[Textop] Textop wiki set up

[Larry Sanger]

Matthias, and Howard,

I've reworked the front page and divided the pilot project proposal into
separate sections on separate pages: http://www.textop.org/wiki

Having slept on it, I'm inclined to say that we should focus the wiki on
pilot project development, which is really the only reason I set it up.  We
*can* also use it for collaborative document development; e.g., I will post
a draft of a community charter on the wiki soon.  But I'm inclined to think
that even those documents should be removed from the wiki at some point and
officially approved and "published" onto textop.org.  In other words, I
conceive of the wiki as Textop's *temporary* content production platform,
not as its content publishing platform.

Howard, I have to admit that I'm opposed to the use of the wiki *a la* Ward
Cunningham's wiki, i.e., combining thoughts in a "discussion mode" which are
then "refactored" and presented in "document mode."  Long experience with
wikis makes it clear to *me*, anyway, that this special method creates
substandard and unauthoritative prose.  We're better off each speaking for
ourselves.  Furthermore, it all too often allows the person who creates a
discussion page to set the tone and agenda of a debate.  By contrast, the
tone and agenda of a debate can change constantly on a mailing list; mailing
lists are much harder for people with special agendas to hijack,
particularly if they're moderated.  Finally, on this point, placing
community governance on a wiki as Ward has done is essentially to declare a
rule of the mob (of the loudest, of the most persistent).  Mailing lists or
any forum that allows *seriatim* contribution allows people to speak always
for themselves; actual decisionmaking is more easily separable process,
because people aren't working together on (allegedly) "consensus"
statements.  I am quite sure that, however collaborative the work on Textop
will be, the *governance* of Textop will be a civilized, well-ordered
representative democracy, subject area expertise a condition of certain
positions.

All that said, I *am* in favor of using wiki pages for collaborative
document creation *a la* Wikipedia.  But this sort of work should be
outgrowth of discussions on the mailing list, conference calls, and other
media where individuals can speak for themselves.

If you couldn't tell, I'm *really* focused on moving this project forward
decisively.  That doesn't mean we're running ahead willy-nilly with no idea
of what we're doing, but we are taking very decided steps in a definite
direction.  I don't want us to be bogged down either by excessive
navel-gazing, or by battling with people with different agendas (to be
clear, I've seen none of these here), or by bureaucracy that we set up
ourselves.  As I used to say quite often when organizing Wikipedia, this is
first and foremost a content-creation project, not merely a community, and
certainly not a debate society.  And, as Wikipedia showed, when you get a
lot of people *focused* on creating content in new, productive ways, the
results can be really phenomenal.

I do want to make sure everyone has the maximum opportunity to get their
voice heard, to make counter-proposals, and so forth--I hope you can tell
that.  But I also want to make sure that we move forward decisively, not in
a wiki-washy fashion!

--Larry

> -----Original Message-----
> From: textop-bounces at lists.dufoundation.org 
> [mailto:textop-bounces at lists.dufoundation.org] On Behalf Of 
> Brendel Matyas
> Sent: Friday, June 02, 2006 7:22 AM
> To: General Discussion List for the Text Outline Project
> Subject: Re: [Textop] Textop wiki set up
> 
> 
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> 
> I agree with Howard that to use a wiki to produce something 
> from our discussions would e great. In Wiki you can branch 
> the topics, and you have a result of a discussion. Using a 
> wiki it would e sure that we always would ave discussions 
> with some constructive result, we always work on something, 
> which we dispute.
> 
> Lrry, if you are afraid that some trolls would vandalise
> this wiki, then lets have it with restricted rights! Only 
> registered memers see it and can edit it.
> 
> I would be glad to see some policies worked out from these 
> discussions, we have now. 
> 
> Matthias
> 
> 
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