Hi Gav, Thanks for taking so much time to respond. The original questions concerning the environment were posed by Kevin from a post dated 2/14/2007 At 12:36 PM. I restated, maybe poorly, his original questions:
> >Hello Marsha. Thanks for asking. I would suggest looking at the >MOQ's current >environment. > >What I found interesting were the words, "putting the MOQ." They make the >MOQ look like a thing that has an environment that can be >controlled, e.g., if it >were given over to academia then it would be affected by the academic >environment or if it is kept here it would not be affected by this >or if we put it there >it won't be affected by that. > >How is the MOQ's current environment affecting its evolution? > I hope Kevin will respond to your post. m At 11:36 AM 2/17/2007, Gav wrote: >[m] >Greetings MOQ'ers > >What do you think of the current MOQ environment? > >What should be its purpose? > >What would be an improvement? > >[Case] >This subject comes up with some regularity and I always refrain from >commenting. I refrain mostly because it seems to me that any comment along >these lines could easily be construed as volunteering. But since these >discussions have proven so infective previously I feel empowered by inertia. > > >The current MoQ environment is tons of fun for those who participate. I like >it. Frankly I would not especially like to see it change at all. > >But: > >As far as these discussions reaching a wider audience or being appealing to >people who do not want to actively participate; forget about it. If someone >finds Moq.org for example, it requires at least two addition mouse clicks to >get to the current discussion. That is assuming that you know which links to >click. Every time Jane Lunchbucket has to click a link the probability of >her leaving increases. If she has to look for where to click, the >probability goes up and if she has to look hard; forget about it. > >Once you find the current discussions what you get is massive amounts of >incoherent conversation. Anyone who actually makes it to the archives has to >really, really want it. Finding useful information is very problematic. You >can search the archives but they are fragmented into clumps of years and >searching is done mainly by looking for specific words in posts. There is no >true indexing of the information. Surely there are seminal posts that could >be regarded as essential to understanding key concepts or key participants >in these discussions. > >What the archives are in effect is trays full of slips. They can be accessed >or organized for random access in various ways that would probably show the >evolution and strands of thought that have evolved from this forum. Dan made >an excellent stab at creating order from the chaos with Lila's Child but a >book does not exploit the quality that can be derived from random access. > >For example how many times has the hot stove been discussed over the past 10 >years? If posts were indexed to various passages in ZMM and Lila we could >see which are the most often cited and discussed. Who are the most frequent >contributors to these discussions? The data is there it is just not readily >available. > >While the site has many fine essays they are also tricky to find. I count >roughly 60 essays. If this has been going on for 10 years, which is about >one essay every two months. Is anyone reading these? I don't think we have >had that many added, at least not one every two month over the past two >years or so that I have been posting anyway. > >Among the possible goals for improvement would be ways to improve access to >the archives for those serious about researching ideas and to create a venue >more accessible to those with a causal interest in the MoQ. > >Improving access to the archives would be a fairly massive undertaking but >creating a more user friendly popular venue for the MoQ is would be less so. >First of all for any site to be successful it has to have fresh content. >This site produces fresh content at a prodigious rate. However the content >has to be organized and edited so people can access it. Here are two >approaches that could work. > >First is one a monthly or quarterly basis people could be asked to submit >candidates for the best posts of the period. Standard could be set for this >post in terms of their literary value, the quality of the observations made, >the structure of the posts etc. etc. These could be complied into a periodic >MoQ newsletter or magazine either of which could be accessed electronically >or printed. > >The second would be some kind of system for rating posts on the site so that >newcomers could see which posts have been accessed most frequently and/or >what sort of Quality rating they receive. Of course one big problem with >this is that most of us participate through our e-mail clients and don't >really access the website. Perhaps if we had more reason to do so we would. > >I could go on and on about this but the real point is that somebody actually >has to do something. People have to decide on tasks, workgroups need to be >formed to set editorial policies and set some rules. > >Beyond practical considerations there are legal issues to resolve. When we >make posts here but who owns them? If I want to use a series of posts that I >have participated in, what obligation is owed to the other correspondents? >If Platt lands a book deal to serialize his massive exchanges with Arlo is >Arlo entitled to a cut of the royalties. Dan had to remove certain threads >from Lila's Child because some of the participants in the forum did not want >to be in the book. Was he legally obligated to respect their wishes or was >this a matter of courtesy? > >There are no copyright notices or disclaimers or agreements about the >contents on the site that I can find. Are the legal rights to listserv posts >spelled out in the law? > >If we were to develop a successful popular version of the MoQ would there be >profits involved? Would there need to be a formal organization? Who would be >in charge? Oh yeah, the whole power and control freak thing that has been >shot back and forth publicly and privately. > >Lots of questions. >Lots of work. > >That is the reason I have refrained from commenting previously, as noted >from the start. As I said, I like it the way it is but if there is going to >be a "next level" to this thing we are going to need some answers, some >commitments and God forbid some cooperation... > >The "Treasure of Sierra Madre" should be required viewing for anyone who >gets involved. > >moq_discuss mailing list >Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. >http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org >Archives: >http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ >http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
