I was missing the the terminology and the differentiation between 'Deanster' and 'DeanSpace'. Independent of the terminology, I believe it is crucial for any sort of online community building tool to facilitate interaction between the users above and beyond merely listing information. I am concerned from what I am hearing, that such functionality seems to be missing from 'Deanster' and I feel that needs to be addressed.
It may be that it is best addressed by avoiding too strong a bifurcation between 'Deanster' and 'DeanSpace'. The question arises how do you establish an impression of other people in the network, how is reputation established, maintained and communicated to others? These, of course, being fundamental building blocks to cohesion which is crucial to people working effectively together. Aldon P.S. Personally, I think the Friendster UI sucks. -----Original Message----- From: Joshua Koenig [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 5:43 PM To: Aldon Hynes Cc: Zephyr Teachout; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [hackers] Draft Deanster Design Doc Aldon, I think you're missing part of the picture here. DeanSpace (e.g. volunteer effort, community websites, blogs, etc) and the Deanster application (hosted and operated by the campaign directly) are logically separate. Deanster wouldn't include blogs for users, though it could include a guestbook ala Ryze. Personally, I think there are lessons to be learned from both of these systems. Friendster has a vastly superior user interface to Ryze, but Ryze allows people to join groups of interest in addition to having a network of friends. Your Deanster profile could of course include links back to your blog or personal website. What we're talking about in terms of "user content" is giving people quick, focused opportunities to offer their opinion or explain what interests them about Dean or what they're working on accomplishing. We actually want to take this a step further in terms of adding xpertweb functionality so that people can use the Deanster network to get things done. Hope that helps -josh p.s. It won't be called Deanster, by the way, but it makes a good codename for now. > Well, I'm trying to catch up on everything that happened over the > weekend > while I was off at the folk music festival. > > So, I'm sorry if I'm covering things that have already been covered, > but I > would like to throw in my two cents here. > > Zephyr, I respectfully disagree with you on the importance of public > expression in whatever sort of space is created. The public > expression is > crucial in establishing a sense of a cohesive community and in > facilitating > different people in connecting. > > Let me illustrate: On Friendster, I am connected to 157232 people in > my > Personal Network, through 17 friends. However, friendster doesn't > facilitate communicating with others in a manner that develops > community. > As such, I haven't made any useful new contacts. > > On the other hand, communities like www.ryze.com and www.ecademy.com > do a > much better job of promoting community through things like blogging. > > So, I strongly encourage facilities to promote blogging. Granted, > there are > other venues, including posting comments on the official blog, having > your > own blogs, etc., but I believe having blogs, forums, or similar tools > as > part of Deanspace will make it much more effective. > > Zephyr raises the issue of moderation. DFA doesn't have the staff to > vet > who posts or what posts remain if we have a giant network of people > posting. > However, following the paradigm of self organizing systems, and the > example > of DMOZ, I don't believe that is important. Every site that gets set > up > will have its administrators and/or moderators. This is no different > than > the close to 400 mailing lists that have already been set up. These > moderators can be as controlling or free flowing as they feel > comfortable > with and fits their particular community. > > Part of the beauty of a truly distributed system like this, is that I > can > (or should be able to), as moderator of one system decide what content > I > pick up from other systems. This provides a natural feedback system. > Those > sites that develop a good sense of community through an appropriate > level of > moderation will end up producing more valuable content, which will get > more > widely distributed. > > So, that's my two cents on the role of blogs, content, moderation and > community building within DeanSpace. > > Comments? > > Aldon > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Behalf Of Zephyr Teachout > Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2003 1:53 PM > To: 'Joshua Koenig'; [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: [hackers] Draft Deanster Design Doc > > > This is fantastic. Thanks Josh! I believe that if we get this up and > running, over 500,000 people will use it. I do -- over 1,000,000 on > friendster, and they aren't trying to change the world :) > > The single biggest request we get from folks in the field is "how do I > find other Dean supporters." This provides that means. It's a top > priority for the campaign, and if we can provide other resources to > help > make it happen, ask me and I'll do everything I can do provide them. > > The one thing that I would change in Josh's model is just that we are > not thinking of this as a place for public expression ("why I support > Dean") not because we don't want that expression, but because > (1) there are other venues for it, and > (2) it drastically (or almost completely) eviscerates the > moderation/management needs if we don't provide that space--if there is > no "enter your own content here" but all pick and choose and links to > forum, we don't need to vet who enters at ALL which is ideal (this is > the big diff between us and friendster -- we don't have staff who can > routinely check every new person and we don't have people who want to > kill the campaign by posting obscene or harassing posts (that's the big > concern, not dissent). > > I'm thinking that we'll just modify our extensive registration to > include all these elements (we're modifying anyway), and then feed the > Data to deanster. The tricks then, are > > (1) how to display the information > (2) how to search > > Right? The critical thing for the search is that people who are > currently online show up first, but if we start with a really clumsy > search (almost like an excel spreadsheet) we could at least get going. > We're a shoot first improve later campaign, in many ways, but esp. for > this one -- the basic functionality will be heaven for people. > > It seems if we can do that and roll it out, we can then add other > features like uploading contacts and rating -- but I'm not the > programming guru. > > What do you all think? > > Zephyr Teachout > Internet Organizing & Outreach > Dean for America > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Meetup at http://www.deanforamerica.com/meetup > Get local at http://action.deanforamerica.com > Contribute at http://www.deanforamerica.com/contribute > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > On Behalf Of Joshua Koenig > Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2003 5:57 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [hackers] Draft Deanster Design Doc > > > Here's a draft of my design doc for Deanster (a.k.a. the talend > database, the visible volunteers, the "front room"). Please excuse the > parts that aren't quite filled in yet and feel free to correct me where > I'm wrong: > > http://www.hack4dean.org/phpwiki/index.php?TalentDatabase > > peace > -josh > > ------------------------ > Politics is the art of controlling your environment. Participate! > Elect Howard Dean President in 2004! > http://www.outlandishjosh.com/politics/dean/ > > > ------------------------ Politics is the art of controlling your environment. Participate! Elect Howard Dean President in 2004! http://www.outlandishjosh.com/politics/dean/
