Sandor, thank you for the superb and articulate post. And let me add, Have I seen you in the hallway here at FutureMonitor? (Nah, kidding.) It's just that your comments/questions could almost have emerged straight out of our constant internal discussions about how to push the still oh-so-beta (alpha?) site forward. To respond specifically to your ideas, though:

--  FOCUSED FORUMS. "Focused forums" is exactly where we're headed, in the short-term at least (and maybe the long-, we'll see). We took a small pass at them in the Trends Survey-triggered "Info overload" discussion here. But that didn't yield the outcome--the "product," as you say--that we're all after. So the next set of focused forums have been conceived much more ambitiously: for each subject/theme we are locating and bringing to FutureMonitor a leading international expert to "host" the forum (to be available to answer questions, provoke discussion, add insight, debate members of the FM sensing network) as well as other expert observers who have valuable points of view. Also we'll do some research that enables us to provide network members with relevant background info and context. The point: to facilitate an enriched conversation about concerns that the network has already underscored in one way or another, such as through the Trends Survey. (The first handful of "focused forums" now planned will address: the business implications of the aging population; prediction markets as the next big management tool; China's emergence; the reinvented corporation--what matters, what doesn't; and the near-term threats/opportunities posed by energy issues.

--  QUESTIONS/"PRODUCT." The only reason to nurture enriched conversations, though, is to achieve that "product" you speak of: "a defined group perspective" (well-put, Sandor) on the concern at hand. In the short run, that will mean working hard to state questions that most need answering--and then trying to get the FM network and the experts (who become part of the network) to answer them.
     An approach, prompted by your comments: How about we create a "pinned" topic at the top of each focused forum that asks, simply, "What are the questions?" When it comes to China, you might name your query about the "bundle of stocks" (a question that's smart because its answer would reveal much more than just ticker symbols I should patch into my portfolio). Sometimes, identifying the right questions is more important even than immediately answering them. What do you think? Are there other ways to elicit and winnow the right questions? (We can use the "Sort" mechanism, and polls, to help us.)
     Ultimately, FutureMonitor will have more tools for arriving at a group perspective--prediction markets, idea-highlighting graphical representations of information, and enhanced dynamic polling/surveying, for instance. We've got work to do. And you've put your finger, in several ways, on all of it. Which tool do you think is needed first?

--  SELF-ORGANIZED vs. DIRECTED. Your thoughts are relevant to another constant discussion in FM's hallways, too. As we proceed with all the enhancing and nurturing of FM, here's the balancing act that keeps presenting a challenge: how much guiding/moderating/imposing can the FutureMonitor team do (choosing focus subjects, recruiting experts, redirecting conversations) before FutureMonitor's fundamental principle of network self-organization is compromised? Obviously, providing direction is critical, especially here at the beginning, both to start seeding the network and to distill from it insights that are meaningful. But the larger and more revolutionary (and more managerially useful) aim is to let the network itself take the lead: to let the crowd's wisdom guide both the network's/site's decisions about what to pay attention to (which subjects, which questions) and the network's/site's decisions about what tools and methodologies the site needs to incorporate. Got any notions about how best to do that? Because we'd sure love to hear 'em.

Thanks again, Sandor, for the attentive and thoughtful post. Let us hear more.

Michael

• ============Topic 1============
• On forums especially if ppl don't find something very intuitive in design, they will not post suggestions to fix it, they will simply move on to another site.  Also something you may wish to research is the effects of "Diffusion of Responsibility" which essentially means, the more ppl able to do something (and are aware of each other), the less likely any one of them will actually act (i.e. there's hundreds of ppl that can vote, mine won't count that much).
• Well, I have an idea to remedy that opinion.  It's a form of voting I mused with in my spare time last about a year ago.  I refer to it as Avatar Voting, or letting someone represent you and vote for you.  You can of course change your vote if you don't like what they chose for you, but if you generally tend to agree with someone, toss then your vote so that 'their opinion' holds more clout.
• Say you have a few hundred subscribers and not everyone has time to read every topic and vote on every new poll.  After 10 or so polls you realize that you always vote the same as foum member Bob.  You could then go into your profile and set your 'Voting Avatar' to Bob.  Now whenever Bob votes, he casts his own and yours.  Perhaps Bob is a very average voter and 100 people have set him as their Avatar Voter, now Bob's opinions are weighted by 100 Votes.
• Of course you won't likely agree with EVERY vote Bob casts, so you need a few days grace period to allow for you to either 'agree' with Bob and do nothing. Or disagree with Bob and change your vote.  When you agree with someone, you tend to feel less strongly about it then when you disagree with someone.  Which basically means you will get accurate votes and large 'voter turn-out' with a minimum number of ppl feeling disenfranchised that their 'vote doesn't count' since they are aligning into mini-communities.
• the only problem with the system is people having multiple forum accounts and artificially inflating votes.  Simple solution is e-mail registration for forum account before being able to vote on polls and a minimum of 10 posts on a single account before being able to set an Avatar to vote for you.  And to top that off, once your account goes inactive (2 months? maybe) then your vote is no longer counter for your chosen Avatar, so that Avatars can't use votes from ppl that haven't logged on or posted in the last 2 months.
• ============Topic 2============
• There was a comment about the 'Product' of this forums and Wikipedia was mention in the OP (Original Post).  I seriously LOVE wiki's.  And something I've not seen but think is a VERY good idea is the ability to create forum threads that have the Main post as a Wikipage (edittable by everyone) and the rest of the thread flows like any normal discussion with replies in sequential order.  The only difference between a wiki-thread and a normal thread is the ability to edit the original post.
• So, why is this useful?
• Well, I'm thinking for the ability to refine theories and opinions about a topic.  Wikipedia and most of the WikiMedia sister projects try and keep the pages neutral and present all sides of a story, threads tend to be the opposite, they represent the poster's opinion.
• With a merge of the two formats I feel it would be possible to form essays or articles that represent an opinion that has all the benifits of 'community intelligence'
• ====
• Note:
•     I am a very frequent poster on several forums, and I also tend to think of myself as an 'ideas guy'.  That being said, I'm use to rejection and most ppl see my 'Wall of Text' and run in the opposite direction.  That's ok.  I don't post ideas because i think they are good, or because I want recognition for them, I simply post them because it's something i thought of that maybe i haven't seen before or someone else hasn't posted the perspective already.  So, take them with a grain of salt, as a single person i can't see all the possible errors, but perhaps someone else out there can improve on them for me :)