Evo Nexus Wiki "Efficient Suggestion"

Hm; I didn't mean to communicate: "All discussions become documents."

What I intended to say was: "There is a smooth motion from conversation to document" - that is, that it's not all: "This is a document, this is a message." I wrote a post that started as a message, and has become a document.

If people are saying, "Oh, hello, how are you doing," just having a conversation, then there's no motion towards a document. I hyperlinked "just having a conversation," to demonstrate the wiki is capable of supporting that kind of interaction. I don't think any of us on CommunityWiki think of it as an office environment. At times, we think of it as a work environment, but I wouldn't say all of the time..!

That said, I believe I see your point, the difference between the casualness of forums, and the concentration of the wiki. In which case, I think our question is: What is our intent?

I think if the intent of our conversations is to identify and collect connections, if our intent is to think out our ideas about the world, see how they hook up with one another, if our intent is to make useful maps of the world, to integrate them together, if our intent is to concentrate our attention, to develop models, and then perhaps most important, to then explain those ideas to other people, then the answer seems utterly very clear to me: Use wiki. (Would you agree?)

How could a forum compete? 

But I could see that if our intent is to make a comfortable space for light and ephemeral conversation, then I see that forum software is more appropriate to our intent.

I agree that there are spaces for both of these things in the world. I keep a blog. I do not use it to build an integrated understanding of the world. Rather, I use it to say, in my own space, to the general world, "This is what I am thinking about right now." Any idea that I think is serious and important that I will want to refer back to again in the future: I definitely don't put it in my blog. Because in a blog, it will aquire no mass.

The page in the wiki is like the pearl in the oyster. It grows, and accumulates meaning. Part of the whole point of the blog post, is that it goes away, and slips into the archives of time. Granted, some famous people write blog posts that are documents. But for the vast majority of uses, it's not like it is in the wiki.

I support comments in my blog. They're "just comments." Occasionally, I'll take a piece of information people sent me, and put it in my links collection, or work it into the wiki. But for the most part, it's "just talking," and I'm not asking it to be anything more.

(How do I find all these links so quickly? It's because the links are embedded in my language. This is a crucial thing, when you're building explanations. When you are following links, you are simulating a live conversation: "Tell me more about that; I'm not so sure what you meant by that." "Okay, I understand that, let's go back to the previous thing;") 

If my intent is to engage in regular "just talking" with people, then I would use forums.

But is that really our intent?

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

Clearly, this isn't binary. Clearly, we just chat in wiki at times, and, here, write documents at times. Couldn't we just use whichever one was most important at the time?

I think "no." Communities find themselves tied to one technology because there are high switching costs to going between mediums, and because communities are tied together by a shared awareness of what is going on. Again, these are not absolutes, they are mushy tendencies. We can imagine technical solutions, to connect our software into "one big soup." And the technical communities work to bring us there. One day, we will have an amazing pattern of mediums sliding into other mediums. But that day is far away, I look to 2020, but find myself here with you today.

We could have forums, and a wiki, and then end up with two groups of people: The people who use the forums, and when they feel inspired to write a document, post that document in the forums. (Because they write for their peers, their readers.) And the people who use the wiki, and when they feel inspired for some light conversation, use a date page on the wiki, because the light conversation is intended for their peers, their readers on the wiki.

It is unlikely that before people post, they will ask themselves, "Is this light conversation, and therefore a forum post? Or is this something that might become something, and thus best put on the wiki?" Again, the switching cost. More than just the switching cost, even just having to make a choice. It's too much.

Granted, there will be community stradlers. People who participate in both communities, and share ideas. But they'll be just that: community stradlers.

Yes, George: I was very conscious when I invited people to the wiki, that it had the potential to split the community. That said: The situation here was becoming unbearable for me. This user interface, this environment, is very hard on me. It would take many months of hard work for me to work on reforming, reshaping, reworking this site. And it would still not be able to change the fundamental barriers that are at work in the medium itself. (The above conversation on wiki vs blog vs forum etc., etc.,.)

While theoretically, I could become a Drupal developer, and dilligently work on making Drupal into a wiki, it would take many years to meet the refinements found in wiki distributions, and that's not my purpose. Besides, there is greater software for all the mediums I love. Drupal is a generalists effort; It matches the criticism: "Jack of all trades, master of none." It is easier to me to configure masterpieces of the respective mediums to work together, than it is for me to work in the general architecture of Drupal. A communications medium is a sensitive thing, and requires delicate treatment. I have never seen better wiki software, than in software distributions that are mainly just about wiki. I have never seen better forum software, than in software distributions that are mainly about forum software. From what I have seen, phpBB has mastered that craft. (There are probably others; I don't know- I'm not a regular forum user, after all.)

At any rate; I am diverging.

I guess I want to go back to the major thread:

"What is our intent?"

(I'm going to continue in a second post, so that if something happens, this post isn't lost.)

Yes:I propose we move to an OddMuse wiki. I think it'll be harder in the short term, (the first 1-3 weeks,) but far better in the long term.

I agree with the some key points in what you said; I think there are some important things to temper it

• The "document" nature of wiki is critical, but overstated in your comment: Wiki integrate dialog as well. Consider looking through CommunityWiki:WikiIsDocumentBased. Read the top, but also read the bottom: You see a whole conversation down there. (And it's immediately relevant to this conversation.) We regularly ''do'' look back at the conversation we've had, and think about it, as you've described.
• I think OddMuse integrates dialog much better than Wikicities. Its because the document text is on the same page as the threaded text. Changes to the document are collected with the author's comments about the changes. Rather than 1 change to the document, and then 1 separate change showing up in the "talk" page, you see 1 change, with both document and comments side by side. The reason Wikimedia separates (dis-integrates!) them is because it is for making encyclopedic pages. They want the encyclopedia page to stand on it's own.
• I don't consider the "wiki" on this site to be a wiki, and I hope you don't project your experience of it here onto the word "wiki." I don't know about it's history tracking, or lack of it.
• History tracking policy differs from wiki to wiki. On CommunityWiki, we practice "Forgive And Forget In Software." What this means is that we intentionally destroy the version history after a few weeks. This is not typical of wiki; Most wiki (off the top of my head, MoinMoin and the Wikipedia) retain infinite version histories.
• Don't hesitate to edit a wiki on account of version history; Even with "Forgive & Forget in Software," there's plenty of time for people to revert something if it's a problem. I wouldn't let that bother you.  Look at an example version history, and you'll see, it goes pretty deep. It's pretty thorough, and easy to revert back to a previous version, should the need arise.
• The crucial "why" of a document is usually found in one of two ways: (1) By reading the text, if it's been explicitly written. And/or: (2) By looking at use of the phrase, by searching the backlinks to the page. Wiki documents are almost always surrounded by a swarm of other documents, revealing it's meaning, context, and importance.
• "The page just manifests the last word" sounds harsh to me. I get the image of someone making a page represent their opinion, and no one elses. This does not happen on most communal wiki. If someone is so rash as to make the document text represent their own opinion, and no others, the soft security kicks in: People get mad at that person. It is rude, and people revert it, and glare at the person. This rudeness happens on Wikipedia often times, but Wikipedia is not a communal wiki. Wikipedia is not typical.
  

But there's something that we haven't touched on, here, that I think is really important.

One of the most interesting things about wiki, is that you have a built-in mechanism for avoiding repeat arguments.

This is something that I have only recently been articulating on CommunityWiki, though I've been meaning to write directly about it for a long time. (So, warning: The page is in development, and very rough.)

When you talk in a forum, the conversation is all "disconnected." Every time you talk about a new topic, it's as if nobody has ever held that conversation before. If you all talked about it 4 months ago, it's basically as good as gone.

Someone could conceivably go fish it out, or something, and then everyone could wade through miles of text that can't be summarized. But in practice, people don't do this.

But in a wiki, we're always constantly threading our ideas together. Did something come up before? You just mention the things name, (perhaps "NotEnoughTime," or "NetworkActivism," or "EvolutionarySalonTwo," or "OpenSpace," or "HowToCreateTheEvolution."

And so it has this enormous focusing power, to collect all that prior thought, every time it comes up again.

We can call it "theory building" or "connecting your ideas," but whatever it is: You don't get it in forums.

So this is a very unique thing to wiki, and it's one of the huge advantages that a wiki has over a forum, or a blog, or any other of these mediums.

In many respects, if I'm posting to a forum, I sort of feel like: "This is a wasted thought. This is going to be very hard for me, and others, to refer back to. To extend. To adjust to the needs of the time. To connect with other things." And so on.

I would not want to have "forums for conversation, and wiki for documents." Because there is a smooth progression from the conversation to the document. And it's essential that the conversation share the LinkLanguage with the documents.

My intention:

• to help choose good media for our conversations, our purpose
  
• to get the ball rolling, to work more towards "do" (at this present moment,) since "talk" is pretty difficult
  
• to preserve whatever unity we can have, as Evo Salon 2 survivors who are online