[p2p-research] semantic wiki extension

Tue Aug 3 09:11:21 CEST 2010

I am open to Michel working with me on making the wiki more accessible.  I
feel the wiki needs to serve experienced editors like myself who have a
background in information architecture, and that an editor like Michel who
pastes in a lot of content should be easily able to discover where things
should be pasted so that they are accessible and useful for this lists of
content that populate the category pages proper.

I don't have any real issues with the current general category system.  My
only thing with it is to spell the categories correctly, which, as Michel
mentioned, was a simple error in the early days of learning how the wiki
worked.

I mentioned the category system was flexible.  Michel, you could have done
so yourself, but I took the liberty of creating the collections of the
historic categories in a way that is exactly aligned to how you use them on
the front page.  Each category could be placed in a number of different
collections, and your method is only as arbitrary as another person who
spends as much time explaining it as you have.

I would offer that the use of subcategories is an easy way to do this stuff,
as opposed to manual editing of lists.  If a single subcategory helps users
navigate, or helps and editor maintain an automated listing on a category
page, that this is a useful thing and deserves no condemnation from you.  As
you mentioned, it is difficult to see how the system is flexible when it
hasn't been used to adapt to your own constraints yet. This has now been
done, to a certain extent, to your constraints, and you can edit/add as you
see fit.  In the future you can ask others to help you with additions to the
system as I am sure there will be more of them.

I do not see the layer that is described, the one that is "mine" or
different.  I can appreciate that Michel is still getting a feel for how to
use categories and subcategories.  As with all editors who begin to use more
of the advanced functionality of the wiki to create an interlinked
collection articles, so it is with the new editors I have been writing help
pages for in the last months.  As each become more familiar with the
functionality they will no doubt enjoy more latitude in creating custom
lists and refined groupings of pages that are part of the larger category
system on the wiki that is now in place.

I am going to assume that the new/empty/not-useful categories on the wiki
are the primarily administrative ones.  I've spent several weeks writing and
re-writing help pages on the wiki so that new editors would be supported
when they enter the site.  In response to questions from these editors and
my own inclinations I took additional time to collect together an unsorted,
unmaintained set of quasi-explanatory documents and did my best to unite
them into something like an average user would expect from an organization,
one that has a website and is open to users creating articles and other
things on that site.  One that says, in the founding documents, that this is
a part of the purpose of the organization.

As a matter of course I did do what I could to develop some more explicit
terminology about the idea of the Foundation as a commons and that licensing
and standards for the site are designed to facilitate the collaboration
practices as outlined in the founding documents of the organization.  As
this collection of documents is quite large in number I do not expect most
folks to read it.

Indeed, as the Forward Foundation and others only appear to consider the P2P
Foundation a partner in a limited sense, the number of stakeholders in such
discussions about formal operations and documentation does tend to go down
over time as that trend of off-site "reputation based" partnership of this
type continues.  My hope is that those who come new to the site now will see
these efforts as welcoming, that they can see that the way the organization
operates is flexible, and that what they hope to achieve here on the wiki
can be facilitated in ways that are useful, non-destructive, and clearly
outlined.  I share their concerns, and wish to continue to work with them on
the wiki.  I am still concerned that these folks will be flamed and trounced
as I feel I have been by Michel.  I have reasonable concerns in this area,
and so I am taking reasonable action to outline policy that is in accord
with Michel's needs, I think, and to the best of my ability.

The new users coming to the site, like myself, are looking for a different
type of partnership.  Most of them don't really care that this is called
P2P.  They are interested in using technology and methods that work.  I get
a lot out of reading articles on the wiki, and as Michel has stated, many of
the articles, even though they do not mention P2P explicitly, do contain
morsels of what the bulk of people reading this email would consider to be
within the realm of P2P Theory.  Folks who read those articles, including
myself, still have to do translation, into a language they understand in the
context of their personal experience, and then another creative step in
moving forward and applying what they learn to their situation.   By and
large it doesn't serve them to call what they do from then on P2P, either.

These type of partnerships are a bit more difficult to serve, as an
organization, than a hand-wavy "partnership" that has us posting lists of
people who "support" the foundation.  These are operations of the
foundation, though, which are somehow related to the purpose(s), purposes
that I've attempted to collect from various places on the wiki into
http://p2pfoundation.net/P2P_Foundation:Purpose.  In a sense these
operations are "given" to folks who want to be editors.  The operations and
policy/guidelines do need a form of outline in some fashion.  This is what
those categories do.  It looks like what most organizations have on their
sites.  I've created hundreds of them in the past.

Michel's reactive outpourings and concerns are a form of input I use to
construct policy/guidelines of a sort, all of which are easily reviewed in
the Help section through the help link.  Again, I don't expect folks will
read them, but if they do, I do stake my own reputation on the idea that you
will find them sane and of consistant voice, as well as editable.  Again, as
I mentioned, they are written to be likable by the folks who have a history
here.  Indeed, as a community organizer in my own right, I have some
background in this, and I hope you benefit from my experience and current
efforts.  To be called "other" or a "layer" is not helpful.  Own it.  It's a
part of it now.

The admin pages are a big part of our wiki because they need to be of
sufficient calibre to intercept issues before they arise through policy.
 This saves high-activity editors who do have a real dependance on the wiki
a lot of time in writing emergent policy one-offs for each case.  I do not
intend to be dealing with policy over email, or even discussing much of this
type of thing in email at all, for the most part.  I am taking the time now
to write this because I do hope that folks will see my own transparency in
this.

Alex
http://alexrollin.com

On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 7:00 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> here is the way I see it,
>
> there are now two wiki's in one,
>
> the first one is the wiki as visible through the home page, it is based on
> opportunistic updating, a organicist/emergentist approach to knowledge
> creation, and a certain view of taxonomy; It is not perfect, but at the same
> time, not unsuccessfull in certain respects, certainly in terms of audience
> and online reputation
>
> there is a second, more invisible wiki, not accessible through the home
> page, but based on an alternative 'organisational' (more internally focused)
>  taxonomy developed by Alex, it is based on the construction of
> positivist/concrete/actionalble knowledge for peer organizations
>
> if we have a view of abundance, they can co-exist, be complementary,
> mutually enrich each other, and the second can be seen as an extension and
> maturation of the first
>
> however, in areas of scarcity, such as the home page, consistency has to be
> maintained and protected, through I have no objection in reserving an area
> for direct access to the other layer that Alex is constructing,
>
> Sam's point is a good one, neither me nor Alex have negotiated their
> approach,
>
> in my case this was a pretty natural processes, since no one objected and
> very few people contributed
>
> in alex case, he also started pretty much tabula rasa to my feeling, did
> not or rarely consult about new taxonomies, except post-facto .. there is
> now a huge amount of competing category tags with nearly identical meanings,
> but based on the different approaches outlined above ..
>
> I have also time concerns, I cannot follow or monitor the huge work and
> additions that alex is producing, so my attitude is 'defensive', go ahead as
> long as you do not endanger the integrity of the whole as expressed in the
> home page presentation
>
> in the sense that alex has already created a huge amount of content and new
> categories, we are already beyond social negotiations for that part,
>
> I also feel alex's approach, though it makes sense in many ways, is very
> complex, and requires a lot of lead time to go into it, so it is meant for
> committed afficionados
>
> on the other hand, I feel the subject/format approach is very accessible,
> but the main issue of my approach is 'volume', which again requires a
> different kind of committment; I'm very much in favour, at some point, if
> time or money would be available, to create a new layer for beginners,
> accessible through a series of simplified pages
>
> so I have to reserve my energy to the integrity of the home page
> organisation and the preservation of the coherence of the legacy system
> (though it's not just legacy, it's continuing to grow and be built on a
> continuing basis)
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 8:56 PM, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 9:21 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > well, I do have some issues with it ...
>> >
>> > we had a taxonomical system, represented by the three columns of the
>> main
>> > wiki page, and the geographic distinctions
>> >
>> > i.e. internal material, topical material, and format categories
>> >
>> > most of your contributions and new category tags are internal material,
>> > which was not existent before, so I'm happy with that, though I won't
>> use
>> > them much myself,
>> >
>> > but then, in your proposed
>> > http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:P2P_Resource_Collections you mix both
>> > topics and formats, and I don't think that is a good idea ...
>> >
>> > personally, I see our minds functioning very differently, and it is true
>> > that the wiki presently corresponds to a particular way of thinking, and
>> > probably my librarian thinking ...
>> >
>>
>> I've seen this dynamic arise in many wiki communities in the past. It
>> is inevitable if more than one participant has a strong desire to
>> affect the info architecture of the wiki.
>>
>>
>> This problem is a social negotiation problem, and I'd like to
>> recommend that changes to category structures be frozen or stopped
>> (including work on semantic wiki extensions), until all participants
>> in the management of that part of the wiki have time to come to a
>> mutual understanding, and perhaps in the process create some simple
>> community rules and guidelines around how the taxonomies are
>> architected. There are at least 3 major stakeholders here (Michel,
>> Alex Rollins, James Burke) perhaps others that I am not aware of.
>>
>> Perhaps one rule could be:
>>
>> Discuss/debate, formulate a working process, then change (rather than
>> change -> discuss/debate).
>>
>> Perhaps changes to our wiki that are disputed could also be mediated
>> (this may already be happening with discussion from James Burke).
>>
>> In http://communitywiki.org we ended up creating
>> http://www.communitywiki.org/CommunityWikiBylaws to create a fair way
>> to co-govern, and it worked very well (we even used a system similar
>> to Henrik Ingo's delegations for people not present :-D )
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > but I feel that most new categories are not obvious for me, and
>> represent a
>> > particular Rollin point of view, the problem is that they are now not
>> > accessible via the main page, so people have to be in the know, which is
>> why
>> > I proposed that you add your own subcolumn on the left side
>> >  I hope that Alex and Michel continue this dialogue
>>
>> > so I feel,
>> >
>> > that most rollin categories should be under subcategory one, the
>> internal
>> > stack
>> >
>> > that the others should either be under topic or format
>> >
>> > and geography and languages are added aspects of any article
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 8:13 PM, Alex Rollin <alex.rollin at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Returning to this thread, I offer a durable taxonomical system for the
>> >> wiki that can be expanded to include additional collections.
>> >>  http://p2pfoundation.net/P2P_Foundation_Wiki_Taxonomy
>> >> Additions, corrections and changes are welcome.
>> >>
>> >> I do believe that the Semantic extension could be more at home now.
>> >> DynamicPageList is now functioning and can provide a few of the
>> automated
>> >> lists needed as more structure and templates are added.  Several forms
>> are
>> >> now being used to allow users to add templated articles for common
>> uses, and
>> >> these articles would be much more re-usable if they were done with SMW.
>> >> Many of the most complex pages then could be rendered automatically
>> >> instead of with tedious tables and such. Many of the most beautiful
>> pages
>> >> are out of date now for this reason.   I suspect that the lengthy html,
>> so
>> >> easily destroyed, is one of the primary reasons for this.
>> >> Because the wiki is not installed in a folder many of the JS functions
>> >> were not working previously. In the near future I suspect that the site
>> will
>> >> need to be served from http://p2pfoundation.net/wiki/ in order to
>> upgrade
>> >> and make use of additional Usability improvement extensions.
>> >> A
>> >>
>> >> On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 5:26 PM, Michel Bauwens <
>> michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> hi thomas,
>> >>>
>> >>> I trust you and kasper,
>> >>>
>> >>> but I do prefer trying things on the copy wiki first, just to make
>> sure
>> >>> ... I wouldn't want to mess up the 10,000 pages of content and the
>> >>> experience with new tech is pretty consistently that there are always
>> bugs
>> >>> ... which geeks like to solve but I don't <g>
>> >>>
>> >>> but feel free to port when you feel the whole thing is mature,
>> >>>
>> >>> and to create a technical mailing list,
>> >>>
>> >>> Michel
>> >>>
>> >>> On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 9:21 PM, Thomas Kalka
>> >>> <thomas.kalka at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Michel:
>> >>>> > my problem is that I really don't have time for experimentation and
>> >>>> > sandboxes, I just can't keep up with publishing and communication
>> demands
>> >>>> > ... also, even with the examples you've send me, I still have a
>> hard time
>> >>>> > understanding what it is for,
>> >>>>  >perhaps Eli would like to experiment, with some concrete things
>> >>>> related to the new sections he's creating on transportation etc ...
>> Eli is
>> >>>> quite active too now,
>> >>>> If you delegate, you have to trust ;-)
>> >>>>
>> >>>> If I get the account  data, I will install the enhancements on the
>> main
>> >>>> site.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> We can switch everything back any time anyway.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> In addition we should create a mailinglist for people working on
>> >>>> p2pfoundation infrastracture (wiki/website etc).
>> >>>>
>> >>>> --toka
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> --
>> >>> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think
>> >>> thank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>> >>>
>> >>> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  -
>> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>> >>>
>> >>> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
>> >>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>> >>>
>> >>> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
>> >>> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
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>> >>>
>> >>
>> >>
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>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  -
>> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>> >
>> > Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
>> > http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>> >
>> > Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
>> > http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>> >
>> > Think tank:
>> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> --
>> Sam Rose
>> Future Forward Institute and Forward Foundation
>> Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
>> Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
>> skype: samuelrose
>> email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
>> http://forwardfound.org
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>> http://notanemployee.net
>> http://communitywiki.org
>> http://p2pfoundation.net
>>
>> "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
>> ambition." - Carl Sagan
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>
> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
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>
> Think tank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
>
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