MeatballMissionDiscussion

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MeatballMissionDiscussionArchive -- old content from 2003, 2004
WikiMission -- "a wiki's MissionStatement is a most important SignPost?..."

Discussion

NathanielThurston -- Sat Aug 29 12:41:22 2009

The sense I get is that meatball has, up until now, been focusued on community-sided collaborative hypermedia, and that we haven't put much energy into finding solutions for CommunityMayNotScale. I think we've done a fantastic job with community-sized problems, and for those I feel that I have little to add. My focus has been on addressing problems for collaborative groups larger than about a hundred active participants, and I hope that we can spend some of our attention on such things as MoneyAndCommunity, TeaTime, http://thething.is/book.pdf. I also have a hunch that TheSelfOnline may be a necessary part of society-scale solutions.

What do you all think?

HelmutLeitner -- Sun Aug 30 07:19:04 2009

I think Meatball always grew in that directions where members had their interests and invested their time. For example I was and still am interested in CommunityOnline and it's specific problems. But one should be able to connect to some real situations, to be able to perceive and maybe to experiment.

FridemarPache -- Mon Aug 31 19:59:08 2009

Helmut, we are all actors in real situations, from which we can learn a lot from each other, especially concerning CommunityOnline.

Nathaniel, I share the vision with you of massive parallel human collaboration, dedicated to problem solving, solving well defined problems, like in PolyMath?, but also ill defined problems like to selforganize and co-build an income stream for all aware contributors in the sense of WikiNomics.

To get a successful solution to the MeatballMission problem, I have the impression that it is an "ill defined problem", that needs (strong) community engagement to be transformed into a well defined problem and then into a MeatballRoadmap? as a base for the success of Sunir's guidebook and the success of all involved authors. I don't think, that Sunir is getting to rip off all material, depersonalizing it as unsigned DocumentMode database, deleting all other contributed stuff and holding it as private corpus for his further books and publications :-)

HelmutLeitner -- Tue Sep 1 10:37:31 2009

Fridemar, I would like to learn a lot from you, but I feel unable to do so. It makes me angry that you do so little to make yourself clearly understood, to put an orderly line of thought in your pages.

To me it seems that you do not follow the ideas of NVC that promotes to talk about your [observations,] feelings and needs and make requests. I don't know nothing about your needs, your work, your human situation. Therefore I perceive a good part of what you write here as promotion without elaboration. Behind your surface of formal NonViolentCommunication, I see an actual aggressive demand, that doesn't accept differing opinions.

You can expect that your ideas have a place here, but you can not expect that Meatball as a whole changes into a breeding board for your ideas.

FridemarPache -- Tue Sep 1 12:31:11 2009

Helmut, in your preceding talk unit, I

(i) observe or sense a mixed message:
- on the one hand your
  - friendly signal of goodwill to learn from each other
  - feeling of angriness
  - invocation of NonViolentCommunication
  - friendly message "You can expect that your ideas have a place here"
- on the other hand provoking messages like
  - "you do so little to make yourself clearly understood, to put an orderly line of thought in your pages"
  - "to me it seems that you do not follow the ideas of NVC"
  - "I see an actual aggressive demand, that doesn't accept differing opinions"
  - "but you can not expect that Meatball as a whole changes into a breeding board for your ideas"
(ii) So I experience on my part in this dialogue similar to you unhappy feelings.
(iii) My needs are to be respected as a person and that my contributions are not misrepresented on the wave of temporary emotions, possibly based, as you say on knowing too little on each other's life context and projecting too much on each other
(iv) My asking to you is, calming down and avoiding general attributions and misrepresentations, in favor of giving concrete links, but please not too many at once, such that it is feasible for me to improve my contributions, of course in the spirit of mutually improving each other's contributions.

Helmut, reminding me to NVC helped indead a lot to respond to you in the four-step model of NVC, as e.g. given in the book "Gewaltfreie Kommunikation" von Marshall B. Rosenberg page 25, a translation of the original Engl.: "Non-Violent Communication" by the same author.

I welcome your asking for exchanging personal life context. Do you have a Skype account? Mine is fridemar.

After this clearing, I hope that we can continue the MeatballMissionDiscussion with better feelings.

HelmutLeitner -- Tue Sep 1 19:32:35 2009

Fridemar, I'm completely calm, so I can guarantee your first request, done.

What makes you think that I do not respect you? What could I do that you feel respected?

In what way do I misrepresent your contributions? What would be an acceptable way to represent them?

SunirShah -- Wed Sep 2 14:02:26 2009

NonViolentCommunication reminds me of the etiquette of the court of Louis XIV. A lot of formal politeness that frequently ended in multiple stab wounds.

This discussion of needs reminds me of our GoalStatement initiative that died due to a hostile contributor who subverted it. I believe that it is insufficient to simply need to be respected as a person to contribute functionally here, since you have that respect by default. It's important to anchor your contributions in demonstration of your own ideas. It's easy to build a house of cards on unsupported ideas. Reaching that level of intellectual honesty would shield you from much criticism. In fact, it's nearly impossible to respect someone who isn't a community or software project leader here. Having a (real) project gives us all a grounding for all our interactions.

A more robustly stated need is, "I am here to advance my understanding of Internet culture to further my career, both as a professional web application developer and marketer, and in the particular cases of FreshBooks?, Bibdex, and MeatballWiki itself so that my communities are more stable and that my businesses are more profitable."

Further, it provides accountability. If you are an unpleasant contributor with a project, you can be held accountable through your reputation. Without a project, as we have seen in the past, contributors rapidly become hostile. Their primary motivation is the entertainment value of the site and, I strongly believe, SocialBelongingness?, which is easily denied as their half-baked ideas are readily challenged by our own direct experiences. Since they have nothing to back up their ideas except for their egos, they confuse criticism of their ideas with criticism of themselves, and quickly the situation devolves into a FlameWar.

While I have the floor, I really think we spent several years fighting over SocialBelongingness? as a goal here, to our own harm (cf the arguments on RadicalInclusiveness). SocialBelongingness? is a symptom, not the purpose of MeatballWiki. After some years of thought, I honestly do not prioritize forming PersonalRelationships with community members here. That occasionally happens by happy accident, but it's certainly not a given. Rather, I expect to form ProfessionalRelationship?s. Contrast that to joining a sports team or an online support group where you expect to form new friends.

HelmutLeitner -- Wed Sep 2 20:41:59 2009

Sunir, whoever created the page NonViolentCommunication did a bad job to make us understand what the concept is about. I think that despite this, despite the possible misuse as formally correct behaviour, I think it is a concept with a lot of potential, at least in certain situations. I am grateful to Fridemar, that he referenced it. The point where I got interested - and this was only a few minutes into one of the videos - was when I noticed that there is an overlap of core concepts to Alexander's PatternTheory. Eventually I'll try to work that out.

NathanielThurston -- Sat Sep 12 21:30:57 2009

Fridemar, I would like to take the time to address your comment, "I don't think, that Sunir is getting to rip off all material, depersonalizing it as unsigned DocumentMode database, deleting all other contributed stuff and holding it as private corpus for his further books and publications :-)" and also to your GodKing complaint, for I am confident in my guess that the power structure of this community is a genuine concern of yours.

As I see it, Sunir is not motivated to perform such an act, as not only would it be against his self-interest, it seems clear to me that he perceives it this way. First and foremost, this is because his stated (and self-evident) perception is that the main value created here is not the artifact (the page database) that we have created, but the living community; and "holding it as his private corpus" would obviously destroy the community. Second, it would have a large detrimental effect on Sunir's reputation with his friends. Sure, he has the power to do all sorts of devious things to us (by changing the "constitution" embodied in the software)... but why on earth would he want to?

Personally, I think the "monarchy" style of government, under a wise and accountable leader, is almost certainly the best for a small community such as Meatball, for it spares us all countless headaches from endless debate. I trust Sunir to act according to his perception of his self-interest; I trust that he has a highly enlightened view about what his self-interest really is; and I trust us all to hold him accountable to the needs of the community.