I'm disappointed that we're not going to be able to talk about Matt Barton's "The Future of Rational-Critical Debate in Online Public Spheres," because I felt this article was saying more than the previous articles this week.

Barton compares online writing to public communication in the 18th century, using Juergen Habermas's analysis of the past to explain the present. Blogs compare to letter writing and diaries (185). Blogs are directed to an audience, but have a very subjective nature. I hate blogging. Blogging requires being able to talk at length without input from others. I need interaction to have something to say. Sure, people can comment, but comments on a blog aren't a particularly good way to have a conversation. Blogs (according to Barton) build subjectivity, a necessary condition for the ideal public forum (185).

You want a conversation, use a message board. I still post at a message board for classes at Drury. Message boards encourage discussion, debate. People talk to each other, not at each other as in a blog. Message boards privilege arguments, not people. For this reason, Barton feels that blogs should come before boards. Before one gets caught up in arguments, one must have a clear sense of self. I think this is an issue of personality type. I think many people do fine jumping straight to argumentation. I feel that my time spent on Dr. Panza's discussion board helped clarify my sense of self quite well, as I'm an argumentative type. But I'm sure there are people who are more comfortable with a sense of ownership that comes with blogs.

But I love the lack of ownership in wikis. After a couple of weeks editing Wikipedia, I noticed that I didn't feel attached to my contributions. I was just giving my input, doing what I could to further the goal of the encyclopedia. But not every contributor feels that way, hence Wikipedia has a policy on the "ownership" of articles, to explain to newbies that it is not "their" article simply because they have worked on it.

I think these are great categories, but we can also remember that they overlap. Some blogs have active comment sections which behave much like discussion boards, with people talking to each other. I've participated in discussion boards which made use of "journal" threads, creating a thread author/owner, much like a blog. And Wikipedia has a strong behind-the-scenes community that features user pages (owned like blogs) and talk pages (for debates like discussion boards). So clearly we can't get away from all the different needs.