When Nick first unlimbered his "big bold naivete" in asking the question
or suggesting there was an answer, I rolled my eyes just a little,
sighed and thought "not again!", but as it has unfolded, I have to give
him credit, along with the other participants in thinking a little
harder about it and at least niggling out a few of the important
possibiities. Even if we *don't* change anything, I feel better for
having had the conversation.
On the technical side, I agree that a hypertext system with
"transclusion" would seem somewhat ideal. What I remember of Nick's
"noodles" was that it was just a wiki (by implementation) with a few
conventions of use that he suggested to try to richly (following the
metaphor of a bowl of noodles) interconnect the myriad individual
noodles and threads. I tried honestly to participate in that with Nick,
but I think it died from lack of participation (myself maybe included).
I think one or another of us *does* try to provide an editor role from
time to time, compiling a summary of the thread to date... not unlike a
forward in a collection, etc. The volume of traffic here (during one of
our tsunamis) would overwhelm any one individual (even if they loved the
job and were paid for it) and it would be hard to find a single person
whose editorial position would be acceptable to all anyway.
Another challenge (even for a good editor) is the nature of this group
(especially the vocal subset) is that we tend to be explosive, going off
in all directions at once (like Underdog). I'm probably one of the more
guilty parties, hijacking not the thread (technically) but the topic itself.
My recent dabbling (at Doug's expense) with the Comic format represents
an attempt on my own part to move out of the linguistic realm (where I
am obviously prolific if not always competent) to get some perspective
on the threads. Comics (for me) lend themselves to satire, so that may
not really be the answer.
A few minor tech points:
- Threads are often broken (i.e. a new email w/o reply or forward)
created with the same or slightly altered subject but not recognized
by the mail system.
- Threads are also often "hijacked" .. someone reading a thread sees a
person they'd like to send an email to so they reply or forward the
threads email but with an entirely different topic. This also is not
managed by the mail system but the different subject is a help.
- Many of us use "digests" so a response to the digest can be to any
of the emails within the day's conversations.
- Attachments or mixed media in the mail may pose a problem in terms
of whether or not they should also be included. PesterPower
definitely wants to include the comics! But not signatures that carry
a company logo or something similar.
Here's what I recommend: take an important conversation we've had
lately and think about turning it into some other sort of media: blog,
forum, wiki, outliner, specialized web page, triple-store (semantic
web), and so on. Programmers and designers often do this to find all
the surprises like the few I listed above. The first Treo was a block
of wood with cash-register paper around it "used" for 2 weeks to
prototype the mobile PDA experience.
I think this is very possible. There are some nifty "aggregator" apps
.. FlipBoard is one I really like. Evernote too.
Good luck, I think this might be a nifty design experiment and who
knows, end up with the next Big Thing!
-- Owen
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