This is a problem that has come up many times in the last few years. In fact, there are a couple social networks I’ve worked on that discussed rating-style solutions.  I, ultimately, agree with the article that this is a problem of accountability, but I don’t know if something like rating really solves it.  After all, we don’t really go around rating people in the real-world.  We might internally denote good or bad experiences, but I doubt many people have given me a solid one to five star rating (not counting the occasional employer of course).

Perhaps, the underlying problem is in the technology itself. We simply don’t internalize text the way we do other forms of communication. We’re not wired that way biologically.  Text is a somewhat dehumanizing medium, which leads to a perception of no accountability. Rating systems might work as a stopgap measure, but probably won’t create a lasting solution (after all, people will game any system given the opportunity).  Crowd sourcing does have limitations, because crowds have a tendency of turning into mobs.

I suspect this is a growing pain of social media (or even the Internet as a whole). Consider the rapid increase in available printing presses during the mid-18th century. The pamphlets and propaganda published by our founding fathers wouldn’t exactly pass muster today. They frequently “trolled” one another via call and response on their respective papers (go back and read some if you have time, it’s quite entertaining when they break down to name calling). The only difference is there was a week or more lag between call and response. Even up through the early 20th century, news papers were the premier form of mass communication and left much to be desired (take Hurst of example, modifying news to sell product is hardly new). Hurst famously said, “Give me the pictures, I’ll give you the war.”  Today, responses occur within seconds and the negative feedback loop becomes an almost self-sustaining torrent of hate (and then somebody calls you Hitler).

My point is this, it took us the better part of 150 years to develop some form of decorum within the modern paper medium – and that’s debatable.

What if our technology outpaced our social development too much? I’m just thinking out loud here, but these solutions presume that people are generally polite and respectful. However, that might be a construct of physical interaction… a throw back to our biological need to avoid pissing off the alpha male , being the weakling left behind or getting injured by a predator. Those are survival instincts I can get behind.  Text, whether on the Internet or in print, removes you quite a bit from the consumer of the information. Without the gates inherent to print (cost and risk of using limited resources to print and distribute something), perhaps we just begin to realize how twisted people really are. Ayn Rand would be proud (although I’m more of a John Stewart Mills fan… never cared for Rand much).

Perhaps we just need to learn a new decorum of respect in an age when publishing is freely available to anyone. It took more than 150 years for news paper reporters and press owners to learn some respect (and they occasionally forget it still today). We don’t have that kind of time to figure this one out though. Once society begins to internalize social media and the Internet as an extension of yourself, things like trolling will be limited to people that actually behave this way (e.g., frat brothers). I don’t think simple ratings will a) create an accurate enough picture of the interactions or b) effectively minimize trolling in the first place.

Perhaps not as clever following René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images, yet still valid (I would have said that back in 1928, except I wasn’t invited to the French exhibition and webpages weren’t in common use yet… and my parents hadn’t been born).  Consider René’s point for a moment.  The image of a pipe cannot be smoked; therefore, it is not a pipe.  Surrealism has always fascinated me as a topic of philosophical discussion (which, I confess, might have been encouraged by my favorite college pastime – screwing with inebriated philosophy majors).  Regardless, the topic seems to have some weight in the world of user experience design (UXD).  But first, allow me to expand on my initial observation.

The Treachery of Images - 1928-1929

How do you define a webpage?  Is it the rendered output of the browser?  The content contained on the page?  The underlying code such as HTML, CSS, javascript, Flash and such?  The underlying ones and zeros representing ASCII and various compressed media files that store and transfer that code?  Is it the local copy stored temporarily for the browser?  The copy on my server (and if so, which one)?

As you can see, the whole concept of what we call a “webpage” gets pretty convoluted when you try to nail it down.  We all (or at least I hope all of you) understand implicitly what a webpage is.  But the definition seems to be a bit elusive.  Now, I’m pretty confident several of those proposed definitions could suffice, but none of them would really be complete.  That’s why, no matter how you define it, I can refute your definition and say “this is not a webpage.”

What’s the point of all this babbling about semantics?  How does it relate to something real (as opposed to surreal)?  I’m getting to that.  Don’t worry, you’re not the first person to suggest I over think things occasionally, so bear with me.

The activity of thinking this through forces you (or at least me) to think of things from a mindset that I wouldn’t normally consider.  As a practitioner of UXD, I consider a website the culmination of technologies and content delivered to your browser when a super special URI is accessed.  As an entrepreneur, a website is little more than one delivery vehicle for a potentially valuable solution to some problem a given group of people have.  As a businessman, a website is a potential asset created and maintained by the firm to increase revenue, decrease costs or maintain existing clients (assuming new clients will increase revenue).

Here’s the problem – These are all valid, yet juxtaposed, concepts.  Each of those definitions are valid for a website, but reconciling them is nearly impossible.  This is what UX designers deal with on a regular basis (perhaps it’s just me, but I’ll assume that at least some designers are like me).  The act of design is frequently an attempt to reconcile inherently incongruous juxtapositions (i.e., surreal).

Good design sometimes requires us to look past temporarily incongruous juxtapositions, so long as they cancel out in the end.

Frequently, to design a good experience, the designer must put himself or herself into a mental position that hasn’t been (or can’t ever be) directly experienced.  For instance, when I was working on Plum Keeper, I had to consider the experience from the primary user group’s perspective, which is pretty typical.  Unfortunately for me, the primary user group are mothers of small children with moderate computer skills. Being a single male (yes women of the Interweb I’m a single geek, how original) with no children (last I checked), the whole young mother thing is a bit unlikely to ever happen and certainly hasn’t occurred yet.  Furthermore, I’m hardly a computer guru, but I’ve been around the block a few times (I started on a C64 and have been online since the early 90s… good ol’ BBS’s).  I know plenty of mothers who I interviewed for the project, but as much as I sympathize with their situations I can never truly empathize.  This is where understanding (or at least pretending to understand) surrealism can help in reality.  The same skills used to digest those incongruous juxtapositions of surrealism will help feel out alternative design possibilities (e.g., me mothering a couple young kids).  I think the design Kyrie Robinson (who has the unfair advantage of being a mother of young children) and I came up with will work out pretty well, but only time will tell.

It reminds me of electrical engineering.  For those of you that haven’t studied the topic, it can get a bit confused.  Imaginary numbers supposedly simplify the algebra (if you insist on calling that mess simplified), but they have to cancel out in the end (seeing as we live in the non-imaginary world).  Now, when dealing with trivial cases, this seems obvious and is pretty easy to do.  My class was a bit different.  Hard doesn’t begin to explain it, but I’ll tell the story of my migraines and C+ worthy 17% another day.

So here’s the grand wisdom (or at least a good idea) that I’ve garnered from surrealism, which I use in product design:  Good design sometimes requires us to look past temporarily incongruous juxtapositions, so long as they cancel out in the end.  Although I might not be able to empathize with a mother of young children, I can attempt to sympathize.  In doing so (if I do my job well), I create an experience that will effectively solve a problem for those mothers.  The imaginary number of my design efforts (me as a mother) cancels out (real mothers like it too).