Foreword

This Guide has a history.

In the first ten years of its existence, the Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World, also called Alliance 21, developed and experimented a set of methodologies to facilitate the work of international work groups whose purpose was to produce collectively formulated proposals for achieving the necessary mutations to build another world in the coming decades. Since 2005, the Alliance 21 communication team in charge of implementing and teaching this methodology, has set up an independent group, the Awele Project, whose purpose is to spread all of its proven methodologies as broadly as possible in order to facilitate the emergence of global citizens' alliances around the world. The present Guide is part of this methodology.

Information and communication technology has been providing international workgroups for some time now with Internet-based communication tools: the World Wide Web, electronic mail (or e-mail), and “e-forums.” Though such tools have opened up unprecedented possibilities for sharing information and ideas, we need to keep in mind that access to them is still limited in many parts of the world and for numerous social sectors, and that widespread “literacy” in their use remains to be acquired. It is therefore necessary to see them as complementary to “traditional” working and communication methods: work on the field of course, face-to-face meetings, newsletters, working documents, individual and collective research, experience sharing, the often forgotten non-written forms of communication, etc.

e-Forums, which are the object of the present Guide, are therefore only a part of an integrated communication and working system.

By “e-forum” we refer to a single e-mail address that is common to all those who are subscribed, or registered to it. To subscribe to an e-forum, the only requirement is to have access to e-mail. All the messages sent to an e-forum address are received by all the people who are subscribed to it.

An e-forum address is a collective workplace.

It can serve to conduct a public, open, multilingual, structured, international debate with expected results, or simply as the “permanent meeting room” of a work group for any specified purpose, whose members may be scattered geographically and speak different languages.

Last but not least, the methodology described here is designed essentially for participatory and bottom-up processes, so that results can be owned by all members of the group.

The effective operation of a citizens' e-forum requires active facilitation, preferably by a team of at least two persons.

The present Guide is intended to help you as facilitator in this fundamental task.

The medium chosen for this methodology is e-mail-based, rather than Web-based, for two reasons:

1. to solicit the participation of members, who will receive all contributions in the form of e-mails addressed to them;
2. so that those for whom using the Internet is difficult or costly are not required to stay on line for participation, reducing their time on line to sending and receiving messages.

However, the ongoing results (introductions of the members, contributions, summaries) as well as the working documents provided for all members can also be published on a specific, associated Web site, for easier reading and consultation per language section.

Some parts of the Guide contain the letter F followed by the name of a file in “text only” (.txt) or in Word doc (.doc) format, which indicates the existence of a separate file provided with the Guide. Such files contain information that you need, but that you may also have to provide to the persons subscribed to the forum after having customized them. They can all be downloaded from the Appendix at the end of this Guide.

I. e-Forums

… are “remote” meetings

An e-forum or work list¹ can be compared to a meeting, with a place, participants, topics to be discussed, objectives, and specific working methods.

… with deadlines and products

The difference with a meeting is that a forum or work list does not have a per-day time schedule. On the other hand, it must have a purpose, a calendar, deadlines, and an expected outcome, to be fixed in terms of its relevant agendas and in agreement with the members of the group. As for a face-to-face meeting, you can either present some of these elements and have them amended/validated by the participants, or you can actually determine some or all of these elements collectively, with the participants.

… and working languages

A forum also has working languages and, instead of using interpreters, provides translation with the assistance of machine-translation software (to save time and costs).

Your role, as facilitator, is to make sure that all these elements are explicit, known, and complied with.

II. Setting up an e-Forum

The meeting place is the forum address, to which you will invite participants to subscribe.

Give yourself time …

As for any meeting, you need to establish a calendar previous to its opening. Before contacting the potential participants, you must have defined the specific objectives of the forum (for example, discussion of a preliminary document in preparation for a meeting or drafting of a paper). If you are setting up a work group, its purpose and objectives must also be clear. If called for, determine the different topics that you will want to discuss. Finally, you need to set a calendar.

To do this, move backwards from the final deadline and on the basis of intermediate deadlines. Here are some indications for reference:

• Plan to stop a discussion forum at least one month before the final deadline. Whether the final deadline is a meeting or the writing of a paper, you will need time to draw out the elements of the discussion that are of interest to your objective.

• For the discussion phase, if you have the time, plan on spending at least two weeks (more, if possible) for the introduction, discussion, and conclusion of each specific topic. If you have several topics to discuss but you don't have two weeks per topic, you should endeavor nonetheless to limit the discussions to two topics (simultaneously) per two weeks. You can distinguish the simultaneous discussions by adding a topic-specific [tag] to the Subject line, thus making it easy for participants to know which of the topics the message is related to.
  
  Remember that in most cases, participants can usually only get involved in a forum discussion outside of their usual activities. Two weeks gives participants just enough time to send contributions and to react to the others’ contributions. To help you to organize your time, consider that two weeks of forum time are the equivalent of one hour of discussion around a table.

You can also have several topics discussed simultaneously over a longer period of time. This requires, however, more of your own time as facilitator, to make sure that participants are able to follow the different discussions without getting confused. It is easier to deal with topics successively than simultaneously.

• Plan an “introductions” period (two to three weeks, depending on the number of participants and the duration of the forum) at the opening of the discussion: participants should introduce themselves, their activities, their interest in the discussion, etc. It is easier for people to express themselves in a remote meeting when they know whom they are addressing.

• Before the discussion begins, participants should have read the document(s) being discussed. Make sure you that they will have the time for this.

• Estimate the time that you will need to convene the potential participants and have them agree to take part in the discussion.

• Take into account the time you will need to prepare the initial document(s), the “call” to the debate or workgroup discussion, and the time needed to translate them.

• Take into account the time you will need to set up the necessary tools for the forum.

… set up the tools for the forum

At the least, you need a mailing-list-management program. There are a good number of them available on the Internet. These programs make it possible for you to open discussion lists and to subscribe or unsubscribe participants. They should provide means for giving the basic information on your forum: its purpose, who can subscribe, its working languages, and its calendar if it is a debating forum.  

We recommend coupling the list with a Web site specific to the debate or workgroup, or with a specific section in an existing Web site, where the following elements are published, if possible per language section:

at least:

• the document(s) on which the discussion is based

• the working calendar (in a meeting this would be the agenda)

• instructions for subscribing to the discussion list

• the archive of all the messages sent to the list

optional:

• an introduction form to be filled out by participants

• introductions of the participants

• summaries of the discussions

• experience reports relevant to the discussion

• documents contributed to the discussion

• links to other Web sites related to the discussion

• etc.

Awele can provide you with a forum-management program called Sympa and train you to use it. This makes it possible for all e-forums to be grouped in the same Web site with the same domain name, along with the archive of the contributions and the documents for the discussion.

Examples of forums grouped according to domain name:
http://www.forums.socioeco.org//lists
http://www.forums.alliance21//lists

… identify potential participants

Participants could be:

• persons in your Awele Directory in the Infotek having expressed interest for the theme of your forum or work group

• other interested people (relations, partners, other networks, etc.)

• etc.

It is highly recommended NOT to subscribe participants to your list without having previously invited them and received their favorable answer.

This is contrary to "netiquette," and adding persons without their previous consent will in most cases result in:

• numbers of persons who will remain on the list but will never participate

• numbers of angry persons who will demand that you unsubscribe them from the list, adding extra management to your time

• numbers of e-mail addresses that are no longer working

If you restrict your list to persons who have stated their interest, your chances of having fruitful discussions will be much higher.

This invitation should present

• the aim of the forum: the objective (meeting, drafting of a document, etc.), the general topic and if there are any, the sub-topics

• the expected products (documents, etc.) and a calendar

It must request persons to state their interest in participating, and to specify

• eventually, the sub-topic(s) in which they are interested

• which languages, especially among French, English, and Spanish (see Chapter III on Working Languages), they can read and which they can write

You can send this invitation by e-mail to all those who have an e-mail address. In that case, open the .txt file, customize it, and copy it directly into the “message” field of your e-mail form.

In the present state of e-mail communication, the different types of e-mail software still do NOT always interpret rich formatting (bold, italics, automatic bullets and numbering, colors, etc.). You must make sure that all your messages are sent in “text only” format.

You can also inform and invite people who don't have e-mail access to participate in the workgroup through some other form (see Chapter VII). In this case, open the .doc file, customize it, and send it by fax or regular mail.

F Invitation-e.rtf

F Invitation-e.txt

This letter of invitation is just an indication; its main purpose is to help you to not forget the different elements it should include. It needs to be customized in terms of the options you have decided on.

… subscribe the interested persons

Subscribe all the persons who responded favorably to your invitation. To do so, use the commands specific to the list-management program that you are using, or the Technical Manual for Citizens' Forums if you are using the Sympa list-management software provided by Awele.

If subscription to the forum remains open, subscription requests will be progressively addressed to you.

… and publish the following more detailed rules for reference on your forum Web site

The “Translation” file is only needed for the forums that use more than one language. See Chapter III.

F Forum-rules.txt

- General working rules: this file is to be customized, but to be kept as such on the whole.

F Layout.txt

- Layout and coding of the message: this file is to be customized. It describes the most complete layout. You can choose not to use all the elements.

F Translation.txt

- Writing tips in view of machine translation: this file is to be customized, though very little.

III. Working languages

Identify the working languages …

On the basis of the answers from the interested parties, and given the possibilities of the machine-translation software that we use (see below, Chapter IV), you will be able to determine the working languages of the forum. Given the features of this machine-translation program, if more than one language proves to be necessary, one of these languages will inevitably be English, with French and/or Spanish in addition, and in certain cases Italian, Portuguese, and German as possible "source" languages.¹ This means that persons can send their messages in one of those languages, but that messages will only be translated into the established working languages.

It is highly recommended to limit working languages (number of languages into which messages are translated) to three, privileging English, French and/or Spanish. Beyond that, the time involved in translation of messages can easily become unmanageable.

There are several possibilities:

1. a single working language

One language is identified as a reading and writing language for all the persons subscribed, whether or not this language is everybody’s “strongest” language. This will be the working language for everybody, that is, the language of the single discussion list. There will be no translation.

2. several “writing languages,” one “reading language”

One language is identified as a reading language for everyone, but not everyone can write it. Choose this language as the language in which the messages will be published on the discussion list, and offer the possibility for everyone to send their messages in one of the three languages in which they can write. It will be up to you to make sure that these are translated for publication into the working language, followed by the original message, for reference.

For instance, if the reading language is English, you will publish a slightly post-edited machine translation into English of all messages received in French / Spanish / any other language included in the machine-translation software, followed by the original in French / Spanish / other language.

3. several working languages

There is no one language that everyone can read. You will have to make sure that all messages are translated.

See an example of a message in a 3-language forum here and in a 2-language forum here.

However, you might not have the time or the human resources needed to accomplish this job (the machine translation + editing of a message takes between 15 and 45 minutes, depending on how long it is and how well it is written).

In that case, you have other options.

1. You can publish the messages only in the language they were written. It will then be absolutely necessary to write up a weekly summary of the contributions (recommended for every forum, regardless of language issues), and translate only the summaries.

2. You can choose to write a short abstract for every message (strongly advised – see F Layout.txt), followed by the post-edited machine translation(s) of this abstract. These abstracts can then be followed by the complete message as received, followed by its “raw” (non-edited) machine translation (a raw machine translation only takes a few seconds, but can produce unintelligible sentences and mistranslation).

3. You can choose to publish the original message followed by just its raw translation(s) (with the disadvantages of possible mistranslation and meaningless sentences). The intelligibility of the message will then depend entirely on the quality of the original message and the application by participants of the guidelines provided in F Translation.txt.

4. In every case, you must indicate at the top of every message and in all the languages, what the message contains: a weekly summary in several languages; the abstract of the messages + post-edited machine translations of the abstract + raw translations of the message; or message + raw machine translations.

Managing languages is not easy, and every solution includes some kind of disadvantage.

Depending on the linguistic profile of the persons subscribed to the list, opt for the least number of publication languages: only one whenever possible, two if necessary, and three only if absolutely necessary. We strongly advise not to choose more than three languages.

Every single participant needs to be able to follow the debate (read) and contribute to it (write). Sometimes, in a small workgroup, the addition of an extra working language can be justified by the presence of a single person who would otherwise not be able to work with the group.

Keep in mind that managing three languages takes twice as long as managing two languages.

When you provide only raw machine translations, responsibility for the comprehensibility of the translation rests on the author of the message. Encourage raw-translation readers to point out the parts that they don't understand or are not quite clear, and to ask the author to rephrase his/her original text.

IV. Using Machine-translation (MT) Software

Awele has adopted the MT software, Power Translator Pro^®, which Alliance 21 had been using for some years. This translation-assistance software manages translations to and from English (US spelling) for French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Italian. Version 7.0 also includes Japanese.

This software has the advantage of not being too expensive, but especially that of making it possible to update the dictionaries. Thus, in the past years, we have updated the English-French, French-English, English-Spanish, and Spanish-English dictionaries, and to a much lesser degree, the Portuguese-English dictionary, with terms and expressions that we use in the framework of our work. We have thus been able to improve its “raw” production considerably.

You should be able to find Power Translator Pro^® in any good software shop.

Install the translation program and the updated dictionaries …

It is a classic software installation. Just follow the instructions. If you don't have a lot of memory in your hard drive, select only the languages that you need.

Once you have installed the program in your computer, you can benefit from several years’ work of appropriately updated dictionaries, which are updated on a regular basis. To do so, you will have to get the updated dictionary files from the Internet. The instructions for downloading these files from the Internet are found here.

As an Awele client and network facilitator, you are strongly urged to join the working list we have for support to facilitators. It is on that list that we will keep you informed whenever a new dictionary update is put up.

… then, decide how you will continue to update the dictionaries …

On this basis, you will be able to either update the dictionaries yourself, or continue to benefit from the updates that we shall continue to provide for the whole of citizens-alliance facilitators.

The first option allows you to refine the terminology that you are more particularly interested in, depending on your needs. It will require, however, some investment in time.

The second option allows you to benefit from the dictionaries such as they are customized for the whole of the facilitators. The disadvantage, in this case, is that translation choices are made such as to provide an intelligible, but not necessarily precise translation: the translation choice is the one that can be adapted for its “comprehensibility” in any field without necessarily being the best translation for a specific field.

These two options are incompatible. If you update the dictionaries yourself and then use the latest updates proposed for the whole of the facilitators, then you will “overwrite” your file and lose your own changes.

The translation software provides, of course, instructions for use, and it is in fact very user friendly. One of its features is to give you the possibility to do your translations within your usual word-processing program, so you can then edit the raw translation with the editing tools to which you are accustomed.

You will have to define the “translation level”

Depending on the human and financial resources you have at your disposal, and depending on the type of discussion, you need to decide what “translation level” you will provide. Specifically, this means how much editing you will do after the raw production of the MT program.

We have defined the following levels:

Level 0: Raw machine translation, the non-edited output of the translation software.

- Advantage: translation speed (about 135 words / second depending on your OS).

- Disadvantage: some mistranslations, and some syntax and grammar errors

Level 0 provides a very quick "gist" translation that makes it possible to understand what a given text is about (and to decide whether such or such document or part of a document deserves, or requires, a better quality translation).

Level 1: Translation post-edited only for mistranslation, but leaving grammar and syntax errors.

- Advantage: a quick translation (about 100 words / minute) with no mistranslation risk.

- Disadvantage: “heavy” reading.

Level 1 is useful to circulate information quickly in another language. In particular, it allows readers to react to a document in a very brief period of time.

Level 2: Completely post-edited translation, but with no attempt to adapt the style to the target language.

- Advantages: No reading problems, a fair and honest result.

- Disadvantages: Longer translation time (about 30 words / minute with a bit of practice), a literal translation.

Level 2 offers a good, not excellent, translation quality. It makes it possible to provide translations, fairly quickly and at a very reasonable cost, for “internal” circulation.

For reference: A human translation, the quality of which, so-called “publication quality,” remains irreplaceable, is produced at a rate of about 4 words / minute.

For messages on a discussion list, we recommend Level 1. There are several advantages: that of producing the fastest possible translations, that of “forcing” the reader to make an effort to understand, and that of “forcing” the sender to write as clearly as possible.

For forum summaries, working documents, and reports, we recommend Level 2. This takes more time, but allows for more comfortable reading of that which constitutes the working corpus.

For “public” documents, i.e. documents published on the Web site or in the form of a paper, book, etc., “human translation” level is imperative. You can use the raw translation (Level 0) as a “rough draft,” but you will have to work on it until it is up to publication standards from the target-language point of view.

Whenever a machine translation is provided, unless it is post-edited to human-translation quality, this has to be explicitly mentioned at the top of the translation with an indication of the post-editing level (for instance, “Machine translation post-edited for mistranslation only”).

V. Forum Facilitation – The Different Roles

Before getting into facilitation procedures, you should know that the facilitation of a forum comprises a number of different roles.

Ideally, a facilitation team comprises one person per role, but in certain cases, one person can play more than one role.

These roles are the following (Ø mandatory; # strongly advised; @ advised):

Ø facilitation

This is obviously the facilitator’s main role. Comparable to the chair in a face-to-face meeting, the forum facilitator introduces the discussion, gives the floor, asks questions, and keeps an eye on the calendar and objectives. This role can be shared by all the members of the Facilitation team in its aspects of raising questions, asking for specifics, and giving the floor,

but only one person should be in charge of monitoring the deadlines defined in the working calendar and making sure these are met.

This role is comparable to the person, in a face-to-face meeting, panel, or round table, who keeps an eye on the clock and makes sure all the agreed-upon discussion subjects are covered. We can call this person the “chief facilitator.”

Ø behind-the-scenes facilitation

Because of its importance, we point to this as a specific role although it is actually part of basic facilitation, and can and should be shared by all the members of the Facilitation team. It consists in contacting participants or potential participants through private messages to encourage them to contribute to the discussion.

Ø subscription and management of Web-based interface of the mailing-list software (in our case, "sympa,” see Chapter II, "… set up the tools for the forum")

Subscriptions, unsubscriptions, checking for e-mail errors, this is an indispensable task. The person in charge of it should also be able to publish the summaries on the Web site, as well as all the other elements that it was decided should be available on the Web site (see below, "setting up a collaborative Web site").

Ø moderation

Whether the forum is moderated “at the source” or “in progress” (see Chapter VI), this role is mandatory. Its purpose is to make sure all the participants comply with the working rules (see 2 Forum-rules.txt, 2 Layout.txt and, if needed, 2Translation.txt).

Ø translation

This role is mandatory when there is more than one working language. See Chapter III for the different translation options.

The person who fills this role must have the profile of a bilingual / trilingual facilitator, rather than that of a translator. Lightly edited translation (Level 1, see Chapter IV) requires having to make some quick choices in terms of the topics and the participants, which requires a strong involvement in the facilitation process. "True" translators find it hard to settle for less-than-perfect, as they are trained to provide good translations.

# or Ø writing of summaries

An e-forum is usually “open,” that is, new participants can join the discussion in progress. For such persons to be able to catch up quickly on the progress of the discussion, it is strongly advised to make summaries of the discussions available on a regular basis (weekly or bimonthly, or weekly and monthly, for example, depending on the duration and the pace of the discussion).

When “non connected” persons are participating (see Chapter VII) writing and translating, and sending of summaries becomes mandatory, because such persons will not receive all the daily messages, just summaries of them.

These summaries are published on the list but should also appear in a “summaries” section on the forum Web site, so they are quickly accessible.

Another factor is that forum participants, however long the forum lasts, are usually very taken by their everyday work. Summaries allow them to take up the discussion without having to read all the messages that escaped them.

# setting up a collaborative Web site

Besides the usual Web interface attached to a mailing-list software program (see http://www.forums.alliance21.org/info/babel for an example of the one provided by "sympa"), it is highly recommended to obtain the services of a Webmaster to set up a collaborative-type Web site, such as "spip." Awele's offers include setting up a spip Web site for you. The content of this type of Web site can be added to by anyone who is given the right to do so in a few easy steps without their having to learn any specific Web-related skill (html publication, for instance). It can be divided into per-language sections, each language section featuring relevant subsections : introductions of participants, the messages (or just their abstracts) contributed to the debate, summaries of the debate, reference documents, conclusions, etc. Keep in mind that the more complex and complete you wish your Web site to be, the more time-consuming this part of the job will be!

The forum facilitators can thus fill the different sections themselves with the ongoing content produced by the forum, thus providing participants with the possibility of browsing through the debate with a clear and pleasant tool to do so. At the end of the debate, the whole process is thus already organized and available to the public.

# regulation

This is actually one of the moderation roles, applicable in the case of moderation at the source (see Chapter VI). We present it as a separate role because it is important. Messages to a forum often arrive in “reams.” When a participant receives a lot of messages in one blow, it is very likely that he/she won't have the time to read them and will be unwilling to do so. It is therefore advisable, in order to facilitate everyone’s regular participation and therefore a true dialogue, for the moderator to publish the messages in their order of arrival, but at a rate of 3 or 4 messages / day at the most.

@ watchtower

This role is very useful in certain types of forum. It consists in monitoring the events relevant to the topic of discussion and informing the forum of them. This can be a role shared by participants who have volunteered to do so. It can be a "heavy" role (systematic proactive research) or a "light" role (information as it comes) depending on how important it is for your discussion.

These functions do not require one person per role. You will distribute the roles according to the number of people that make up your team. Here are some indications:

• Only one person is “chief facilitator.” His/her main role is to make sure, with regard to the participants as well as to the Facilitation team, that the discussion, and all of its components (translations, summaries, the introduction of a new topic, etc.) progress according to the time defined by the calendar.

• Only one person does the moderation and the regulation.

• Translation is intimately linked to the moderation: translation and moderation can, or even should be done by the same person.

• Only one person introduces and concludes the discussion on one topic, as well as encouraging the completion of discussion of a topic through occasional messages to point out, for instance, that such-or-such aspect still needs discussion, there is still strong disagreement on such-or-such a point, there is only so much time left before conclusion, etc.

• The Facilitation team as a whole can facilitate the debate in terms of the content, raise questions, and rekindle the discussion. The entire team is also in charge of contacting participants outside the forum (through private messages) to encourage them to contribute to the debate. This requires internal coordination. For messages from the Facilitation team to the forum, all messages should be sent for publication to the moderator, who is in charge of publishing them. Messages to participants outside forum should be copied to the rest of the team members to keep them informed and avoid two persons' doing the same thing.

• The watchtower role can be shared, or filled by one person.

With all this in mind, and as an example,

… if you have a team of two persons:

• one person is chief facilitator, moderator, and translator, and manages the mailing-list Web interface

• the other person introduces and concludes on the topics, writes summaries, plays the watchtower, and transfers the content to the public (collaborative) Web site

• all the other facilitation aspects are shared by both

… you can also get participants involved …

• for example, you can get participants, in turn, to write summaries, to introduce and to conclude on a topic, and/or to play the watchtower role.

Your role, as facilitator, is to make sure that all these roles are assigned explicitly within a team, possibly by involving participants of the forum.

What follows should go without saying, but we shall be explicit about it:

All the members of the Facilitation team should know and understand the debating topics in depth. If this is not the case, then it should be true for at least whomever is in charge of introducing, exploring, and concluding on a topic, but this does not excuse all the other members from having a good understanding of the topic and of what is at stake in the debate.

VI. Forum Facilitation – The Procedure

We saw in the previous chapter that all the members of the Facilitation team are facilitators, whatever their specific roles. All this being clear for the entire team, you can proceed as following.

Get the discussion going quickly …

As soon as the first subscriptions are made, proceed as for a meeting. You are “chair”: introduce yourself, briefly recall the objective of the forum and the calendar (agenda), and invite the rest of the team and all the participants to introduce themselves. You should in fact establish as an explicit rule that before any contribution, participants should have previously introduced themselves.

Eventually, publish a second message to the forum to call for the introduction of those who have not responded, but limit the introductions period and introduce the discussion quickly.

Ask the first questions and state the time that will be given to discuss them.

… recall the products and the deadlines

At the time of the invitation and in the “welcome message,” you have already defined the products of the work on the forum and their deadlines.

These could be to prepare a face-to-face meeting or to draw up a paper and an action plan in the framework of your topic.

Once the work is underway, it will be useful for you to recall these objectives regularly. For the different topics, you will be able to call upon participants willing to introduce and to conclude on topics,

but it will be your job to make sure you that these latter comply with the intermediate deadlines that you will have fixed together.

For example, you could be launching a discussion on the basis of one or several documents. In this case, you can request first reactions to these documents for a specific date.

… take up, rekindle, refocus the discussion, and summarize

The facilitator’s role is to raise questions, take up questions that have remained unanswered, seek consensus, try to make the discussion progress, challenge the people who remain silent, and provide periodic summaries of the discussion…

… make sure the working rules are complied with …

This is one of the most important, and perhaps fastidious aspects of the facilitator’s role, that of moderation:

to make sure that the discussion is accessible to all

For this, you need to make sure that every participant is aware of the working rules when they are subscribed (Chapter II, F Forum-rules.txt) and that they are complied with.

… for an organized discussion …

The objective is to build progressively and concertedly the information that will circulate in the forum, so that the participants of the forum can organize and capitalize the thinking and proposals.

For this, do not hesitate to remind participants to apply the rules, in particular those regarding the headings of the message (title, abstract), which will be essential for the ulterior capitalization and the overall legibility of the forum.

… but also for “basic” legibility …

Given that a good number of the persons subscribed to the forum can be more-or-less beginners in the use of this medium, “infringements” to the rules can be numerous and frequent.

Among these, you will find:

- use of a language not defined as a working language

- messages that are too long and/or not very clear

- attached files

- personal messages to other participants of the forum

- messages that are off the subject

- messages full of spelling mistakes, therefore nearly untranslatable with MT

- answers to messages uselessly including the whole message to which it is replying …

… and for a “cross-cultural” reading …

One of the your main roles is to facilitate understanding among participants. For this, you must take into account all the cultural and social backgrounds of the whole of the participants and must encourage participants to do the same. This involves, for example, explaining references that are specific to a country, a social class, or a professional context, in order to make them accessible to all.

… through moderation “in progress” or “at the source”

Moderation can be exercised in progress or at the source. e-Forum programs usually provide an option whereby the messages either are posted on the forum directly, or they can first be "screened" by the moderator. In the first case, the discussion list is set up so that a message written by a participant is directly published on the list. This is only possible for forums in a single language. In the second, the list is set up so that a participant’s message is first received by the moderator. In regular e-forum programs the moderator can choose to "validate" the message or not. In the "sympa" program provided by Awele (see Chapter II, "… set up the tools for the forum"), the moderator can also change the layout of the message to make it legible and check that the content is appropriate to the discussion in progress, then translate it before publishing it on the list.

s moderation in progress

We do not advise this form of moderation. You can however choose it for a work list that is limited in time and to a very specific workgroup with a limited number of participants.

In this case, facing all the problems mentioned above, and yet many others of all sorts and kinds, you have an educational duty. It is your job to send messages to the authors to point out problems and offer solutions. These messages will generally be private messages, discreet and diplomatic, addressed to the authors. However, you can sometimes judge that a problem is shared by enough people to justify pointing it out directly on the forum.

s moderation at the source

This form, where messages are “screened” by the moderator, guarantees that all messages addressed to the forum will be legible and relevant.

In this case, the messages sent to the forum will first come to your mailbox, and you will “validate” their publication on the forum, or not. This form of moderation also permits the “regulation” role described above (Chapter V).

If there is a problem, then you can send back the message to its author, explaining what is wrong and asking the author to correct it. In certain cases, this back-and-forth won't be necessary, for all you will have to do is correct the layout before sending the message to the forum. Nevertheless, for any problem regarding the content, do not act without the author's consent.

Moderation at the source can be perceived as a form of censorship, and it is important that everybody understands precisely what it is about. On no accountwill you intervene in the content of the messages.

Whatever the form of moderation, your educational job remains the same.

VII. Linking with “Non Connected” Persons

It is fundamental to keep in mind that an e-forum is only one among many communication media in a citizens' alliance.

Forums privilege persons who have access to the Internet, and among these, those who already have some practice in this type of work.

The obvious risk is that the discussions and debates are owned only by a handful of people.

You should therefore try to develop or encourage relays to other forms of communication and discussion: call up experiences on the field and the results of local working groups, encourage the work (the summaries, for instance) to be translated into local languages, or even into non-written forms, create links with other Web sites, etc.

For this, you must be able to depend on those, among the persons subscribed to the forum, who are local network members. Encourage them (publicly, on the forum, as well as through individual private messages) to share the summaries with their networks at local informal meetings, and then to inform the forum of what is said in those meetings.

... forum, regular mail, fax

The practical methods for links between forums, regular mail and fax will depend a lot on the nature of the forum itself, on the reality of the networks represented by the participants of the forum, and on other factors.

However, the connection between these two media – e-forum and printed communication – is indispensable to enlarge the debate and to get the broadest possible participation in the work among the interested persons.

The same messages or documents that serve to introduce the discussions in the forums should be circulated to non-connected persons by fax or by regular mail.

... require time to respond

These latter should consequently have the time to respond, therefore a deadline that will be the same for the forum, so that things do not get decided among the people discussing things on line before the non-connected ones have even received their mail. The two-week units that we recommend for the discussion of one topic (see Chapter II) take this element into account.

All the summaries that you – or the person who introduced the discussion – will write will be circulated simultaneously on the forum, by fax and by regular mail.

... and the time and the means for implementation

The connection between the forum and regular mail / fax requires time and means (photocopies, mailing and faxing expenses). This issue should be taken up with your team and its financial aspects need to be factored in when preparing a budget for a "remote debate."

Other elements to be linked to the work on the forum will be the Web site, face-to-face meetings, newsletters, individual or collective research, work on the field, experience sharing, non-written communication (you may have a section for short videos or sound documents on the associated Web site), external communication (the media, artistic events). You can and should keep these possibilities in mind.

VIII. Keys to the Success of Your Forum

In light of everything that has been stated in this Guide, here are the keys to the success of your forum. There are two main categories:

• specific keys
  

human resources
You need to be able to count on at least two persons! A forum is above all a human adventure, and exchanges within a facilitation team help to see things more clearly as they progress.

financial resources
A forum requires investment. Know on what resources you can count and determine the ambitions of your forum in agreement with them.

precisely defined objective(s)
The objective(s) must be clear and known by all the participants. If these objectives are part of a larger process, this should also be explicit.

the choice of a method to reach this or these objective(s)
This designates the calendar, the choice of topics, the form of moderation (at the source or in progress), and all other elements that are relevant in view of the objective(s). The drafting of a paper by an international workgroup does not require the same method as the preparation of a small national meeting.

the suitable means
By means, we designate mainly the tools. Even though we recommend an electronic mailing list coupled with a Web site for most forums, in certain cases a Web site may not prove to be indispensable, for example.

• not so specific, but very important keys

The quality of the work of the forum is going to depend on the participation. Use every means possible to make sure that

the composition of the participants reflects your objectives. If you wish to have exchanges among persons from different countries or different social backgrounds, reach out to participants from all the countries, or from all the social spheres, in balanced proportions and

If you open discussions with a component that is dominant with regard to others, hoping to restore the balance later, it will be very difficult, or even impossible, to achieve such rebalancing. You therefore need, in your "call to the debate," to do everything you can to reach out to potential participants in the spirit of exchanging

because the natural human tendency is to talk to those who are similar to oneself.

Time must be present in your mind… all kinds of time: your time, the time of the forum and its deadlines, but also

such as they experience it where they live, in their everyday lives and everyday responsibilities.

When you open up communication, you cannot be sure of exactly what is going to happen. Participants are often a source of new ideas, unexpected directions. You must remain flexible, while keeping an eye on your objectives, and ready to listen to and integrate, or even to formalize the unexpected.

This Guide is a basis, an elaborate one, but just a basis. Some circumstances can require imagining new formulas.

The heart to work, of course, but also strong empathy. It is not easy to express oneself in an e-forum context, and sometimes sensitivities are heightened and can bring about misunderstandings. As facilitator, your role is to help people to express themselves and for this, you must be able to

Your involvement will hence be, to some extent, emotional.

IX. Facilitator’s Responsibilities in Brief

1. Technical

a) to set up and to manage the mailing list, to subscribe participants

b) to circulate the working rules

c) to circulate the writing rules in view of MT

d) to provide machine translations of the messages

e) to publish the important elements of the debate on the associated Web site

2. Facilitation

a) to define the products and deadlines of the forum

b) to take up, rekindle, and refocus the discussion in order to complete the products

c) to write summaries

d) to make sure that the working rules are followed

3. Coordination between the e-forum and communication by regular mail / fax

X. Forum Preparation, Management, and Products in 21 Steps: Checklist

(Groups I, II, and III are to be advanced simultaneously.)

I. Facilitation

• (1) definition of objectives (products and deadlines) of the forum [see Chapters II and VIII]

• (2) identification and preparation of the Facilitation team (distribution of roles ) [see Chapter V]

• (3) setting up a working and debating calendar [see Chapters II and VIII]

• (4) collection of reference documents [see Chapter II]

• (5) preparation of the working document(s) (writing-translation) [see Chapters II, III, VI and VII]

• (6) writing-translation of the basic forum information [see Chapters II and III]

• (7) customization of the 3 working-rule texts [see Chapter II]

II. Participants

• (8) identification of potential participants [see Chapters II, VII and VIII]

• (9) reaching out to potential participants (writing-translation and sending of invitation) [see Chapters II, III and VII]

• (10) sending the preliminary working document(s) to participants (1 month to two weeks before the opening of the debate) [see Chapters II and VII]

• (11) subscription of interested participants and assurance that everyone knows the working rules [see Chapter II]

III. Technical Platform

• (12) identification of the working languages [see Chapter III]

• (13) setting up the Web site [see Chapters II, III and VIII]

• (14) setting up the discussion list according to answers to the invitation [see Chapter II, III and VIII]

• (15) setting up the list-management program (“sympa,” or any other) [see Chapters II and III]

IV. Debate

• (16) introductions of participants (two weeks before the beginning of the debate) [see Chapters II and VI]

• (17) discussion per topic (intermediate deadlines based on a two-week unit) [see Chapters II, III, V, VI, VII and IX]

• (18) writing of summaries of debates on a regular basis (weekly / bimonthly / monthly) [see Chapter V]

• (19) closing of the forum (at least one month before the last deadline) [see Chapters II, VI and VII]

• (20) writing, translation, and circulation of product documents (proposals, conclusions, assessment, etc.) [see Chapter III]

• (21) event / final product

Appendix: Separate files provided with the guide

Here are the different files mentioned in the guide. Tou can download the .doc file, and for the .txt files, you will be shown a Web page. Copy the content of the page and paste into a message, if applicable, or into a text file that you can then place in the "Shared documents" section of your forum.