MeatballWiki

MeatballSignaturePoll

Some people on Meatball sign their contributions on Meatball others don't. So it would be helpful to know, if there are more people happy seeing signed contributions or not.

The initial author's reformulated Question, extended by Helmut:

Do you prefer to see signed contributions? Yes:

No:

  • ..

Yes or No depends on the situation or context:

Don't care:

  • ..

----

SamRose's modified question:

Yes, pro signed contributions:

No, signed contributions not necessary/required, but encouraged (these issues were covered in UseRealNames):

Discussion:

As Sunir deleted the signed contribution of FridemarPache in GaiaFoundation, with the words "Reverting Fridemar's change, as it is incorrect that we insist on signatures." Fridemar didn't formulate "we insist on signatures" but politely guessed, that it would probably make more people happy, to see signatures. So it is only fair to make it clear, whether "we" is representative or a GodKing statement. This suggestion for consensus and the deleted text can be seen on my blog. It is great to enjoy the freedom here on MeatballWiki to AgreeToDisagree. My arguments:

  • Spam is usually not signed (there were days with long lists of unsigned Spam, you could read in the RecentChanges but now don't show up in the list)
  • Display the last 360 days in RecentChanges to see that signed contributions prevail (what appears to be the "current style")
  • Authors are treated more respectfully, and not treated like a quantitée négligable, whose work can be wiped off at will
  • Contributions of authors can't be ripped off their signatures by the main editor and then presented as authorless "DocumentMode" contributions, that are then in the copyright of the Meatball data base (Warning CopyrightTrap).
  • Dedications to the CreativeCommons are more trustfully taken as such, if the authors sign to signalize their intent.

-- [fridemar]

Thank you Sam for the link, but you reformulated the question, the initiator of this page asked and improved the awareness of the initial author. If the initial author adhered to the practise of Sunir, he had reverted your work. Instead of this, he accepts your reformulation and reformulates himself his question as a second option for consensus polling, because he wants to know, if you and the other peers are more happy with more signatures or less signatures or don't care about signatures. -- [fridemar]

Fridemar, you seem to mix two kinds of signatures. First if there appears a user name on RecentChanges and second if one signs his contributions on a wiki page. I think the later may be more relevant to your poll, but I'm not sure. -- MarkusLude

Yes Markus, your observation is right and I thank you, that you bring up this topic, because it helps to grow awareness of the neuralgic point. In my case, I used the short form of my DomainBasedRealName, a kind of public business card, on which future transactions of CreatingAndSharingWealth within a SocialCommonWealth can be based. When I discovered the [New Unsigned Original Version of the GaiaFoundation Intro Page on Meatball] I noticed, that the link was mistyped. As I am a lover of the Gaia paradigm, I not only corrected the link, but also invested some time to use this situation for the benefit of all involved interaction partners, as I hoped. So I made the following [Enhancement to the GaiaFoundation Intro].

To make aware my considerations, I give you the full text with additional explanations:

<Copy with comments in /* .. */>

> See our page at http:gaia.iinet.net.au

=> See our page at http://gaia.iinet.net.au

/* correcting the defunct link */

=> See our page at http://gaia.iinet.net.au  -- AnonymousDonor

/* inserted AnonymousDonor, for two reasons:

  • as a convenience to the newcomer, that could easily be overridden by his/her RealName
  • as an helpful context to explore */
=> Fridemar corrected the mistyped link to signal sympathy and goodwill for collaboration.

/* selfexplaining */

=> He also inserted the interim signature AnonymousDonor to encourage use of RealNames, because using explicite 
   signatures is the current style in the MeatballWiki Community, that probably makes most of the people happy here.

/* please notice the

  • cautious formulation "interim signature", to make it easy to change it.
  • non-apodictic mark of the subjective view of the author: ".. probably makes most of the people happy.. */

=> He blogs this entry and politely asks you, if you allow WikiBlogging. i.e. copying the whole page into the blogosphere, with y/our contribution, giving y/our projects more exposure

/* Asking for WikiBlogging is an offer to help all interaction partners to get a broader exposure of their messages and this way, more efficiency for attracting partners to their projects. Since in WikiBlogging, most of the links give traffic back to the base Wiki, this helps the base wiki to get more exposure and fresh newcomers too. */

 -- [fridemar]

/* the short signature as Domain Based Real Name, for the following reasons:

  • authenticating the author in the wider Web with a stronger technique (kind of a public business card)
  • signalling the form, he prefers to be addressed in public conversations */
  • a link, where he blogs his contributions in public with additional links and flags

<End Copy>

-- [fridemar]

I think whether a contribution should be signed or not, depends on the situation or context. As part of discussions, to express opinions, like here, the answer is yes. But this doesn't mean that ThreadMode should be the preferred mode. Any single signature makes refactoring more difficult. There are probably a dozen different situations, to judge separately. For example: starting a brainstorming should be signed, contributions to brainstorming probably shouldn't be signed. I think it doesn't make sense to create a rule for this. Trust your intuition and gut feeling. -- HelmutLeitner

Thank you Helmut for your feedback: "As part of discussions, to express opinions ..". So I did express my opinion on [Enhancement to the GaiaFoundation Intro], hoping for discussion, before my opinion and work was wiped out by Sunir. I trust my intuition and gut feeling, that I do the right thing to make the "interaction" with the main editor of this wiki fully aware to him and the community, to protect the work of future authors, not to be destroyed with only a short (respectless) comment in the DigestedSummary, misrepresenting the author's intentions, burdoning upon him/her additional explanation work and beyond that, destroying credibility of the involved interaction partners.

-- [fridemar]

Fridemar, your contribution to GaiaFoundation sounds really weird. Maybe you do not intend to, but it sounds like the only important thing is Fridemar and his ideas in contrast to meatball. We are simply not used to make such a fuzz about typos we correct. Sunir was not especially friendly with your contribution, but I suppose this is because you already carry a stigma with you. That's a bit how we are at times, technically correct but unfriendly, when somebody is getting on our nerves, creating unnecessary work, making things complicated. -- HelmutLeitner

Thank you Helmut for your feedback, "Fridemar" is only a pointer that shows to places, where a new idea is bread, in this case the idea of a SocialCommonWealth. I hope that soon a lot of peers are realizing the idea, making my life easier to be not a target for lots of agression. Making the name of a contributor a punchball, implying a bloated ego, or even stigmatize it, is not helpful. Are you aware, that associating with "Fridemar" a stigma, makes yourself a stigmatizer, a process that is mirrored and escalated and not useful for anyone of us. Anyhow, I thank you, that you recognized the action towards "Fridemar", gentlemanlike as you phrased it as "not especially friendly". "Fridemar" stands for the little guy, whose contributions are wiped out by the allmighty main editor. I hope to contribute to the general awareness by making this process explicit. -- [fridemar]

I'm afraid I have to agree. Referring to yourself in the third person comes across as a little strange. Also, if you do have a transient comment to make - such as asking an anonymous contributor a question - it's polite to indicate it as such, along the lines of Wiki:DeleteWhenCooked. Saying "I added an AnonymousDonor signature because that is current style here" also comes across as a touch condescending - let people find out for themselves by following the link.

Also the use of a URL as a signature worries me. Not everybody has a Web address that they expect to remain permanent. Fridemar, do you expect people to go through the entire site and change every single instance of their "Domain Based Real Name" if the address of their website changes? It's extremely bad factoring. On a simple wiki such as this, personal URLs should be kept on a user's home page, where they can be updated [Wiki:OnceAndOnlyOnce once] if they change.

Final thing. The name of this page, with its leading "consensus", strikes me as quite defensive. SignaturesAtMeatball, or MeatballSignaturePoll, would have been a more neutral formulation. -- EarleMartin

Hi Earle and Helmut I happily agree with your more neutral formulation for the pagename and accordingly redirected it to one of the optional names, you offered. Using the third name of the author is a common practise, that goes back to the dawn of wikis, originally recommended by WardCunningham. Even you use it. as recommended in the DigestedSummary. So don't let us nitpicking about this point. I accept your advice, Wiki:DeleteWhenCooked. Yes, this would have been a better option for me. Next time, I'll remember it; if not, give me a nudge. ;-). In the same way I feel, that it would have been better to avoid the AnonymousDonor passus, indeed it sounds to me now, so as you describe it.

You needn't worry on the "use of an URL" for signatures (which I don't suggest as a general practice in Meatball, because it would mean a another mindset, combined with heavy refactorisation work). It is a personal preference currently for the above mentioned reasons. In an OpenBusinessWiki however, .. (Details, as suggested by Helmut, moved to another place: [AboutUs:User_talk:Fridemar]. -- fridemar

Fridemar, there are large enough numbers of third-world people (children and adults) on the web to do experiments on any scale. The 200 Mio OLPC vision just serves to avoid acting here and now. This page is also the wrong place to discuss this. Again someone will have to work to clean up this mess. -- HelmutLeitner

Hello Sam, Markus, Earle and Helmut, thank you for participating on this page. Let's finish the drama, we can do much better, when collaborating on greater goals. Summary: MeatballSignaturePoll appears to me kind of a taboo, a bit too hot for the majority of peers here, to burn their fingers. It was triggered by a rude behaviour, so please let's be a bit more polite in the future. I interpret Helmut's last statement as a hint to put a DeletedPage on top. So I did it, leaving of course anybody else the option to delete this marker. -- fridemar

Whose rude behaviour? Yours or mine? -- SunirShah

Both. Tat Twam Asi. I think, we are all mirrors of each other. Do you accept my sorry, brother? -- fridemar

I didn't do anything I consider rude. Nor did you do anything I consider particularly rude--except perhaps creating this vote. Please clarify what was exactly rude? If nothing, that's fine too. -- SunirShah

Sunir, yes, that's exactly the point. I think we all have our blind spots. We sometimes do things without being aware, that there are side-effects, that hurt somebody. In our case, I relied on my overall-feeling, made precise in http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?#SignGuestBookWithYourRealName, http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?MeatballWiki#WeUseOurRealNamesInOrderToFosterTrustAndProfessionalism. So I formulated it very cautiously and as friendly as possible in my non-native English. It cost me some time, and you yourself wrote somewhere in the wiki, that even you as a native speaker need sometimes a lot of time to write three well thought out sentences. I didn't formulate the unfriendly isolated phrase: ".. because it is the current style..", which might have caused a misleading impression, when only skimming the text. I wrote:

"He also inserted the interim signature AnonymousDonor to encourage use of RealNames, because using explicite signatures is the current style in the MeatballWiki Community, that probably makes most of the people happy here."

(As I didn't want to expand my original wording here again, I tried to give the inhibited version a named anchor to quote from. This produced however a new version. So I reverted to the original uncommented version to reflect the current state of the discussion).

As I felt, you simply wiped out my contribution, misrepresenting the intent of the wiped out work of the author. In my view, you acted like a father, who nugded his child to prevent similar behaviour in the future. I think we are living the paradigm of brothers and sisters. I admit that my behaviour might be an overreaction. But as we are each others teachers and students, Helmut might be right to leave our conversation as stuff to learn from it.

I just learned to improve my wording considering two points:

  • "He" should be replaced by "I" (in this case, as suggested by Earle)
  • The comma before "that" is misleading (as I should have recognized earlier, due to the hint of Earle)

This gives:

"I also inserted the interim signature AnonymousDonor to encourage use of RealNames, because using explicit signatures is the current style in the MeatballWiki Community that probably makes most of the people happy here."

and even better by eliminating "is the current style":

"I also inserted the interim signature AnonymousDonor to encourage use of RealNames, because using explicit signatures probably makes most of the MeatballWiki people happy here."

Or what about:

"I also tentatively inserted AnonymousDonor to encourage use of RealNames, because I suppose, that signed contributions make most of the MeatballWiki people happy here."

Or even simpler, I could have avoided my personal signal and instead of this, having simply referred to the MeatballWiki document.

Further suggestions for improving welcome. Thank you.

Now we have reached nearly emptyness and I hope to understand all peers much better now. :-)

-- fridemar

Fridemar, why should we delete this page? One can learn from it. I meant that the arguments about your projects are misplaced here on a page about signatures at meatball. -- HelmutLeitner

Helmut, I have started to thin out my texts. On the other hand, I hear Earle saying, it is cooked and can be deleted. And perhaps Sunir and the majority is not happy with this page. I am ready to accept, what makes most of us happy. -- FridemarPache

You write, "I think we are living the paradigm of brothers and sisters." This is principle is the most important to you? -- SunirShah

Yes, Sunir. And I feel, that this is the maximal source of happiness in the end. However I don't claim that anyone of us has reached enlightenment yet :-) -- FridemarPache

Cool. So, going forward, the key question is as brothers and sisters, how should we a) coordinate (i.e. ensure we aren't bumping into one another), b) contribute (AddValue), c) collaborate (ExchangeValue)? What communication skills and techniques are required? -- SunirShah

Sunir, I think, we can improve our coordination with short public videos and video-collages, where we can look into each other's face, while exchanging our social signals, helping each other to develop humor and emphathy. Adding and exchanging value is the core of wiki. But until now, economic values were excluded. I.e. probably only a tiny fraction of (non-)wikizens could make their living from adding and exchanging values via wiki. I think, Wiki has the potential to realize economic integration for all engaged participants. -- [fridemar]

That's too tactical, not to mention impossible. Let's start with basic communication skills like listening skills. -- SunirShah

My feelings are somewhat in between. I agree with Fridemars search for economic use, although I do not agree with his original constructivist approach. I think that Sunir is right that it is difficult to make a living using wikis, although I feel that wiki can be a key factor for doing so, increasingly for more and more people. The use of media like video, as Fridemar suggest, may be an important factor. The basic ability to communicate and simply listen, like Sunir suggests, to build trust and cooperation, that is missing with many people and organisations, is probably fundamental. I see that wiki is more and more used by people and organisations, although still in an initial stage. E. g. we (RupertPayer and me) just offered to do $7000 wiki+video consulting for a rural development organisation which should result in a concept for wiki+realworld community for regional craft using video as an addition media for communication. This is not much, but much more than has been possible two or three years ago. Today I'm sitting with people to continue and extend the AlliedSchoolsGraz project, which for a year connected 8 schools in 5 countries for project work (should report about these experiences sometime), open this up for all schools and youth organizations in the small federal state of Styria (about 1.2 mio inhabitants, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Styria) These are funded, social but also economic projects, that deal with quality of communication and cooperation, that wiki makes possible. The VideoBridge project is an important factor for us, to add additional media competency. It's maybe a GimmeFive to get successful: (1) wiki and quality of dialogue (2) learning and quality of content, multimedia, video (3) connection to real life, people, organisations (4) create economic effects, value (5) signal life competency (innovation, patterns, sense). -- HelmutLeitner

I like what Helmut is saying. I agree with the idea FridemarPache is championing, of integrating video. I don't know how to "make money from wiki posting," but I understand that where people gather and converse for a long time, (that's us,) that business plans can naturally arise. -- LionKimbro

Brainstorming. Here are some things I think matter to be part of an effective peer working group:

-- SunirShah

(This is mostly in reply to Lion's post above "maiking money using wikis", but not in response to Lion himself, but just addressing the idea of "making money in wiki" in the context of everything Fridemar has talked about here on Meatball.) I'm going to make a comment here that probably should go elsewhere, but what I see Fridemar talking about is an idea that basically groups like MeatballWiki should team up and pool their equities (financial, social, intellectual) and share wealth in cooperative ways. If you've had a chance to read much of what I've been putting into http://socialsynergyweb.net/cgi-bin/wiki/FrontPage you'd know that I agree with Fridemar in principle. I agree that, if people in the community are genuinely interested in this, that it is a good idea.

However, the ideas, the suggestions, the methods that Fridemar has employed to date to introduce and grow these ideas in this community have met with mixed results. I believe that this is because this community, although possibly interested in pursuing a cooperative group wealth sharing experiment, is not interested in immediately applying the exact methods that Fridemar has been suggesting here.

My own observation of the Meatball community tells me that this community would prefer to try experiments like this (when they are indeed genuinely interested in the experiment) through a group co-creation process, instead of a pre-formatted template that affixes participants into a pre-determined "role" in the system. From my observation, you can gauge whether Meatball is interested in an idea by it's enthusiastic uptake by the community. If a lot of people aren't jumping on board on the idea, then chances, to me, seem very good that they are not genuinely interested in it, at least in it's current state. I think this is why Sunir keeps bringing up things like "ListeningSkills". Basically, in my experience, if you have an idea like the one Fridemar has been pursuing, and you hope to persuade people to have GenuineInterest in it, you need to TuneYourTransmitterToTheirReceiver. You have to listen to the culture and WorldView of the people in question, and try to help them consume and digest what you are serving in a way that they are willing and able to. If they are not ready to, and they are responding by rejecting, you can help your own listening by putting aside what they are saying (rejection), and asking why they are doing it (worldview, cultural reasons). Then, you can think about putting yourself in their shoes, looking at the world through their eyes as much as you can, and thinking about their core motivations for accepting/rejecting. Then, you can adjust your idea based on this feedback, ask them to engage your idea based on problems that they genuinely care about solving. Your idea itself will change (probably for the better), but you will also build trust and mutual understanding among people from whom you seek exactly those things. -- SamRose

Sam is right. Essentially, the recent spate of conflicts are unnecessary if people spent more time improving their ability to communicate with each other. If everyone's priority is working together as peers, it is everyone's responsibility to respect their peers by working hard to first listen to what they are saying, and then second communicate your own points relative to the other person's world view. The art of persuasion is listening. Ultimately, while none are violent or intentional conflicts, they aren't HealthyConflicts as they aren't leading to constructive outcomes. -- SunirShah

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