The conclusions presented in this article are based of four months of observation of two asynchronous on-line discussion groups: a mailing list called "Politics" and a web forum called "U.S. Politics/Current Events.

Politics is a mailing list devoted to political discussion.  In general, the discussion tends to revolve around United States politics (non-U.S. political situations, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, tend to be discussed in terms of U.S. involvement).  “Politics” is interpreted broadly by the list, including socio-political issues like “family values” as well as governmental issues.  For example, issues surrounding Laura Schlessinger, a controversial radio personality, were discussed at length in several threads. At present, it has 295 subscribers; however, a majority of the posting is done by a much smaller number of participants, as few as ten individuals.  It tends to produce just under 100 messages a day.  According to the list configuration, the list has three administrators.  However, only one, Linda Saboe, is active in administrating the list. The official rules of the list are minimal: no personal attacks, no racial, ethnic, or sexual slurs, and no “personal vendettas.”  The welcome message also prohibits  “mail bombing” (sending large amounts of email to a participant in order to overload her/his account),  threats against administrators, and “spam” (advertisements).   Administration tends to be very minimal - what could arguably be interpreted as personal attacks and vendettas do occur, and the administrator only intervenes in extreme cases.

 U.S. Politics, Current Events is actually a larger web site devoted to articles, links, and discussion of  current political issues in the United States.  The site is one of many at About.com, a web network of topically organized sites devoted to everything from “pregnancy to cars, palm pilots to painting, weight loss to video game strategies” (http://ourstory.about.com/index.htm).  Each site is run by an individual “Guide,” who provides articles, links, and information, and who moderate the included discussion forums.  The forum technology is provided by Delphiforums.com, a web forum service, and about.com forums are included in the Delphiforums directory.

 USPCE, as it’s abbreviated, is run by John Aravosis, a political consultant and activist best know for the “Stop Dr. Laura” campaign (a national campaign to protest Dr. Laura’s television show, largely in response to her statements about gays and lesbians).  The site’s web forum is extremely active, accumulating as many as 100 posts a day.  Membership is somewhat different than for a mailing list: while participants must obtain an account with either About.com or Delphiforums.com, the forum itself does not have a discrete membership.  However, as with Politics, the forum tends to have a set of regular participants who account for a bulk of the activity.  The rules are listed in the User Agreement and Guidelines pages (see Appendix  ).  Rules include copyright notices, admonitions against “Activities that support or espouse non-consensual and/or extreme violence or sexual aggressiveness towards another individual or group for any reason,” “Activities that support or espouse hatred towards another individual or group based upon any criteria (including race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, beliefs, etc.),” and illegal activity.  Interestingly, there are no specific rules against personal attacks, one of the more common rules on discussion forums.