In 2008 I joined Newsvine, an online blog. Over the course of 8 or 9 years I wrote more than 200 articles on everything from photography to travel to politics. The political articles were by far the most personally rewarding for me… mainly because it provided great opportunities for conversation. Whether it was one of my own articles or someone else’s, they often spawned length conversations with hundreds of comments between dozens of people exchanging ideas. It was these opportunities to interact, to share my ideas, to hear other people’s ideas, and to learn that I found very rewarding. For several years this worked very well. In fact, it was the conversations I had with people who had different views than I have that I found most interesting, rewarding, and educational. At first all these conversations were done with mutual respect for others… even when there were clear philosophical differences. Eventually, these conversations were overwhelmed by people who wanted only to disrupt everything and sow acrimony. Eventually, that acrimony was so bad and so unmanageable that the site was shut down. I joined Medium hoping to find a similar community. Sadly, I have not found any sort of “conversation” on Medium… plenty of things to read, but virtually no interaction. If you happen to know of a conversational forum on Medium, I would love to hear about it.
