Having been involved in various versions of these, some observations. First, just having a semi-common mail subject line of [ANGERSOCK-BAD-ATTITUDE] or whateve

Having been involved in various versions of these, some observations. First, just having a semi-common mail subject line of [ANGERSOCK-BAD-ATTITUDE] or whatever and then having a list of contacts and reply-all works pretty well. You can easily tag and filter the resulting backchannel, and it helps lend to the general sharing style of "Here is a thing", "Here is a comment on that thing", "Here is a comment on that comment". Longer-form discussion or debate is better suited to IRC. Second, IRC is really, really good for this. Like, seriously, go setup a channel on Quakenet or whatever for you and your friends today! It's open, there's a lot of clients you can get, and it definitely feels more intimate than certain hangouts or social-web solutions. Third, try to bring in people with different views. It makes discussions more interesting, makes everyone more moderate, and overall helps people learn. That said, people have to be respectful of one another, or at least have some agreed-upon decorum for teasing and ribbing. Sometimes, it's helpful to hang around and make sure that people who are opposed to, say, a majority opinion on GG or whatever still see that they are still members of a majority on something else (like, chocolate flavors or whatever). Everybody wants to be part of a community, and you can accomplish--with care!--even if that community has different beliefs. Fourth, group dynamics and conversations can really, really change just by adding one or two people. It's not something to be done lightly, and it may be necessary (say, in the case of the email backchannel) to just address a different subset of the group in order to prevent flamewars or whatever. The main idea is that everyone is part of the community, but again, that they don't feel ostracized for disagreeing on a few points.