Recently on the Group Psychotherapy mailing list I am part of, the question came up about whether members could copy portions of emails for articles they were working on. This brought up some very good discussions about copyright, privacy, and ethics. Underlying all of this was the question of how rules get made. One person observed how the group was reluctant to establish rules. Another asked why rules the list needed rules, at which point the first person rested his case.

With Second Life, there seems to be similar resistance to effective rule making. As I noted in my SLNN Reporters Notebook, people claim that Daniel Linden said LL keeps its policies deliberately vague because, "as soon as they draw a solid line, someone will walk up to the line, lean over it and spit over it."

Are these, and other examples of difficulties establishing online rules a function of the online environment? In an online environment, the question of authority arises. Who has authority on a mailing list or in an online community? Is it the moderators, the company that runs the community, some combination? If it is some sort of combination, how is that worked out? To what extent should rules be established by direct democracy or by a representative democracy where rule makers are elected? What role does the absence of cues that we receive in face-to-face interactions play in people’s resistance to rule making online?

Is there something bigger going on here? Do people generally resist rule making, not wanting to be the disliked rule giver? Does this happen independent of the means of communication?

Next week, there will be an E-governance barcamp in Boston. Steven Clift has been working on e-democracy since 1994. Yet these efforts all seem to get drowned out with all the e-politics. It seems like everyone wants to argue the political points, but somehow e-governance initiatives don’t get the same amount of focus.

Does it make sense to have an experiential mailing list focused on e-governance? Can virtual environments like Second Life or Central Grid establish effective e-governance? How useful will the e-governance barcamp be? It will be fun to find out.