Comments on: re: should it all be miscellaneous?

By: dnorman

dnorman — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:30:06 +0000

ah, well then Bingo! I was just trying to get at what could happen if an openly/flexibly governed community had to get squished into a rigid/confined CMS…

By: Cole

Cole — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:04:30 +0000

I’m not sure I see the difference in what we are saying to each other … governance isn’t a rigid set of laws in my mind — it includes a(n open) framework that describes how to share. Inclusion is the key and the word governance (in my use here) assumes there will be an agreed upon set of guiding principles to empower users. Is that any clearer?

By: dnorman

dnorman — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:00:41 +0000

Cole, I agree that the community governance model is the more critical thing – but if we have a wonderful, powerful, flexible community that gets hamstrung by the tool(s) that are available, there will be some clipping. I’m really loving Brian’s thoughts on the inclusive approach (see my latest post… )

By: Cole

Cole — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:51:44 +0000

D … I appreciate the link and more importantly the thoughts. I want to echo Brian’s comment that my real thrust is around a new way of thinking as it relates to governance. All of my recent thinking has been around changing the discussion to encourage more open content on the way in — I am not in place where I think open courseware (as an example) will be accepted. The discussion I want to have is about the open availability of the production and evolution of Institutional knowledge. I am at this moment very excited about the way wikipedia manages that approach. Reading Brian’s quick thoughts here I am struck by what appears to be an even more inclusive approach — one that not only promotes open contribution in a single system, but provides a framework (RSS and Tags) for contributing in other ways.

By: dnorman

dnorman — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:37:25 +0000

I’ve been thinking about the whole forced-centralization vs. encouraged-decentralization issue wrt the project I mentioned. I’m now pretty sure that my first reaction – to build a centralized but loose and individually-managed website to reflect the face-to-face communities – is the right approach. I’m working up a blog post in my head at the moment on why I’m now sure this is the right thing to do…

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:11:17 +0000

I think the notable contribution of Cole’s post to the discussion is the notion of a Wikipedia style governance model… One that lets people know how they can participate in the campus framework both technically (RSS, maybe even tagging suggestions) as well as guiding people to how work can be judged and how it may be republished…

I don’t know where to begin in terms of how to develop such a model, much less how to get buy-in… And if people are still pushing a repository model in 2008 I fail to see how a solid governance model will assuage them. But it’s got me thinking…

By: Ian H.

Ian H. — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 14:05:47 +0000

Depending on what you’re using it for, you may want to consider the new Automattic project, BuddyPress (http://buddypress.org/) – it’s a set of plugins for WPmu that lets you set up a social network-like site, with each person getting their own subdomain (like usual with WPmu), but with interactivity features.

By: Bill Fitzgerald

Bill Fitzgerald — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 07:08:47 +0000

Hello, D’Arcy,

A quick post here, as it’s late, I’m tired, and sleep sounds real nice at this point in time —

RE: “My gut reaction was to craft a website using our CMS of choice. I wanted to keep it as organic as possible, letting people in the community do pretty much anything they want with it. But, now I’m seriously wondering if even that would be too constraining. I’m now thinking about just having individuals and groups set up blogs wherever they like (with several suggested services provided to help guide them) and let them publish whatever they want, however they want, wherever they want.” —

While a central cms will definitely be constraining for some (and unnecessary for others), it will be useful for some people. Fortunately, as you point out, it doesn’t need to be an either/or, and you can blend both approaches. About all that’s needed for any of the publishing platforms is an rss feed —

In your response to Cole’s post, you nail the core issue — the problem isn’t the cms, it’s an artificially imposed structure. Depending on the tool/cms, that artificial structure can be inherent in the design, but that’s a separate discussion.

A central aggregator would go a long way toward restoring/creating a community feel to a distributed publishing network — Eduglu away!