Kim Gentes

(my official computer geek picture).

It's funny.. People are funny. And that is cool. Some folks were asking why I chose to have a blog where I moderate the posts, so I figure a little explanation is in order. (Update, Nov 19, 2006: this has actually now changed. I don't moderate posts to the blog any longer. People can now post responses at will, though I do quality checks on posted content after the fact to make sure people are not putting junk in the blog.)

Back in the day... It was 1993. I was working in a big company with techno-job doing coolish fun stuff for a geek like me. Said company just opened up the network of our local systems so that we could email folks outside the company. I ventured out and started contacting folks as far as I could, for no particular reason, other than to see what this all meant. No one even was talking about anything called the internet. It was the word people used, sure, but it wasn't like it was sexy or cool or hip. It was just some collective bundle of wires that some company's had risked to get out and connect up with, along with the ironclad government/defense systems that were already linked in, and the willy-nilly universities and colleges that where trying to share information. I mean people thought, yah, this might be useful to share files, maybe do some electronic mail and stuff. There was FTP, something called golpher, email, Usenet, bitnet, and just a touch of WWW. The official definition of the W3C (what would define the HTML language for webpages) was still being written. The first version of Mosaic (precursor to Netscape) had been released by NCSA's Marc Andreessen. There were literally only 200 or so known reliable webservers online at the time. By March, 1994 Marc Andreessen left NCSA and started Mosaic Communications Corp" (later Netscape).

During 1994, we got interested in bringing a group together to help worship leaders with worship related stuff.. I tried to get it going in newsgroups, but that ultimately failed (see newsgroup posting here). Eventually, I found a friend at University of Colorado and we started the worship list. Soon he left or something (never found out what) and I had a list of email addresses with no server host for an email discussion group. Through yet another friend, I found a home at the UIUC (university of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) for the worship list. After university bandwidths continued to struggle, we moved it to a Christian non-profit called www.grmi.org, and eventually ended up hosting it ourselves through www.praise.net. This trek was all about communications, email specifically. The discussion group grew into several hundred and people would yak about everything worship. Mostly. We also participated online through newsgroups at news:rec.music.christian which would barely pass for being PG-13 on most days.

Sometime in 1995, myself and a few others started a webpage for worship that linked in the worship list email discussion group and became a landing spot for the worship FAQ (a e-database of info that I had originally developed in Filemaker pro on a Mac). A couple friends I found online (Jon Ried & Brad Donison) took my text flat file and converted the data into useful stuff on the web (using CGI/Perl). It was all getting quite hideous in size, but we had many people who wanted to help, so there was a lot of people involved in putting the web site, FAQ and discussion group to use. By this time we discovered free flow communications is great for stirring conversations, but not good at helping the content to either be focused or necessarily helpful/encouraging. We implemented moderators on the Worship List in about 1996, and that model has been running now for 10 years on that list. It is the first and longest running list on Worship, and in my mind still remains the most helpful to people/leaders conversing and supporting one another in worship ministry.

By 1997, I had been on email and news discussion for 3 years and realized that there were a few universal truths about e-conversations:

• people like to talk
• people want relationships
• the internet is a place where people can have relationships without responsibility
• people often use the internet as a place where they can talk/take relationship without being responsible for their words.

This is why we put moderation in the Worship List discussion group the year before, and why so much junk mail, newsgroups and forums are practically useless even to this day. The e-world is much different than the real life world. In real life, if you speak something to someone, you are physically present to encounter the response. In e-life, you can spout off what you want, and even if people would like to know who you are, you can hide. That is not conversation. I think talking without "owning" your words is gossip at best and possibly even abuse when taken to the extreme. If you care enough to speak, chat or whatever, it only means something real if you back up the words with a person, a being, a friend, a colleague. Further, no one cares who says anything if they aren't big enough to own up to saying it.

Back in the day (1997)... is when I started publishing a column called the "Worship Thought". It was just quotes at first, but quickly became a bit of a binary log of my thoughts ( http://www.praise.net/quote/index.php?q=classic ). Yep, a blog before blogs where cool. People would often respond to the content of the columns, but in the context of a the moderated discussion of the worship list (archives began in 1997 for the list, which you can find here http://www.fni.com/worship/). Some times people would email me privately in disdain or approval or just "yo.. makes me think".

By early 1998, I was involved in starting up a number of worship related resource sites, including one that became my full time job (Worshipmusic.com). In the context of that, I managed to write several editorial columns over the years (though not as much lately). From time to time, we experimented with forums, chat rooms, other discussion lists, web sites and more. What we found was that people will say what they want on the internet if they aren't given some "netiquette" thoughts to help frame the conversation. As soon as people felt they needed to be responsible with their words they either began being helpful to one another and conversing in a way that removed slander and gossip, or they left the discussion in hopes of "freer" realms. This didn't mean things didn't get heated or people not opinionated or subjects controversial. Far from it. It meant we allowed our speech online to become what we knew it should offline.. That is, to be salt and light, instead of angst and irresponsible spew.

Back in the day.... ya, back in the day... its a good thing the internet is so much more advanced now and you don't have to worry about people spouting spew anymore online... that's a relief... I don't think free speech has evolved much with the internet.. for those who didn't have a voice, it is certainly a possible vehicle.. But its doubtful that any of the forefathers of America ever envisioned free speech without the personal responsibility from the speaker (owning his words).. They had to own their words of declaration, speaking against the powers of their time, forging the constitution, negotiating our lands, pursing a system of justice for all... They owned their words, and it is on whose ownership we owe our freedom...

So you can spout all you want... If its worthwhile, someone might listen... If you don't own up and choose to be anonymous, its words from darkness... If you stand and speak into the community's you live in, with words that reflect your life, people will not only listen.. They may follow...

Kim