yoomoot pre-launch blog

A recent discussion on Twitter about the value of international aid reminds me of why I co-founded yoomoot in the first place. I frequently come across well-argued points of view that throw my own worldview into disarray. This article rubbishing the value of international aid is one example. This article claiming that the US has kidnapped Haiti is another. I don't know how to ignore these kinds of articles. They are bombs exploding how I perceive the world and I don't know enough to rebutt them. So how can can I just forget about them and blithely continue believing my original, settled worldview?

I think that's a good thing: I consciously try to be open-minded and to doubt my own views. However I don't actually enjoy the consequent disorientation of not knowing whether my worldview is in need of drastic readjustment. The tension of not-knowing grates on me and trying to resolve it can easily become an obsession.

The good thing is that many of these big questions are resolveable: some arguments are better than others. The difficult part is getting to a point where I can accurately assess all the competing arguments, and also put out my own views in a way that can be criticized by others. That takes time; too much time. Partly that's because of the deficiencies of existing social media tools.

That's where yoomoot comes in: it's designed as a place where you can rapidly get a logically-structured overview of a big conversation. By requiring everything to be worded in questions and answers yoomoot forces people to think about the focus of what they're saying and allows their thoughts to be visually organized by those focuses. This is a key part of what makes yoomoot conversations much more useful than standard online conversations: a logically-organized tree of questions is much easier to consume than pages of entirely unstructured text.

Unfortunately we've discovered that the mental paradigm shift of rewording everything as a Q&A is a stumbling block for newcomers. It's not surprising because the advantages of rewording your thoughts as Q&A are only visible after the conversation has gotten big. When you're actually trying to express your thoughts, it just seems cumbersome and unnatural (at least until you've got used to it). I see it as yoomoot's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. If yoomoot fails it will be because people don't the see the point of, or can't be bothered to deal with, having to reword their thoughts as Q&As.

I'll delete this if ever we try to raise funding but I honestly don't particularly care if yoomoot fails to make lots of money. If a community of only 100 diverse, thoughtful people regularly use yoomoot I will still be committed to it when I'm 90. I am obsessed with yoomoot because I am obsessed with unanswered questions. Not the one-off, isolated questions which can be answered on Yahoo! Answers or Stack Overflow and their clones. Certainly not questions that can be answered in 140 characters. I'm obsessed with the questions that can only be answered by asking other questions: questions leading to questions leading to questions. The questions the answers to which we, consciously or unconsciously, found our whole lives.

Some people want more
For most people the Internet is three things: A means of acquiring information, a means of entertainment and a means of communicating with friends, family and colleagues. The Web is fantastic at all three. But for some people, the Web has a fourth dimension: the Agora. These are people who want to share their questions, insights and ideas with the world, not just the miniscule fraction of people who happen to cross their lives normally. They're people who want to change the world, and also to learn from the world in an active, questioning, interactive way, not a passive way. What are the tools available to such people?

Commenting is ephemeral
The obvious choice is forums and comment threads. But these media are chronically disorganized. On popular threads, new comments are immediately drowned out by all the noise – brief flickers in an unnavigable stream. Moreover, there's no effective way of coalescing all your comments into a coherent whole. A list of all your comments would be a list of incoherent conversation snippets rendered senseless by the absence of context. These problems make commenting a poor way of establishing an online presence and sharing your ideas with others.

Blogging is lonely
Consequently, many people reserve their most carefully-crafted thoughts for personal blogs. Blogs are organized. Blog posts are self-contained, easily editable, easily categorized and are concentrated around your personal online identity. The problem is that the vast majority of bloggers are talking into a void. It's very very hard for a new blogger to get to the point where they receive regular comments. I know from experience that this can be demoralizing for would-be bloggers since feedback is generally the reward which keeps bloggers writing.

(and we're weaker alone)
This lack of feedback also wastes the potential of Internet. Insight, criticism and approval from others refines and sharpens our thinking. It also makes for better reading for everyone else. High-quality dialogues are much more enlightening than high-quality monologues.

The Web Citizen's Dilemma
So people engaged with the Internet as the world's Agora are faced with a dilemma: Should I submerge my work in the ephemeral liveliness of forums or showcase it in the lonely isolation of the typical blog?

yoomoot is social blogging
yoomoot resolves this dilemma by merging blog posts and comments into a single format: the moot. The nested Q&A structure by which moots are linked ensures that every moot can be simultaneously a conversation snippet and a standalone article, meaning that your profile page, which features a list of all your conversation contributions, acts as both a personal blog, and a gateway to wider discussions.

Problem: Rudeness
How many people have been put off online discussions because of the sniping, personal attacks and general needless rudeness that is all too common on public forums? The anonymity of the Web creates incredible openess but it also licenses incredibly bad behaviour.   yoomoot's structured format prevents the one-on-one personal attacks that are at the heart of most online incivility.

Solution 1: It's hard to hate via Q & A
If you dislike something in a standard online discussion, you simply click reply and start criticising. In yoomoot, you can only criticise something by asking a question about it, and then answering that question. The question puts a distance betwen your criticisms and the original disagreeable comment. You're replying to a question, which is neutral, not to the opinion you disagree with. As a result, personal criticisms don't make sense: nobody says 'you are wrong and stupid' to a question.

Solution 2: No personally insulting questions
The only way round this would be to ask a question specifically about another user, e.g. "is UserX stupid?". Therefore such questions are banned on yoomoot.

Solution 3: A free speech policy that distinguishes between 'what' and 'how'
The ban described above is the one key exception to yoomoot's guiding principle of 'free enquiry into any issue'. Importantly, this pro-free-speech policy does not mean that users can be as offensive as they like. Being offensive in a way that is not necessary to make your point is prohibited on yoomoot. yoomoot believes in free speech for what can be discussed but restrictions on how it is discussed. We think this is necessary to encourage as many people as possible to participate in online discussions.

Problems: Discussions get fuzzy, aimless and take too long
Discussions – all discussions, not just online ones – tend to meander off-topic and lose focus; and when particularly complex issues are discussed, there is frequently a failure to separate distinct arguments and assumptions, leading to confused thinking. yoomoot's format encourages structured, goal-oriented thinking in discussions, leading to better and quicker decision-making.

Solution 1: Focus is a requirement
yoomoot requires discussions to be phrased only in terms of questions and answers. This ensures that everything we say has a clearly defined purpose – it's either a question or an answer to a question.

Solution 2: Meandering is signposted
If a discussion meanders off-topic, this will be clearly signaled on yoomoot because a new follow-up question will have been created. This makes it easy for users to ignore tangents that aren't relevant.

Solution 3: Complex issues are logically broken down
On a standard forum, if you come across a post you disagree with, you will reply with a comment addressing everything in the posts in one go. On yoomoot, the Q & A format means that you have to address every 'questionable' claim one-by-one. The argument is thus broken down into separate component issues and the result is much clearer thinking.

Right now, yoomoot is just another discussion site. But if it were big, it would be more than just another discussion site, because it would be a place where the virtual crowd's conversation could be quickly and clearly understood, instead of being an overwhelming babble, as all existing mass-conversations are. This means the Powers That Be could realistically absorb what was being said. That's yoomoot's government 2.0 agenda.

Unfortunately the current version of yoomoot isn't quite right for all societies. Would it be right for the People's Republic of China for example? Probably not. That's why we're very excited to be announcing yoomute. While on yoomoot everyone posts answers to questions, on yoomute, only government officials do so. On yoomoot you can 'agree', 'disagree' or be 'unsure about' answers, while on yoomute 'agree' is the only option. The benefits to social harmony could be revolutionary (in the style of the Russian October Revolution). While the verb 'moot' means 'discuss', the verb 'mute' means 'quieten'. So you could say we're going from 'you discuss' to 'you be quiet!'

Thank you to mackenzy for inspiring this new vision.

Problem: Chaotic, overwhelming or uninformative notification systems
Standard collaboration tools' internal inconsistency makes it difficult to keep track of replies and to monitor all relevant new content. Notification systems are also hampered by showing either too little – requiring users to manually check for replies and updates – or too much – overwhelming users by telling them about every tiny edit and update.   yoomoot makes it easy to see everything that’s new and relevant without ever being overwhelmed by a deluge of notifications.

Solution 1: One 'inbox' for tracking everything in a consistent way
Because yoomoot merges wikis, forums, comments, blogs and bookmarks into a single format , all the items you're interested in tracking can be viewed together at a glance. This glance is directed at the favorite moots interface: a list of moots which works similarly to an email inbox. If a moot has been changed or has a new reply, it will appear in bold and float to the top of the list.

Solution 2: Detailed auto-highlighting of specific changes, when you need it
This means that you are never bombarded with notifications detailing every new edit and reply. We leave those kinds of details for when you actually visit the changed moot. When you do visit it, every change is automatically highlighted. If later you forget how a moot has changed, you can use the history interface to compare changes between specific dates. We also recognise that your interest in certain changes is dependent on your relationship with the moot. For example, we won't bother telling you that a moot has been recommended or has a new revision request unless you're the author of that moot.

Solution 3: Conveniently discover relevant new content
The favorite users and favorite categories interfaces are for discovering relevant new content. They provide a convenient way of checking what's new in the subjects you're interested in and what the people you're interested in are writing and recommending.

Solution 4: Rapid access to relevant updates and new content
The 'favorites' interfaces are always one click away on the yoomoot site header. This central positioning is a recognition that responses to your contributions, and new content related to people and subjects you care about, are at the heart of everything that social media is about.

Solution 5: Customizable notifications
Finally, yoomoot is flexible with regard to the way that you receive notifications. Email-people can choose to receive email notifications, RSS-people can receive them as an RSS/Atom feed. You can receive email/feed notifications about all your favorites, or just the most important ones. Either way, we won't flood your inbox or reader with every little change, we'll just tell you that your favorite moot/user/category has changed, and wait till you next visit it before sending you anything else. (This solution is not implemented yet)