Wikipedia and Open Space...the beginning of something bigger?

[Harrison Owen]

The truly interesting thing is that the academic literature (along with academia) has virtually ignored Open Space. To the best of my knowledge there has never been a peer reviewed article published anywhere. There have been several dissertations, but that is all. Question: How could the academic world ignore a 25 year old, 100,000 iteration, 136 country phenomenon? Go figure! Personally I don't care, and if anything I would consider it their loss. But this fact does not make providing the sort of independent sources Wikipedia wants a possible thing. In fact there have been major stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times of London, etc,etc.  -- which perhaps could be used if somebody cared to do so. A search of the archives of the Times and the Post will produce those articles.

Harrison 





Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Dr
Potomac, MD 20854
USA
Phone 301-365-2093
(summer) 207-763-3261

www.openspaceworld.com

Nov 18, 2009 09:23:30 PM, OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU wrote:

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Hi Suzanne & Everyone,
The essential thing about Wikipedia style is that they really do want to be an encyclopedia. That does mean that it's not a place to post anything really personal or original. But it doesn't necessarily have to exclude the subjective experience, as long as that experience has been documented somewhere else.
The "evidence" that's needed isn't scientific evidence that Open Space "works" or anything like that; think of it more as documentary evidence about who practices Open Space, how they do so, and notable events in its history. The most appreciated documentary evidence will be in the form of papers in peer-reviewed journals, articles in reliable newspapers, books published by reputable presses, and so forth. Here's a page describing "reliable sources" in detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:RS
So the first step is to gather together all the available references -- all the articles and books that have been published about Open Space, its history, and how it relates to other meeting styles. That would be the basis for a really solid Wikipedia article.

Cheers,Justin (who's only done a very tiny bit of Wikipedia editing)

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 2:18 PM, Suzanne Daigle <sdaigle4 at comcast.net> wrote:

What a day!  Lisa, Arthur, Shufang…amazing the placesthis has been taking us in the on-going world-wide conversation about oslistand ning. 

 

On another matter, Michael Herman today appealed to us for help onwhat he called  “tremendous editing” work required on theWikipedia Open Space description. I went to the Wiki website to see what wasthere. I cringed when I saw the alerts at the top of the page:  “readslike an advertisement”; “blatant advertising” could lead to “speedydeletion”; “insufficient context”; “missing citationsand footnotes” and requires “clean-up to meet Wikipedia standards”. I then started to dig deeper through pages and pages to understand the  Wikipediastandards, guidelines and criteria.  Part of me felt that if I was to helpon this  (along with other OS folks hopefully?),  I’d have towrite and conform to a structure of  “predictability”,  “control”,“data”, “verifiability” and “neutral point ofview” that could miss the point of what Open Space is all about. The Wikipediafocus seems to be much more on the objective than the subjective.  Out ofcuriosity, I checked other modalities like Appreciative Inquiry and FutureSearch and saw some of the same alert messages there too. I then went to LeanManufacturing, and Six Sigma – no alerts! Interesting.

 

Somehow it felt that if I was tackling this (with others?), itwould be like describing Chinese medicine on the basis of evidence-basedWestern medicine? I now understand what Michael said when he talked about the “tremendous”editing not because what’s there was poorly done but because of their rigorous(and limiting?) criteria.   

 

Or… perhaps there’s another way of looking at it. Maybe the time has come for a group of folks out there to take up the mainstreamWikipedia challenge to further document this experiential “experiment”that Harrison challenges us on in his latest book, Wave Rider. Who knows whereit could lead?  Perhaps this documentation already exists and we coulddraw from it? It appears there would be lots of “evidence” from thenearly 25 years, in 140+ countries, in (hundreds of thousands?) or (thousandsand thousands?) of situations, stories, learnings, etc.  

 

With some trepidation, I’m putting this out there to the OS universe. Certainly with my still limited experience in Open Space, don’t think thiscould be a solo initiative on my part. That being said, as we typically do inOpen Space, I’d like to post a topic “Wikipedia and Open Space”. Anyone want to join? Maybe we’ll set up a room on the new Ning. My interest is that I feel we are at a tipping point in the world with OpenSpace based on the multiple system breakdowns everywhere.  Lots ofopportunity for transformation and making a meaningful difference.  Anyonewant to join? Suzanne

 

 

Suzanne Daigle

Managing Partner, US Operations

Tel:  941-359-8877

sdaigle4 at comcast.net
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