[Textop-en-phil] Report on first work, and next steps

[Larry Sanger]

All,

As far as I'm concerned, the pilot project has kicked off!  It's a pretty
unspectacular kickoff, to be honest, but I'll give you a report anyway.

As promised, I've been working on the wiki for something like an hour a day,
five days a week, for nearly the last week.  In addition to finishing
instructional material, I've been working quite a bit on the outline.  I've
been formatting chunks from my previous work and putting them into the
outline.  I've also been working with Philippe a bit on his drive to clarify
the relations between nodes.

It has been well over six months since I looked at the outline in any
detail, and I've come to a number of conclusions:

(1) Once I've filled up the outline with what chunks are available, I want
to go back over the whole thing with a fine-toothed comb and render the
whole thing much more conceptually coherent.

(2) As a result of revising the outline, I'll propose a number of rules.  A
lot of the present incoherence of the outline stems from the simple fact
that I never made any clear decisions about matters that would have to be
articulated and codified.  Well, it's clear to me now that if we're going to
work on such a thing together, it *will* have to be articulated and
codified.

(3) If I just forge on ahead and no one is working with me, I'll probably be
working on it myself forever.  So I have a new scheme to get you to work
with me.  I will post *parts* of the outline (or some problematic chunks)
here on this list, and I will for each part (or the chunks) raise a number
of questions about it/them.  I hope I'll be able to inspire you to at least
discuss these matters with me even if you don't feel emboldened to
contribute on the wiki yourself.  In fact, though, I think that such
discussion will serve as a nice entrée into wiki work--that's my scheme.

Those three of you who have volunteered (more are very welcome!), none of
the above changes anything I said--the ball is in your court--please get
back to me at your convenience!

----------------
Dr. Larry Sanger
Director of Collaborative Projects, Digital Universe Foundation
100 Enterprise Way, Suite G370, Scotts Valley, CA 95066
larry.sanger at dufoundation.org http://www.dufoundation.org/
Office: 831-227-2602  Cell: 831-359-0582  Home: 831-335-3521