CommunityOverContent

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: Are we speech without a speaker?
Notes

Quoting with permission, March 20, 2004:
<Sunir> He saw Meatball as document-centric, and I see it as community-centric.
<Sunir> But I'm apparently post-modern and therefore unintelligible.
<awwaiid> are those really opposing views?
<Sunir> no
<Sunir> A community-centric viewpoint covers a document-centric one
<awwaiid> a community made up of documents
<Sunir> But you have to really understand what it means for things to be socially constructed to know why this theory is more powerful and more applicable.
<Sunir> no, the community *writes* the documents
<awwaiid> I understand social construction
<Sunir> The documents don't just appear.
<Sunir> So who ultimately is reading and writing the documents? the community. Therefore, the community is more important than their output.
<Sunir> At least to the survival of both the community and the corpus of the documents.
<awwaiid> but can the community be identified without the side-effect of the documents?
<Sunir> The documents don't grow by themselves, in other words, so they cannot be given priority to the community who maintains, upgrades, protects, defends, organizes, and otherwises *does* stuff to the documents
<Sunir> that's the interesting thing about community online 
<Sunir> everything goes through text.
<awwaiid> ya
<Sunir> I call it "LifeInText"
<Sunir> and that gives the community online properties missing in normal community 
<awwaiid> and takes some away, I'd say
<Sunir> LifeInText is the same collapse as software (machine and data)
<Sunir> yes
<Sunir> and software is less than machine and material; shucker and conr.
<Sunir> corn
<Sunir> in some ways, i mean
<awwaiid> shucker and corn?
<Sunir> just a type of machine
<awwaiid> oh. I know what you mean now.
<Sunir> but post-modernism also includes modernism
<Sunir> so my community-centric view will also include a document-centric view 
<awwaiid> (though i might say software is more than machine + data)
<Sunir> and also a style-centric
<Sunir> chat-centric
<awwaiid> ya
<Sunir> software is interesting in that while all information is both bits + encoding, software makes the encoding also bits
<awwaiid> though your analogy seems to be becomming inappropriate when comparing post-modern=community, modern=document-centric, etc
<Sunir> software then incorporates time
<Sunir> post-modernism is highly community-oriented.
<awwaiid> certainly I see that
<Sunir> that's because it prioritizes social forces rather than external objective realities.
<awwaiid> I'm just saying the analogy seems a bit fishy, and not necessary for your viewpoint
<awwaiid> yes, I see what you are getting at
<Sunir> well, the document-centric viewpoint presupposes a Truth, or at least a measure of truth.
<awwaiid> how so?
<Sunir> Well, it figures what is written down is fact; or valuable as a truth
<awwaiid> I don't see why a document-centric view couldnt' itself be twisted into a postmodern stance
<awwaiid> but in a wiki things change
<Sunir> whereas I would claim that nothing on the wiki is intelligible without the community to decode it.
<Sunir> which is another reason why copylefting a living wiki is dumb; no one else can read it.
<awwaiid> okay
<Sunir> also, modernism looks as the people as a group of individuals.
<awwaiid> what restriction that copylefting imposes would stop others from reading it?
<Sunir> so the individuals come to the wiki to read the documents to learn something, and then they go away (think "software manual").
<Sunir> individuals also come and may add things to the wiki because all individuals will be motivated to do so (i have no idea why people think this)
* Sunir will get to your question in a sec
<awwaiid> k
<Sunir> but a community-centric viewpoint sees the corpus as primarily a conversation and dialectic between people who care about one another with a common sense of identity; a MeatBall:CommonContext and a MeatBall:SuperordinateGoal
<wiki> -> http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SuperordinateGoal
<Sunir> MeatBall:CommonContext
<wiki> -> http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?CommonContext
<Sunir> Which is why we have the MeatBall:BarnRaising motto
<wiki> -> http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?BarnRaising
<Sunir> the text on the wiki is primarily useful for aiding discussion within the community
<Sunir> it's a vocabulary for them
<Sunir> and since a wiki is so perfect for this (page names are concepts), it works out well for us
<awwaiid> ya
<Sunir> social construction of meaning
<Sunir> which is why you need the community to decode the text; it's not very clear to outside observers.
<Sunir> trust me, most pepole don't understand what we write 
<Sunir> ok, onto your question
<Sunir> Coyplefting doesn't stop people from accessing the text.
<awwaiid> I see. So by the time they understand the wiki they are basically part of the community, sharing the common language
<Sunir> it's just that they can't understand what we write without the MeatBall:CommunityLore that helps decode what we're talking about
<wiki> -> http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?CommunityLore
<Sunir> right, except by reading a copy, they lose the ability to communicate with the community.
<Sunir> the text and the community are one
<Sunir> LifeInText
<Sunir> so, this is all disturbingly post-modern, I guess. it just makes sense to me as the plum obvious truth of it all.
<Sunir> but i'm secretly modernist. ;)
<awwaiid> ha
<Sunir> "plum obvious truth"
<awwaiid> *chuckle*
<awwaiid> Well I appreciate you sharing your perspective with me.
<Sunir> i hope it was enlightening
CommunityOverContent

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