I of course can't help but think about all of this quite specifically in terms of the role of AoIR in Internet Studies and what our lofty goals should be, and I wanted to pose some of the questions this discussion raises for me. I start from the premise that while AoIR may be many members' favorite affiliation and conference, we are not likely to be conducting academic careers in an institutionally recognized department of Internet Studies. So one goal may be to provide a form of institutional credibility so that members' work will be recognized by tenure and promotion committees that want evidence of outside review. This is of course one of the major functions of well known academic associations, usually in the form of peer review association journals and conferences. If we want AoIR to do this for us, then it raises the questions of what AoIR has to do to make that happen, particularly when we encompass people with extremely varied disciplinary, national, and local sets of expectations. I like the point Annette Markham raised that we have the opportunity to go about this in ways that other associations have not. We can imagine new possibilities and enact them if we want to. We don't have to be a Discipline. We can be something different and better that offers the best of disciplinarity without the worse of a mainstream that marginalizes challenging work. What is the best of disciplinarity? Institutionally recognized credibility so you can get a good job and move up in your career is, alas, a huge part of it. This is a practical reality. Having access to a community that provides intellectual, career, and social support is another. My sense is that most existing academic associations do well on providing credibility, and less well on support (beyond providing job ad venues and conference interviewing opportunities), especially support for those outside the mainstream. AoIR has thus far attracted people who want to engage in a positive, respectful, and genuinely friendly model of intellectual practice. It has been exciting for me to see that alongside the new research projects, books, and special issues of journals that have emerged through our conferences, new friendship networks have also been started. I've met some of my favorite people through AoIR, and I expect to make more old friends in years ahead. That matters a lot. When we talk about credibility, we are necessarily talking about disciplining: creating set(s) of standards of acceptable vs unacceptable, limiting the preferred venues in which to present research, and providing people with opportunities to actively participate in judging and often rejecting the work of others (as with the conference submissions). An association can't provide credibility if it approves of everything everyone does. Our standards won't be delivered from the almighty, as Charles Ess notes, but through continuous discussions of what constitutes good research practice. How important is it that AoIR provide credibility? How do we apply standards? What kinds of structures could we build through which to apply them? How do we maintain and nurture a kind and stimulating ethos? How do we discipline and nurture one another in a way that does its best to speak to all the home disciplines and traditions in which members make careers? I don't have a good answer to any of these questions. I see a lot of challenges and balancing acts ahead. My hope is that the right answers will emerge as we continue to discuss these and related issues together. Nancy ________________________________________________________ Nancy Baym http://www.ku.edu/home/nbaym Communication Studies, University of Kansas 102 Bailey Hall, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Lawrence, KS 66045, USA Association of Internet Researchers: http://aoir.org