Wiki help

chris macrae wcbn007 at easynet.co.uk
Sun Oct 24 00:57:05 PDT 2004


I am a sub-editor of the European Union's knowledgeboard.com and this
has caused me to observe the trials and tribulations of sustaining
various wiki's, whilst not claiming any expertise

I have started a public conversation thread here in case it can add to
your discussion
http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=132487&d=1&h=417&f=56&
dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y

Wiki's it seems to me are asking for a lot of a core community's time
which also means that core group really needs to be certain its open
sourcing the same topic

To give you a specific example. I have a dream of finding a community
that wants to put together a different curriculum for teaching about 6th
grade on. Partly because my daughter is currently 2nd grade! Now, many
people might be attracted to that idea, but to be more specific I would
probably co-qualify the core community around a few key ideas. These are
not all of them (of course there should be communal room for more than
my self dreaming) but still the wiki I dream of would have content so
that the following became no-brainers

-every child has a right to experience open space before leaving school

-every child is taught (the networking age's revolutionary freedom) that
the great virtue of email and any other virtual tools you use is to
learn how to connect to your own 10 best mentors through life and help
peers do so too:
http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=122627&d=1&h=417&f=418
&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y

-there's something systemically wrong with controling too much
measurement and scoring when it separates facts from learning and
doesn't contextually help sustain positive human emotions/relationships
(probably, a teenager's syllabus of mapping systemic or communal
relationship patterns is one of the few content/theory syllabi I would
prioritise links to- exercise: how many different synonyms for
self-organizing can you find out there?)

If a consequence is that a great wiki currently needs an inner society
to see it through gestation, then, unless you have millions of funding
to administrate it more openly whilst still keeping its patterning core
to the dream, then although the exciting applications of wiki's should
open source something, my feeling is that this paradox is one to
organise around and fast track

At the end of the day, wiki's are asking a lot of some people's time,
and its best to know who's who and why's why in such a cooperative
dream. Incidentally, I do note that wiki and open space could be natural
supporters of each other, though that might also raise the issue as to
whether you are trying to develop content ideas that weave global
diversity from all quarters of the globe (and so it becomes a question
of not only affording time but the continuing cost of beating
geographical barriers)

Actually, my network of friends is discovering a halfway house to wiki's
in co-blogging. The idea is to find people who love the same communal
place (starting with some very disconnected ones like these Indian
villages http://whynotvisakhapatnam.blogspot.com/
and get a sample of that core community treating the blog (of what this
place most needs to connect with the outside world like) a wiki through
having co-editing rights; as well as linking selectively through a
family of 100 other place blogs. If you love a place and feel it could
do with connecting its development needs with others, please contact me,
and we can quickly try out what's involved around your specific
development location. Of course as part of this family's inner society
(and because we feel deep local poverty requires urgent systemic relief
as the root cause of most global strife), we are trying to start with
places which are in the centre of big conflict issues like whether
people or global corporations own water, and a few other needs that
differentiate sustainable bushes (however poor) from that other sort.
100 parallel blogs can cover each other's tacks and links in ways that
make one wiki centre more vulnerable. At least I hope so!!

Chris Macrae
wcbn007 at easynet.co.uk
London, DC & 100 other places

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