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UpMyStreet Conversations: Mapping Cyber to Space Tom Coates, Matt Webb & Stefan MagdalinskiApril 22 - 25 2003  Westin Hotel, Santa Clara, CA: 

UpMyStreet Conversations: Mapping Cyber to Space Tom Coates, Matt Webb & Stefan Magdalinski April 22 - 25 2003 Westin Hotel, Santa Clara, CA

UpMyStreet Conversations: 

UpMyStreet Conversations

“What happens when you tie web social software to precise physical locations?”: 

“What happens when you tie web social software to precise physical locations?”

I. Some background on UpMyStreet:: 

I. Some background on UpMyStreet: UpMyStreet is a UK-based local information publisher. Information on 1.7 million different postcodes 500 different statistics 700,000 business listings 500,000 classified ads

How do we geocode?: 

How do we geocode? UK postcodes: WC1A 1UP (for example) There are 1.7 million postcodes in the UK On average a postcode covers 14 houses They refer to only one area (street names don’t - there’s more than one “Oxford St” in the UK) They are small enough to group similar neighbours, large enough to be anonymous. Meaningful structure: WCIA contains WC1A 1 contains WC1A 1UP (and people know this) Everyone knows their postcode (and we support 70,000 placenames in case they don’t)

Postcode density around London: 

Postcode density around London

Postcode density close up…: 

Postcode density close up…

Aside: not the same as ZIP codes: 

Aside: not the same as ZIP codes There are only 33,000 5-digit ZIP codes in the US On average a ZIP code contains 8,600 people The higher resolution ZIP codes aren’t well known to the general public yet

UpMyStreet Ethos: 

UpMyStreet Ethos Civic engagement starts locally…

A local site for local people?: 

A local site for local people?

How do we get them talking to each other?: 

How do we get them talking to each other?

II. UpMyStreet Conversations: 

II. UpMyStreet Conversations

What is Conversations?: 

What is Conversations? Geocoded Message board Every threaded conversation has a specific geographical location. Designed to help you “meet you neighbours and discuss local issues”.

Walkthrough (1): 

Walkthrough (1) 1) You locate yourself by typing in a postcode

Walkthrough (2): 

Walkthrough (2) 2) when you start a conversation in that postcode it’s like putting a flag in the ground.

Walkthrough (3): 

Walkthrough (3) 3) people in neighbouring areas see their nearest conversations

What kinds of Conversations are people having?: 

What kinds of Conversations are people having? Organising real-world social events Information Gathering about other areas Organising and debating local politics Debating national interests with their local communities.

Why now?: 

Why now? The online discussion of real-world stuff is not new… There are loads of implementations of discussion that serve these purposes… The concept of location-aware content or geocoded content isn’t new either, although it is coming into its own now… But in order to pull those two things together, you need UBIQUITY…

III. So what happens to…: 

III. So what happens to… Privacy? Time? Moderation?

Privacy 1 - peoples’ locations : 

Privacy 1 - peoples’ locations If privacy wasn’t an issue we’d display where people live exactly. It would give other people on the board useful information which they could use to put your comments in perspective. But it would also reveal where you lived. Fix: We drew the focus out to a larger, named district.

Privacy 2 - proximity to conversations : 

Privacy 2 - proximity to conversations Users get a lot of value in knowing how close other users are to conversations and make judgments based upon locality. But what happens if the board says you’re 0 yards from a postcode? Fix: We instituted a level of obfuscation for those who are ‘less than 200 yards’ away.

Privacy 3 - location of conversations: 

Privacy 3 - location of conversations It’s important that users understand that each conversation has a specific location. But if you’re encouraging people to talk about their home postcode, they can inadvertantly reveal their location when they post… Fix: To gesture to the tight granularity, we had to just conceal the last two postcode characters.

Geocoding and Privacy…: 

Geocoding and Privacy… All sites that geocode user-generated content have to think long and hard about how to protect their users from real-world abuse…

Time (& Space) 1 The Axis of “Then” & “Now”: 

Time (& Space) 1 The Axis of “Then” & “Now”

Time (& Space) 2The Axis of “There” & “Here”: 

Time (& Space) 2 The Axis of “There” & “Here” UpMyStreet Conversations fundamental principle: Show me X nearest posts to Y location…

Time (and Space) 3What happens when you lose time: 

Time (and Space) 3 What happens when you lose time Users aren’t directed to new threads and don’t know when threads they’re interested in have been updated. The unpopular threads don’t vanish - users are surrounded by the “wall of boringness” It’s easy to lose threads that are active and interesting just because people have posted bad threads near to you. But if you lose time as a primary axis you lose some really valuable things...

Time (and Space) 4Ways of compensating…: 

Time (and Space) 4 Ways of compensating… Thread-tracking: “subscribing to Conversations” - a useful list of threads organised by last-updated. Threads are not lost, people can see when things change. Flagging number and time of replies: Trying to draw people’s attention to when threads have been updated. E-mail alerts: By default people are informed by e-mail (aggregated once a day) if their conversations have been updated. We built in things to mitigate these effects of time no longer being the primary axis, but we still needed to reintroduce some aspect of temporal organisation…

Time (and Space) 5Reintroducing time: 

Time (and Space) 5 Reintroducing time “Show me X nearest conversations to Y location last updated within time T” This principle is integrated into the board as this piece of navigation: This reintroduces time - but as a filter. People can choose to track updated conversations by switching to shorter time-frames and find lost conversations by extending to longer. They can also choose their own levels of thread ‘freshness’.

Time (and Space) 6The Axis of “Here” & “Now”: 

Time (and Space) 6 The Axis of “Here” & “Now” Two extremes of the axis: Very RECENT over a large area. Very LOCAL over a longer period of time.

Geocoding and Time…: 

Geocoding and Time… If you remove time as a primary axis by which to structure any online community, you have to find ways to compensate. Be warned, these may have side effects!

Moderation 1 - Local problems: 

Moderation 1 - Local problems There’s no default view which a moderator can share with all the site’s users - this makes it hard to prioritise problems on the board. The message board is potentially vast - a large volume of posts country-wide still wouldn’t overwhelm a local community’s discussions. Different standards for appropriate behaviour will emerge in different geographical areas (an interest-centered site is more likely to attract similar attitudes). A loud troublemaker in a small area can completely pollute that area’s perception of the board as a whole.

Moderation 2 - Local solutions: 

Moderation 2 - Local solutions In order to be able to find the problems, we have to partially rely on local people to tell us about them. Alerts process - “Help keep this site useful, informative and fun - if this thread is inappropriate, let us know” To help people set their own local standards of behaviour and governance we have developed a system of distributed moderation. The core of this is a process of “Find My Nearest Moderator”. Local problems have local solutions

Geocoding and Moderation…: 

Geocoding and Moderation… The moderation problems that emerge when you make a community operate on a local level can really only be solved by devolving moderation down to the local level as well…

IV. So… what’s next?: 

IV. So… what’s next? What else can be done with this kind of message-board… Mother & Baby Political Activism Networks of fans

How could we extend this kind of model into other areas?: 

How could we extend this kind of model into other areas? Local calendars that show upcoming events collaboratively edited and tailored to your area Helping to bridge online / offline groups Providing spaces for geocoded forums to collide different levels of space or geo / interest

A final word (from Stef)…: 

A final word (from Stef)… And we’ll end with a quick reminder of the conditions that allow sites like this to start to emerge now: Models exist for discussion about the real-world.. We have experience and models for geocoding.. AND NOW… We have enough people online to make combining those things practical. “The future of projects on the internet (and geocoded projects are the first good example) is to be enmeshed with the real world not parallel to it.”

Slide37: 

SO GET BUILDING! Lame ending…

 http://forums.upmystreet.com/tom@plasticbag.orgmatt@interconnected.orgstefan@upmystreet.com: 

http://forums.upmystreet.com/ tom@plasticbag.org matt@interconnected.org stefan@upmystreet.com