, Dave and others during VoteReport, we managed to pull together some pretty snazzy maps of all of this user-generated content as it came in. We plan to do the same for the inauguration, particularly in the week leading up to it, so we can track content submissions from people all over the country as they make their way to DC. One thing I'm hoping we can pull off is tapping into all those users with iPhones, since the GPS capability will make it possible to plot each person's route, see how far they've traveled and explore what they've uploaded. For January 20th itself, we're thinking about setting up a hyperlocal map of DC itself, so you can observe everyone's submissions over the course of the day, no matter where they happen to be around the National Mall. This might be the toughest thing to do in the project, particularly for content that's not submitted with GPS metadata. (Using zip codes as geolocators, for example, won't work to well when zoomed in at the street level.) So we may put together a series of DC-specific tags (#ellipse, #washmonument, #lincolnmemorial, #airandspace, etc) to make it easier to identify who's doing what where. Journalism students from American University will also be volunteering to cover the inauguration throughout the city, so we'll be highlighting their activities on the map as well.
Of course, all of this is going to be one big, messy experiment, particularly given the fact that many mobile network providers are forecasting serious congestion and possible outages due to the huge numbers of people using their phones simultaneously. Nonetheless, we think it's worth the effort, given how many people are planning to be involved in the inauguration. There are going to be lots of stories to tell that week, and we want to give you the tools to help share those stories.
Lastly, we'd love your help building this project. We don't have many resources to pull this off, and everyone is volunteering their time to do this. Dave and Andrew are tech geniuses, for sure, but they can't do it alone given the limited time between now and January 20th. So we're looking for some techies who can back them up. Our biggest need is for iPhone app developers who can help them repurpose the VoteReport app and get it in the App Store as soon as possible, so people will be able to install it prior to their roadtrips to DC. We'll also need some Rails, Google Maps and Javascript gurus. If you're interested in helping, please post a comment below and describe what skills you can bring to the table, and we'll be in touch with you soon. If you're on Twitter, you can also send me a note at @acarvin.
As for everyone else reading this post, we'd love your feedback. Does this seem like a worthwhile effort? Is there anything you liked or disliked about VoteReport that we should take into consideration? Are there any specific features or requirements we should try to work into the project? Please let us know what you think.
-- Andy Carvin
2:46 PM ET
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I had a long conversation with a colleague of mine about how easily comment threads can go sour. She said every community manager begins with a pleasant view of their online preserve, a view that values democracy, free speech and an open market place of ideas.
Then, after countless episodes of rants, name calling and non sequiturs (it's people like you who will soon have us living in a Nazi wonderland ruled over by a leader who makes Hitler look like a caring social worker), your ideals are dashed.
Where do these meandering, senseless rants come from? Trolls, people who say just about anything to get a rise out of others. Don't get me wrong, I think for the most part, we have a very strong let-the-community-sort-itself-out ethos. We welcome pointed comments from all points of view. We just ask that they also be constructive and substantive.
Trolls, however, are community members without convictions, arguing a point just to see the other person go red. They turn perfectly interesting threads into festering cesspools of resentment.
We've talked about what to do with them. We've stepped in and asked posters to stop breaking the discussion rules. We've blocked scads of comments, and even a few community accounts. Eventually, we came to the obvious conclusion that the only thing that will move this conversation forward is to ask the community to ignore them.
So, here's a new community rule: Do not "feed" the trolls. We encourage community members to report abuse by trolls. But we also ask that you not engage with trolls in the comment threads. Reacting to their provocations is exactly what they want.
If we see you feeding a troll, we will remove both the troll's comments and your responses.
I messaged with a few community members about implementing this new rule and the reaction was mostly positive. But everyone had one question: How do you define a troll?
I think I've already given some definition to the concept of a troll. But community member Peter Wilbur added a bit more: "I think of it," he wrote in an e-mail, "as someone who doesn't engage others in a discussion, who posts irrelevant comments, or who goes off on the same rant no matter the topic."
In some ways, a troll is like the person at the party who's a little too drunk and picks a fight with everyone. He (or she) is the one who makes things so hostile that everyone avoids a gathering as soon as they see him on the guest list.
Our oft-stated principle is that we want the NPR.org community to be home to a civil conversation that avoids insults, vulgarities and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. We ask for first and last names during the registration process because we want users to remember that behind our funny avatars and strong views are real human beings.
Trolls tend to hide behind the anonymity of the Internet to make community interactions less human. So, from now on, let's ignore them.
-- Eyder Peralta
1:51 PM ET
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