A related trend I’m appreciating is the increasing number of tools available to help make online conversations more personalized.  A particular tool I’d like to encourage you to start using right now is that of a Gravatar – a “globally recognized avatar” – which displays an image of your choosing (sometimes a photo of you) next to your contributions to online conversations.

Here are 4 reasons why you should:

1. If you’re someone who participates in online discussions (responding to blog comments, adding forum posts, etc.), uploading your gravatar image is a way of creating a consistent and personalized online identity across all of the sites you visit.  Just sign up, upload your image, and you’re done.
2. If you’re a content publisher (blogger, forum administrator, chat room host), using gravatars gives your participants the ability to express their identity beyond just text characters on a page or a clever nickname.  This strengthens your online community, adds some color and flare, and is a free, easy way to do it.  Some people are even using them on technical conference badges.
3. Gravatars are secure and consolidated – gravatar owners aren’t able to tell when you make use of their images, and you can always change or remove your image later if you decide you don’t want it public.  The images are hosted on the Gravatar.com server, so a change in that one place instantly takes effect on any site where you’ve contributed.
4. Gravatars are easy to implement – there are plugins available for most known content publishing platforms (e.g. WordPress, Movable Type, Drupal, Joomla) and even some desktop applications (e.g. the Mac OS X Addressbook).  There are reference implementations available for most languages used to build web pages and online applications.  This means that we can leave behind the days of implementing our own profile image management systems, or at least start to come to a better standard about how they should work.

I’m posting below the Gravatars of the last 9 people who commented on this blog.  As of this initial writing, only one of them has uploaded their image, the rest are just the default image – won’t you help me make that square (or any comments you might post below) a little more pretty by showing us your smiling mugshot?  (The images below will update as people upload, so check back.)

As I thought about these observations (which I suppose are fairly obvious to those who hop between cultures), I realized that I’m definitely someone who prefers to be challenged, and who gets the most out of a conversation when I feel safe doing the challenging. But I know that in the course of seeking healthy dialog, especially dialog in the public sphere amongst relative strangers, it can still be quite a balancing act to engage in challenge with a positive outcome. And I worry that our fear of challenging or being challenged, or being out of practice with actually doing it, means that we end up missing out on great opportunities for conversation and building shared vision with those around us.

So I thought it worth writing down some of the ways that I find useful to challenge and be challenged, in hopes of eliciting comments and refinements from others who find themselves aware of their own tendencies and preferences in these areas.

First, I should be more clear about what I mean when I talk about challenging someone. If you’re already clearly engaged in a debate or dialog about an issue (such as you might be at a book club, or debate competition, or editorial board meeting), then you may be challenging each others` perspectives or opinions, but that’s not the kind of challenge I’m referring to. I’m talking about a setting like the scenario mentioned above, where there’s no default expectation that a statement or expressed view is in question, or that the listeners will react in any remotely opposing way to the speaker.

A dinner gathering where conversation is typically kept polite. A hallway conversation about the day’s news. A social exchange in a public place. These seem like settings where if someone says “Red really is the greatest color out there, and so…” and you happen to think that red is simply the worst color out there, you generally aren’t expected to interrupt them to say so, if you say anything at all. The challenge is a turning point where the chit-chat has ended, where the weather is no longer relevant, and the topic at hand is of importance to those conversing. And of course, I’m not talking about colors here….for me, red is politics, red is reproductive rights, red is money management, red is peak oil and climate change, red is how to raise kids properly, red is peace and justice issues, red is religion and spirituality.

What do I get out of being challenged? I’m asked to reconsider my views, to explore where they came from, to understand where I’m at with them now – that’s exciting! I learn how to communicate better, to make myself understood in ways that I don’t currently know – that’s great! I get to know viewpoints that are not my own, to really understand them, and perhaps even to adopt them – wonderful. When I think of times in my life when I’ve grown the most, felt the most alive, they are times when I’ve been challenged into new ways of looking at the world.

So, If someone wants to tell me that I’m wrong about red, to challenge me on my views, here are some ways that really work for me:

• Speaking plainly and boldly about how you feel. “Chris, I think you’re just wrong about that, and here’s why.” I respect it when feelings and views are not diluted out of concern for ego or politeness, though I certainly understand and frequently give in to that impulse.
• Maintaining the tone of the conversation even as its importance or intensity may escalate. I appreciate that some people express themselves best through raising their voice or gesturing wildly, but I generally don’t respond well to it. I think emphasis and importance can be shown in ways that don’t alienate someone (like me) who wants to hear and process the words as clearly as possible, without distraction. I fully realize that this is just something I can hope for, but not expect out of many people.
• Understanding my perspective fully. As I always strive to do for someone in a conversation, I can most engage another when I know that they are trying to see an issue from where I stand, and ask the questions necessary to get there. If it is always left to me to “make my position clear” and the other person isn’t invested in helping, then things quickly turn to debate and thoughts of victory for victory’s sake, instead of genuine mutual understanding.

Here are some things that really don’t work for me:

• Interrupting. If I’m interrupting someone, then we’re not having a conversation, we’re exchanging monologues, and we’re back to trying to win instead of trying to understand or agree. If someone is interrupting me, then I no longer have any sense of confidence in their ability to hear me out, and I just want the conversation to be over. I know that many, many interruption-laden conversations happen every day in families, businesses, and public spaces every day, and I know that it seems normal to some, but for me it’s a symptom of the declining quality of important dialog.
• Justifying a challenge based solely on vague personal declarations of understanding about how the world is. I’m fully in support of having conversation in this country that is LESS focused on the might and power of logic to the detriment of emotion and less cerebral forms of connection. But, if you’re going to tell me that I’m wrong about red, you can’t JUST tell me that it’s because you feel that way: “Chris, you’re wrong about red because everything I’ve ever experienced tells me so.” Whatever your reasoning, or emoting, or deep sense of right and wrong that guides you, you have to find a way to help me see it if we are to understand each other.

When I challenge someone, there are a number of things I take into consideration:

• Is this a situation where challenging this person can have a good and worthwhile outcome? Is it possible for us to have an exchange that is meaningful? If not, is the challenge about an issue that is important enough to go ahead anyway (i.e. standing up for something on principle more important than my relationship with the person I’m challenging)? Will the resulting conversation be impacted negatively by the setting? Would a written challenge be more effective?
• When I challenge someone’s views, can I do it in a way that authentically represents my own views or that respectively questions the reservations I have about their views, or is it just going to be a negation of something they’ve said that leaves no real path forward for them in the conversation? Am I challenging out of care, or out of the desire to be right?
• When does it end? If we challenge each other, and we don’t come to some point of understanding or clarity, how will we find closure? Does the other person want to resolve the challenge as much as I do (or more, or less)? What kinds of signs should I look for that they’re done? When and how will I express my need to end the conversation?

That’s what I have for now. What do you think? Do you like to challenge or be challenged in a conversation? If not, why not? If so, what methods or approach do and don’t work for you?

Since then, I’ve used a few other handles that were more appropriate and cool (to me, anyway), but lately, I’ve decided that the handle that best represents of my personality online is the same one that represents it offline: my real name. And in most cases, I’m of the opinion that we should all use our real names when engaging in online discussion and community-building.

It’s sometimes a suggestion that makes people uncomfortable, so I want to provide some additional reasoning to consider and discuss:

Participating in a healthy public life is an important part of the human experience. Online discussions are now a part of the public sphere, and when used well, can bring people together in ways that complement and enhance real-world community.

To truly participate in public life, we must do so as ourselves, with our identities revealed. Part of the usefulness of the public conversation about issues that matter to us is the accountability that it demands. If we really want to make a certain neighborhood better, then we need to hear from people who live in that neighborhood and know that they speak from experience. If we really want to flesh out the best ways to approach sustainable economic policy, we need to know who is at the table and what resources, interests, and agendas they bring. If we just want to get to know each other better, we need trust and intimacy before we can form any real bonds. As Duc Francois de La Rochefoucauld wrote, “almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to to hide them.”

The corollary to the great accountability that comes with real names, as Amitai Etzioni notes, is that “people who use aliases are on average much more abusive, unfair, and intemperate than those who disclose their true identity.” I’ve found this to be true in 100% of the online communities I’ve participated in. When you can dismiss or berate someone’s views without any real accountability to them, it is likely to happen more often (even at the hand of those who wish to be accountable). When you can attack an institution or business or person or idea from behind the shield of a pseudonym, it is so much easier to take off the gloves of civil interaction and dialogue that most of us wear and trade them for sharp words, hyperbole, and points made only to harm, not to inform or improve. When we do not have to consider the impact of our words on another, even if only through a facial expression or grunted response, we can be reckless with their hearts.

I hear some recurring responses to the suggestion that we user our real names online:

Bad people will exploit my vulnerability and come after me. If I am a woman, I will be stalked. If I am a liberal, Bill O’Reilly will have FOX security drag me away.

Maybe they will. In all my years of having personal information posted on the Internet, I have never had a problem where the voluntary online availability of that information was itself the cause for some sort of personal invasion of privacy. Anecdotally speaking, this seems to be true for the Internet as a whole; in the “nightmare scenarios” you hear about, either the perpetrating party already had it out for the victim, or the victim disregarded advice like “don’t trust strangers with the pass-code to your life savings account.” We are rarely targeted for just “being somewhere” in the real world (where not only might our names be available, but our appearances, habits, and quirks), so why do we expect to be targeted for just “being somewhere” as our real selves, online?

I can’t fully point out the faults of my employer/family/government/neighbor if they know who I am – the possibility for retaliation demands anonymity.

In some cases, perhaps. I find that any system which cannot stand up to the criticism of those who participate in it, or any relationship which does not permit respectful and faithfully-engaged conflicts, does not deserve to survive. If you’re at the point of wanting to enumerate your grievances in an online discussion, then presumably you’ve already gone through the standard approaches – direct confrontation, letter writing, reporting concerns to the equivalent of an ombudsman of an organization, etc. By that time in most cases, everyone who would care about finding out your identity because of what you say online should already know your point of view anyway.

It’s just too uncomfortable to use my real name online.

Of course, if you’re uncomfortable using your real name, don’t. I’m not saying we can’t have authentic interactions as anonymous parties, and in most cases I would rather we participate in the conversation as an alias than not at all. But in doing so, I hope we reflect on what we’re withholding from those around us, and what we’re missing out on as a result.

Different people have different degrees of comfort with what they’ll reveal online, even when they are trying to use their real identity. For some, a full name is as far as they’ll go, while others will post intimate details of their daily routines, love lives, financial doings. There’s certainly a line we can cross from “being ourselves online” to exhibitionism.

There are plenty of times when it is appropriate (or more fun) to use an alias online. For example:

• The subject of discussion or the existence of the discussion itself is illegal or ethically vague (assume that your communications are being read by an NSA analyst or even your local law enforcement)
• The discussion centers around revealing information where sources need protection (e.g. journalistic or crime solving endeavors)
• The quality of the exchange is enhanced by abstracting online personality from real-world personality (areas where discrimination has traditionally been present, or where power dynamics would typically prevent authentic conversation)

My hope, though, is that where possible, we will tend toward being ourselves in our online personalities. The world is complicated enough and we’re isolated from each other enough that anything we can do to make the world a little smaller, including using our real names, is for the better.

“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and
hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives
of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods
of light and life no longer flow into our souls.”
–Elizabeth Cady Stanton

It’s too bad, then, that we often seem to be trending toward the further diluting and replacing of a strong public life, especially for our younger community members. In Richmond, the Common Council recently decided to enact a new curfew that restricts people under the age of 18 from being out past a certain time of the evening, and threatens to fine the parents of those people progressively higher for each offense.

As with most laws that say “if you’re under a certain age, the government requires that you do or do not ____”, I think it’s yet another unnecessary and misguided transfer of a community’s power and responsibility to decide how it wants to live away from the community members themselves (especially parents and children) and to the government and accompanying police state. (Do we still honestly believe that the time elapsed since birth is such a precise measure of maturity, self-discipline, ethics or responsibility?) But in this case, it’s one of those particularly draconian measures that says “you, human, must stay in this particular physical space from this time of day to that time of day.” Do we really want that kind of imperative coming from lawmakers who don’t live with us, who don’t know what our private lives entail?

I know that one argument for this kind of curfew is that it helps keep order in the city, reducing the amount of policing that has to be done. The implication here is that (A) people under the age of 18 are the predominant cause of disorder, and (B) a form of order that involves restricting our public lives by threat of physical force and economic hardship is a desirable one. I would suggest that neither A nor B are generally true, and that by trying to relieve the burden of policing our streets during certain hours, we pursue outcomes that are far inferior to creating a community where the streets are a positive part of a healthy public life.

It’s putting a band-aid on symptoms and avoiding the deeper conversations we could have about why we don’t think we can live together well without a curfew. It’s an example of a world run by old minds that think “how can I keep these bad things from happening?” instead of new minds that think “how can we best create the world we want to live in?” And it makes you start to think about what other programs are in place that artificially hold us back or keep us confined, when there are much more important things we should be spending our time and energy on.