everything i know about ost...

Birgitt Williams birgitt at mindspring.com
Wed Jun 18 17:55:52 PDT 2003


Michael,
thank you for assisting me in my edits on www.openspaceworld.com Your
generosity with that site and with your time is a wonderful gift and I thank
you.  I spent several hours today going over the materials, imagining what
could be added, and also thinking that it would be so good if all content
rich conversations on this list were on that site in the way that you have
pulled a few tidbits from the list. In some ways, active participation on
that site could replace this OS List and the wisdom shared would be easily
accessible to all newcomers to OST.

I was excited to see a spot for "research" and there is a good beginning
there but I know there are so many more papers that have been done. We truly
have had a lack of a space to pull the research together and I very much
hope that you all will go into your files and contribute any and all bits of
research about OST and its uses.

Blessings to you and to all with whom you make Genuine Contact,
Birgitt
Birgitt  Williams of Dalar International Consultancy
http://www.dalarinternational.com <http://www.dalarinternational.com/>
Mentoring for Organizational Effectiveness
view the calendar for upcoming training at
http://www.openspacetechnology.com/training.html
<http://www.openspacetechnology.com/training.html>
We invite you to join the list serve at
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organizations incorporating these values have exciting, tangible results
including wealth, prosperity, and abundance. Daily, these organizations
attend to their health and balance. Participating in the Genuine Contact
program takes you on a learning journey of HOW to achieve the healthy and
balanced organization (the conscious Open Space Organization).”  Birgitt
Williams, Dalar International Consultancy




-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU]On Behalf Of Michael
Herman
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:10 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: everything i know about ost...


one more thought for today... as more and more of the
http://www.openspaceworld.org wiki website becomes open and editable, i
thought this might be interesting.  it comes from the MeatballWiki
(http://www.usemod.com), which is a wiki website for programmers and
others interested in feeding the use of wiki.   you'll see that some of
what they are saying here could easily weather a little
search-and-replace, plugging in OST for wiki...

----

Why use a wiki, when anyone can change or delete anything there?

What's to prevent someone from going berserk and wiping the whole site,
or secretly changing the meaning of what people say, or clogging
everything up with spam?

Most community web sites rely on technology to restrict the actions of
community members. Elaborate schemes have been designed to moderate
postings (such as SlashDot
<http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SlashDot> and KuroShin
<http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?KuroShin>) or to establish a trust
metric for community members to rate each other (such as AdvoGato
<http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?AdvoGato>).

There are several problems with this:

    * Only one person can generally edit what they have already said,
      regardless of how bad a mistake they have made.
    * Duplicate comments can't be pared down and merged together.
    * Moderation and trust metrics create an atmosphere of distrust by
      implying that visitors must first earn the trust of the community.
    * It frequently becomes a game to get around technical limitations.
      For every limitation, there is usually a way around it.

Wikis work better because they rely on the community, rather than
technology, to police itself. If someone comes along and deletes text or
posts spam, someone else can just as easily fix the problem. Since an
open environment encourages participation and a strong sense of
community, the ratio of fixers to breakers tends to be very high, so the
wiki stays stable.

There are technological protections, too -- they're just less obtrusive
than having to "log in" or "rate" something. Most wikis store old
versions of each page for at least a short period of time, allowing
damage to be easily recovered. Many wikis provide a means to limit how
quickly someone may edit a large number of pages. Most wikis also
provide a means to lock out particularly abusive visitors without
disturbing other visitors. UseModWiki
<http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?UseModWiki>, the software running
MeatballWiki <http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?MeatballWiki>,
provides all of these features.

In short, wikis work because of the community.

----



--

Michael Herman
Michael Herman Associates
300 West North Avenue #1105
Chicago IL 60610 USA
(312) 280-7838

http://www.michaelherman.com - consulting & publications
http://www.globalchicago.net - laboratory & playground
http://www.openspaceworld.org - worldwide open space

...inviting organization into movement

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