Come join us at Open Space Technology World Community Ning site!!

[Kaliya *]

On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 12:29 AM, Justin T. Sampson <justin at krasama.com>wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 11:00 AM, Kaliya * <identitywoman at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Yeah - MEATBALL WIKI IS NOT A MAINSTREAM WIKI.
>>
>
> I must say I'm a bit baffled by this whole exchange. I often find much
> value in your posts, but as a moderate techie you must realize that ALL CAPS
> IS CONSIDERED YELLING
>

I was yelling.
I have been saying this to Micheal for years and he keeps saying "it is
mainstream" - and quite frankly it isn't.
Having an old out of date syntax that is not appropriate to expect
non-tech-inclined people to learn in this community.
Yes it may be easy to "install" and beautiful to maintain (From your
perspective as a developer) but that is beside the point if it not usable
for people like Lisa.


> I'm a more extreme techie (currently working as a software engineer at
> Google), I've built and installed a bunch of software, and I host a few
> small websites (including www.wosonos2008.org), and I just have to point
> out that it's no trivial feat to keep a site up and running for a decade,
> community involvement or no.
>

Maybe it is not clear from the tone of how the dialogue unfolded. I respect
what Micheal has created and 10 years ago it was totally appropriate to
"Just put up a site" and the only way to maintain it was to hand edit the
HTML etc. This site is that kind of site - hard to "just open up" and it is
his right not to.

When I first got to this community I went to find the wiki and tried to edit
it and got totally stalled and I am technically literate and participate in
many a open standards community editing wiki's all the time. I counldn't
easily access and change this one.  I assumed that this site was managed and
developed by and in community.  I only learned from my dialogues with people
that "really it is Micheal's site" but the site doesn't say this.

The site was not and still is not labeled as Micheal Herman's "personal
site" (put up in service of a community) and hopefully now that he has come
clean and "owned" that it is "his" this will help our clients showing up on
it thinking it is "THE worldwide home of *Open Space Technology*" to realize
that it is just one guys site.


There are now many more collaborative community tool's that have evolved in
10 years and I think we as a community should be using them together.  The
web changed and the world wide home of open space should change too.



> UseMod, the wiki software used by both MeatBallWiki and OpenSpaceWorld.NET<http://www.openspaceworld.net>,
> is open source, very simple, and super easy to install and maintain. It's
> one of my favorite wiki systems for those reasons. It was created 10 years
> ago and hence its syntax and style are reminiscent of the original wiki.
>

Yes - so it is fine for technie nerds like your self to "learn how to edit"
but not for regular folks here on OS land.
If we installed media wiki and people learned the syntax for that - they
could actually use it may other places including the whole universe of media
wiki sites.



> had no trouble logging in and making some edits this evening (just to add
> my name page). I went and looked at the website for that Planet Planet feed
> aggregator you mentioned, to see how easy it is to install, and there's no
> obvious documentation -- at first I could only see some links to sync from
> their code repository, until on third or fourth reading I noticed links to
> some tarballs. And this is what you want Michael to install when you don't
> even know how yourself?
>

Because I am part of a really amazing technical community that uses it to
stay connected and thing it would be good for this community - why not
recommend it to Michael for this community.  Saying I should know how to
install it to make the recomendation doesn't make any sense.



> Having gone through the pain of installing software too many times, these
> days my first choice is definitely to go with a fully-hosted and
> ad-supported system. It's definitely important to be able to backup the
> data, though, so any guidance you can offer about who supports what is
> extremely valuable. Also, the web search rankings are indeed quite
> changeable -- in fact, redesigning a successful site to make it more
> "beautiful" can easily knock it off the top if you're not careful. I've seen
> it happen, and it's no fun.
>

Yes - I know search engine rankings are movable.

BTW The wikipedia article also says this....in external links. ...

"openspaceworld.org" <http://www.openspaceworld.org/> Supporting and
supported by Open Space practitioners worldwide. The site offers materials
(or links to materials) in 20 different languages. Includes the primary
website of the Open Space Institute USA.

I wonder if someone from the OSI-USA board can speak to the fact that
Micheal's personal site is considered their primary website.


I do think we can make a new and better real home for the world wide
community to connect and share about this amazing practice we share.

-Kaliya



>
> Please keep pushing for improvement and openness... And keep breathing,
> too.
>
> With gentle respect,
> Justin
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