Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
Le 2013-05-15 22:07, Sue Gardner a écrit : It's the [[Michael Shermer]] thing: if we ignore the rustling in the grass and it's the wind, no harm done. But if we ignore it and it's a tiger, we're dead. So rationally, we behave as though everything is a tiger, without necessarily realizing that reflexively doing that has a pretty high price-tag. Interesting. On the other hand, in my very own case, I think that if it's a tiger, then I'm dead anyway: I'm not a warior able to win against a tiger with bare hand, and I'm not sure on this but isn't the average tiger a better sprinter than the world biggest human champion in this field? It may me think of the quotation, which I red, may be on this list, (attributed to the Dalai Lama in the document where I found it): I there's a solution there's no need to worry, and if there is no solution, there's no need to worry. Anyway, yes. Patience, maturity, self-control and generosity for the win :-) Sue ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Association Culture-Libre http://www.culture-libre.org/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 12:47:08 -0700 From: Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.com To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience Message-ID: 519537bc.6000...@frontier.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed On 5/16/2013 11:52 AM, ENWP Pine wrote: I agree that patience is a very important virtue in some situations, such as when we coach newbies or seek consensus among many people. But it's sometimes not a virtue, such as in many crisis situations. As a metrics and performance enthusiast, I feel that it's possible to have an appropriate mix of patience and impatience, and people should be appropriately accountable for their performance. I suppose it depends what implications you attach to those words, but I would not recommend using impatience when what you really want is urgency. In my experience, the self-discipline that goes into everyday patience can actually remain a virtue in crisis situations as well, as it may help you remain clear-headed and make better decisions than you would if you let the circumstances overwhelm your ability to think rationally. And as Fred points out, a big part of my message relates especially to making emergencies out of things that are not. I also do not believe that patience is in any way incompatible with accountability. Patience does not require ignoring commitments, discarding performance evaluation, or even disregarding agreed timeframes. However, it does mean that the results of the evaluation should be well-considered and any consequences appropriate to the circumstances. Impatience tends to drive us to choose excessive consequences, like a lot of the somebody should be fired kind of talk over things that are honest mistakes. --Michael Snow I think I understand your distinction between urgency and impatience in the sense that the former doesn't necessarily imply the brusqueness that the latter can. Whether a situation is an emergency is sometimes subjective. I think that someone on this list pointed out that something that's a crisis for one entity may be viewed as a minor issue by another entity. I agree that employment consequences for poor performance should be carefully considered prior to implementation. However, sometimes demoting or firing someone is appropriate, even if a poor decision was an honest mistake. Serious negligence is unacceptable. On the other hand, it's also a good idea do praise and celebrate success and good performance, as we're doing now with regards to Spanish Wikipedia's significant milestone. Pine ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
I agree that patience is a very important virtue in some situations, such as when we coach newbies or seek consensus among many people. But it's sometimes not a virtue, such as in many crisis situations. As a metrics and performance enthusiast, I feel that it's possible to have an appropriate mix of patience and impatience, and people should be appropriately accountable for their performance. Pine ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
I agree that patience is a very important virtue in some situations, such as when we coach newbies or seek consensus among many people. But it's sometimes not a virtue, such as in many crisis situations. As a metrics and performance enthusiast, I feel that it's possible to have an appropriate mix of patience and impatience, and people should be appropriately accountable for their performance. Pine Fine, so long as people don't make emergencies out of things that could very well be carefully considered and decided. We are not [plug in name of political idiot]. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
On 5/16/2013 11:52 AM, ENWP Pine wrote: I agree that patience is a very important virtue in some situations, such as when we coach newbies or seek consensus among many people. But it's sometimes not a virtue, such as in many crisis situations. As a metrics and performance enthusiast, I feel that it's possible to have an appropriate mix of patience and impatience, and people should be appropriately accountable for their performance. I suppose it depends what implications you attach to those words, but I would not recommend using impatience when what you really want is urgency. In my experience, the self-discipline that goes into everyday patience can actually remain a virtue in crisis situations as well, as it may help you remain clear-headed and make better decisions than you would if you let the circumstances overwhelm your ability to think rationally. And as Fred points out, a big part of my message relates especially to making emergencies out of things that are not. I also do not believe that patience is in any way incompatible with accountability. Patience does not require ignoring commitments, discarding performance evaluation, or even disregarding agreed timeframes. However, it does mean that the results of the evaluation should be well-considered and any consequences appropriate to the circumstances. Impatience tends to drive us to choose excessive consequences, like a lot of the somebody should be fired kind of talk over things that are honest mistakes. --Michael Snow ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Patience
I originally wrote this message last year on a nonpublic list. It seemed to be well received, and some people asked me to share it publicly, but I didn't get around to it then. I think this would be a good time to share it here now. It is not specifically directed at recent issues here, but I think it does have some relevance. (I have some thoughts more directly related to those matters as well, which I hope to share when I have time to write them down. That might not happen until late Friday, which is probably not the best time for it, but based on recent history perhaps I can still hope some people will be reading then.) Internet technology is known for letting things happen much faster than they did before we were all so connected. This speed now seems normal to us and, being immersed in that culture, we have come to expect it. Wikis, as one aspect of that culture, have the feature of making that speed a personal tool - you can make something happen right away. How many of us got involved because we saw a mistake and figuratively couldn't wait to fix it? And when we discovered that we literally didn't have to wait, we were hooked. One result of this is a culture that caters to impatience, sometimes even rewards it. And that's why we are often tempted to think that being irritable is a way of getting things done. We imagine: this problem should be instantly solved, my idea can be implemented right away, I will be immediately informed about whatever I care about. But as our culture grows in scale, none of that remains true (and perhaps, we get more irritated as a result). I wish I could say that because it's a matter of scale, technology will take care of things because that's how we handle scaling. However, the issue is not about whether the technology will scale, but whether the culture will scale. On a cultural level, scaling issues are not handled by technology alone. They are handled by establishing shared values (be bold, but also wait for consensus), by agreeing upon standard procedures (which provide important protections when designed well, but also introduce delays), and by dividing up responsibilities (which requires that we trust others). That last bit is critical; people have repeatedly suggested a certain mistrust underlies the repeated flareups. Well, the reason that mistrust has grown so much is because we are often impatient, and take shortcuts in order to get things done (or so we believe). The impatience manifests on all sides--to illustrate: volunteers get impatient about the effort needed for any kind of policy change, chapters get impatient about requirements to develop internal controls and share reports on their activities, staff get impatient about time involved in consulting with the community. Everyone thinks it would be so much better if they were free to just do things and not have to deal with these hassles. But in every one of these scenarios, and I'm sure I could come up with many more, if we let impatience guide us, inevitably more trust will be drained out of the system. Patience as a virtue is in short supply on the internet. It is not native to our culture, but we must apply it in order to scale. Fortunately, it is simply a matter of maturity and self-control at appropriate moments. I encourage us all to practice it. --Michael Snow ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
On 15 May 2013 07:45, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.com wrote: That last bit is critical; people have repeatedly suggested a certain mistrust underlies the repeated flareups. Well, the reason that mistrust has grown so much is because we are often impatient, and take shortcuts in order to get things done (or so we believe). You're quite sure that's the root cause? - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
On 5/14/2013 11:48 PM, David Gerard wrote: On 15 May 2013 07:45, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.com wrote: That last bit is critical; people have repeatedly suggested a certain mistrust underlies the repeated flareups. Well, the reason that mistrust has grown so much is because we are often impatient, and take shortcuts in order to get things done (or so we believe). You're quite sure that's the root cause? I'm addressing this as a structural issue, and there may be other ways to express it, but I'm not sure that talking about the root cause fits the nature of the problem. With apologies for lapsing into legal terminology, my message is not about proximate cause, such as for particular incidents. Rather, I am focusing on a cultural phenomenon, and as with most aspects of culture, certainly many factors may be at play, but I do feel sure that as to what I'm describing, this is a major part of the challenge. If you like, change that sentence to say one reason rather than the, I think the rest of what I wrote is still just as valid. --Michael Snow ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
On 15 May 2013 08:05, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.com wrote: I'm addressing this as a structural issue, and there may be other ways to express it, but I'm not sure that talking about the root cause fits the nature of the problem. With apologies for lapsing into legal terminology, my message is not about proximate cause, such as for particular incidents. Rather, I am focusing on a cultural phenomenon, and as with most aspects of culture, certainly many factors may be at play, but I do feel sure that as to what I'm describing, this is a major part of the challenge. If you like, change that sentence to say one reason rather than the, I think the rest of what I wrote is still just as valid. Yeah, I'd definitely agree with one. - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
Your comment remind me of my strong belief - take time to reflect before to take action and/or react My golden rule in complicated/heated issues - let it take 24 hours after an urge to act/react before it is made a reality. About two third of your thought reactions then disappears and the rest is mostly readjusted to be more sound. :) Anders Michael Snow skrev 2013-05-15 08:45: I originally wrote this message last year on a nonpublic list. It seemed to be well received, and some people asked me to share it publicly, but I didn't get around to it then. I think this would be a good time to share it here now. It is not specifically directed at recent issues here, but I think it does have some relevance. (I have some thoughts more directly related to those matters as well, which I hope to share when I have time to write them down. That might not happen until late Friday, which is probably not the best time for it, but based on recent history perhaps I can still hope some people will be reading then.) Internet technology is known for letting things happen much faster than they did before we were all so connected. This speed now seems normal to us and, being immersed in that culture, we have come to expect it. Wikis, as one aspect of that culture, have the feature of making that speed a personal tool - you can make something happen right away. How many of us got involved because we saw a mistake and figuratively couldn't wait to fix it? And when we discovered that we literally didn't have to wait, we were hooked. One result of this is a culture that caters to impatience, sometimes even rewards it. And that's why we are often tempted to think that being irritable is a way of getting things done. We imagine: this problem should be instantly solved, my idea can be implemented right away, I will be immediately informed about whatever I care about. But as our culture grows in scale, none of that remains true (and perhaps, we get more irritated as a result). I wish I could say that because it's a matter of scale, technology will take care of things because that's how we handle scaling. However, the issue is not about whether the technology will scale, but whether the culture will scale. On a cultural level, scaling issues are not handled by technology alone. They are handled by establishing shared values (be bold, but also wait for consensus), by agreeing upon standard procedures (which provide important protections when designed well, but also introduce delays), and by dividing up responsibilities (which requires that we trust others). That last bit is critical; people have repeatedly suggested a certain mistrust underlies the repeated flareups. Well, the reason that mistrust has grown so much is because we are often impatient, and take shortcuts in order to get things done (or so we believe). The impatience manifests on all sides--to illustrate: volunteers get impatient about the effort needed for any kind of policy change, chapters get impatient about requirements to develop internal controls and share reports on their activities, staff get impatient about time involved in consulting with the community. Everyone thinks it would be so much better if they were free to just do things and not have to deal with these hassles. But in every one of these scenarios, and I'm sure I could come up with many more, if we let impatience guide us, inevitably more trust will be drained out of the system. Patience as a virtue is in short supply on the internet. It is not native to our culture, but we must apply it in order to scale. Fortunately, it is simply a matter of maturity and self-control at appropriate moments. I encourage us all to practice it. --Michael Snow ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
Michael, can you please copy this as is on Meta? [[Patience]] will be a nice complement to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Eventualism Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
Thank you Michael for the thoughtful post! I very much agree. I read somewhere (don't ask me for a citation!) that the physiological effects of anger - increased levels of adrenalin and cortisol, high heart rate, and the like - take about 30 minutes to return to normal after something happens that makes you angry. Back in the day if you received a letter that made you angry, you would have several hours to write an immediate response, which would then probably take several more hours to reach its recipient, who would probably respond the next day... plenty of time for the physical reaction of anger to subside. Email, usenet, PhPBB, wikis and the like means there is a technological method of ensuring that responses can be written and shared instantly (and angrily) and, indeed, in heated threads you can quite happily exchange messages which provoke an emotional response quickly enough that your flight-or-fight reflex is being triggered repeatedly over a period of hours with every ping of your inbox. So basically; yes, I agree. Regards, Chris On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 7:45 AM, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.comwrote: I originally wrote this message last year on a nonpublic list. It seemed to be well received, and some people asked me to share it publicly, but I didn't get around to it then. I think this would be a good time to share it here now. It is not specifically directed at recent issues here, but I think it does have some relevance. (I have some thoughts more directly related to those matters as well, which I hope to share when I have time to write them down. That might not happen until late Friday, which is probably not the best time for it, but based on recent history perhaps I can still hope some people will be reading then.) Internet technology is known for letting things happen much faster than they did before we were all so connected. This speed now seems normal to us and, being immersed in that culture, we have come to expect it. Wikis, as one aspect of that culture, have the feature of making that speed a personal tool - you can make something happen right away. How many of us got involved because we saw a mistake and figuratively couldn't wait to fix it? And when we discovered that we literally didn't have to wait, we were hooked. One result of this is a culture that caters to impatience, sometimes even rewards it. And that's why we are often tempted to think that being irritable is a way of getting things done. We imagine: this problem should be instantly solved, my idea can be implemented right away, I will be immediately informed about whatever I care about. But as our culture grows in scale, none of that remains true (and perhaps, we get more irritated as a result). I wish I could say that because it's a matter of scale, technology will take care of things because that's how we handle scaling. However, the issue is not about whether the technology will scale, but whether the culture will scale. On a cultural level, scaling issues are not handled by technology alone. They are handled by establishing shared values (be bold, but also wait for consensus), by agreeing upon standard procedures (which provide important protections when designed well, but also introduce delays), and by dividing up responsibilities (which requires that we trust others). That last bit is critical; people have repeatedly suggested a certain mistrust underlies the repeated flareups. Well, the reason that mistrust has grown so much is because we are often impatient, and take shortcuts in order to get things done (or so we believe). The impatience manifests on all sides--to illustrate: volunteers get impatient about the effort needed for any kind of policy change, chapters get impatient about requirements to develop internal controls and share reports on their activities, staff get impatient about time involved in consulting with the community. Everyone thinks it would be so much better if they were free to just do things and not have to deal with these hassles. But in every one of these scenarios, and I'm sure I could come up with many more, if we let impatience guide us, inevitably more trust will be drained out of the system. Patience as a virtue is in short supply on the internet. It is not native to our culture, but we must apply it in order to scale. Fortunately, it is simply a matter of maturity and self-control at appropriate moments. I encourage us all to practice it. --Michael Snow __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
Florence, I agree with you almost completely, but I would also note that it is also partially about the user's thought processes and business norms that determine how fast it is. My employer, for instance, has a wiki that's meant to be a collaborative resource where disparate elements from across the (several thousands of persons with access) organization can quickly iterate on a document the same way we make revisions to our wikis. In practice, however, we are so accustomed to a high level waterfall style process as you describe, with a primary author and several interested parties clearing the copy, it completely loses any benefit of the process and becomes no different to me than a Sharepoint site with slightly better UI. -Dan Dan Rosenthal On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 11:16 AM, Florence Devouard anthe...@yahoo.comwrote: Just yesterday during a meeting, a working partner of mine said that he really could not understand why on earth we were insisting so much that wiki meant quick. Whilst the edit itself maybe done very quickly, it actually lead people installing wikis to believe this will accelerate the production process (=increase productivity). It is actually incorrect; In most cases, collaborative editing using a wiki does actually take MORE time than the traditional back and fro of a document written on a desktop editor and forwarded to others by email (or dropbox or whatever). Traditional way of doing things is actually so boring than most multi-authored documents end up being essentially written by one and lightly copyedited by others, a process which is often much quicker than the slow and laborious co-writing process on a wiki. Of course, the second is likely to result in a better document, so that the argument to use a wiki should be better documents rather than quicker process. (No reference to conflict here. It is just a side thought emerging from my mind as I read this post about patience) Flo On 5/15/13 9:31 AM, Chris Keating wrote: Thank you Michael for the thoughtful post! I very much agree. I read somewhere (don't ask me for a citation!) that the physiological effects of anger - increased levels of adrenalin and cortisol, high heart rate, and the like - take about 30 minutes to return to normal after something happens that makes you angry. Back in the day if you received a letter that made you angry, you would have several hours to write an immediate response, which would then probably take several more hours to reach its recipient, who would probably respond the next day... plenty of time for the physical reaction of anger to subside. Email, usenet, PhPBB, wikis and the like means there is a technological method of ensuring that responses can be written and shared instantly (and angrily) and, indeed, in heated threads you can quite happily exchange messages which provoke an emotional response quickly enough that your flight-or-fight reflex is being triggered repeatedly over a period of hours with every ping of your inbox. So basically; yes, I agree. Regards, Chris On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 7:45 AM, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.com wrote: I originally wrote this message last year on a nonpublic list. It seemed to be well received, and some people asked me to share it publicly, but I didn't get around to it then. I think this would be a good time to share it here now. It is not specifically directed at recent issues here, but I think it does have some relevance. (I have some thoughts more directly related to those matters as well, which I hope to share when I have time to write them down. That might not happen until late Friday, which is probably not the best time for it, but based on recent history perhaps I can still hope some people will be reading then.) Internet technology is known for letting things happen much faster than they did before we were all so connected. This speed now seems normal to us and, being immersed in that culture, we have come to expect it. Wikis, as one aspect of that culture, have the feature of making that speed a personal tool - you can make something happen right away. How many of us got involved because we saw a mistake and figuratively couldn't wait to fix it? And when we discovered that we literally didn't have to wait, we were hooked. One result of this is a culture that caters to impatience, sometimes even rewards it. And that's why we are often tempted to think that being irritable is a way of getting things done. We imagine: this problem should be instantly solved, my idea can be implemented right away, I will be immediately informed about whatever I care about. But as our culture grows in scale, none of that remains true (and perhaps, we get more irritated as a result). I wish I could say that because it's a matter of scale, technology will take care of things because that's how we handle scaling. However, the issue is not about whether the
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
I don't know if relates opn what you said, but I'd add that a wiki is a great way to work on different, related documents at the same time, and it's useful t tag/categorizes them, and to have a bunch of integrated documents all together. Writing all together a single document is difficult also on Etherpad, because, well, people don't share their minds. Aubrey On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 10:29 AM, Dan Rosenthal swatjes...@gmail.comwrote: Florence, I agree with you almost completely, but I would also note that it is also partially about the user's thought processes and business norms that determine how fast it is. My employer, for instance, has a wiki that's meant to be a collaborative resource where disparate elements from across the (several thousands of persons with access) organization can quickly iterate on a document the same way we make revisions to our wikis. In practice, however, we are so accustomed to a high level waterfall style process as you describe, with a primary author and several interested parties clearing the copy, it completely loses any benefit of the process and becomes no different to me than a Sharepoint site with slightly better UI. -Dan Dan Rosenthal On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 11:16 AM, Florence Devouard anthe...@yahoo.com wrote: Just yesterday during a meeting, a working partner of mine said that he really could not understand why on earth we were insisting so much that wiki meant quick. Whilst the edit itself maybe done very quickly, it actually lead people installing wikis to believe this will accelerate the production process (=increase productivity). It is actually incorrect; In most cases, collaborative editing using a wiki does actually take MORE time than the traditional back and fro of a document written on a desktop editor and forwarded to others by email (or dropbox or whatever). Traditional way of doing things is actually so boring than most multi-authored documents end up being essentially written by one and lightly copyedited by others, a process which is often much quicker than the slow and laborious co-writing process on a wiki. Of course, the second is likely to result in a better document, so that the argument to use a wiki should be better documents rather than quicker process. (No reference to conflict here. It is just a side thought emerging from my mind as I read this post about patience) Flo On 5/15/13 9:31 AM, Chris Keating wrote: Thank you Michael for the thoughtful post! I very much agree. I read somewhere (don't ask me for a citation!) that the physiological effects of anger - increased levels of adrenalin and cortisol, high heart rate, and the like - take about 30 minutes to return to normal after something happens that makes you angry. Back in the day if you received a letter that made you angry, you would have several hours to write an immediate response, which would then probably take several more hours to reach its recipient, who would probably respond the next day... plenty of time for the physical reaction of anger to subside. Email, usenet, PhPBB, wikis and the like means there is a technological method of ensuring that responses can be written and shared instantly (and angrily) and, indeed, in heated threads you can quite happily exchange messages which provoke an emotional response quickly enough that your flight-or-fight reflex is being triggered repeatedly over a period of hours with every ping of your inbox. So basically; yes, I agree. Regards, Chris On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 7:45 AM, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.com wrote: I originally wrote this message last year on a nonpublic list. It seemed to be well received, and some people asked me to share it publicly, but I didn't get around to it then. I think this would be a good time to share it here now. It is not specifically directed at recent issues here, but I think it does have some relevance. (I have some thoughts more directly related to those matters as well, which I hope to share when I have time to write them down. That might not happen until late Friday, which is probably not the best time for it, but based on recent history perhaps I can still hope some people will be reading then.) Internet technology is known for letting things happen much faster than they did before we were all so connected. This speed now seems normal to us and, being immersed in that culture, we have come to expect it. Wikis, as one aspect of that culture, have the feature of making that speed a personal tool - you can make something happen right away. How many of us got involved because we saw a mistake and figuratively couldn't wait to fix it? And when we discovered that we literally didn't have to wait, we were hooked. One result of this is a culture that caters to impatience, sometimes even
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
Florence, I agree with you almost completely, but I would also note that it is also partially about the user's thought processes and business norms that determine how fast it is. My employer, for instance, has a wiki that's meant to be a collaborative resource where disparate elements from across the (several thousands of persons with access) organization can quickly iterate on a document the same way we make revisions to our wikis. In practice, however, we are so accustomed to a high level waterfall style process as you describe, with a primary author and several interested parties clearing the copy, it completely loses any benefit of the process and becomes no different to me than a Sharepoint site with slightly better UI. -Dan Dan Rosenthal We have a few waterfall editors on Wikipedia too, and they are a repeated source of trouble, as they are likely to defend strongly against collaborative changes. Patience is a premise for dealing successfully with any group dynamic, Napoleon and Alexander the Great not withstanding. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
I just wanted to add another thought to this, which occurred to me on the bus in to work this morning. There is an insight from a school of psychotherapy called Transactional Analysis* that, while all of us have a basic need to interact with one another, that need is fulfilled as much by negative interactions as positive ones. If positive interactions are lacking (which they often are, because we are socially conditioned to avoid providing positive interactions unless there is a good reason), then negative interactions will substitute for them because they fulfill the same psychological need, just in a much more dysfunctional way. I wouldn't recommend this as rigorously-proven scientific analysis but I've often been surprised by how true it can be. Perhaps when email lists are quiet we should simply praise each other more? ;-) *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 8:31 AM, Chris Keating chriskeatingw...@gmail.comwrote: Thank you Michael for the thoughtful post! I very much agree. I read somewhere (don't ask me for a citation!) that the physiological effects of anger - increased levels of adrenalin and cortisol, high heart rate, and the like - take about 30 minutes to return to normal after something happens that makes you angry. Back in the day if you received a letter that made you angry, you would have several hours to write an immediate response, which would then probably take several more hours to reach its recipient, who would probably respond the next day... plenty of time for the physical reaction of anger to subside. Email, usenet, PhPBB, wikis and the like means there is a technological method of ensuring that responses can be written and shared instantly (and angrily) and, indeed, in heated threads you can quite happily exchange messages which provoke an emotional response quickly enough that your flight-or-fight reflex is being triggered repeatedly over a period of hours with every ping of your inbox. So basically; yes, I agree. Regards, Chris On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 7:45 AM, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.comwrote: I originally wrote this message last year on a nonpublic list. It seemed to be well received, and some people asked me to share it publicly, but I didn't get around to it then. I think this would be a good time to share it here now. It is not specifically directed at recent issues here, but I think it does have some relevance. (I have some thoughts more directly related to those matters as well, which I hope to share when I have time to write them down. That might not happen until late Friday, which is probably not the best time for it, but based on recent history perhaps I can still hope some people will be reading then.) Internet technology is known for letting things happen much faster than they did before we were all so connected. This speed now seems normal to us and, being immersed in that culture, we have come to expect it. Wikis, as one aspect of that culture, have the feature of making that speed a personal tool - you can make something happen right away. How many of us got involved because we saw a mistake and figuratively couldn't wait to fix it? And when we discovered that we literally didn't have to wait, we were hooked. One result of this is a culture that caters to impatience, sometimes even rewards it. And that's why we are often tempted to think that being irritable is a way of getting things done. We imagine: this problem should be instantly solved, my idea can be implemented right away, I will be immediately informed about whatever I care about. But as our culture grows in scale, none of that remains true (and perhaps, we get more irritated as a result). I wish I could say that because it's a matter of scale, technology will take care of things because that's how we handle scaling. However, the issue is not about whether the technology will scale, but whether the culture will scale. On a cultural level, scaling issues are not handled by technology alone. They are handled by establishing shared values (be bold, but also wait for consensus), by agreeing upon standard procedures (which provide important protections when designed well, but also introduce delays), and by dividing up responsibilities (which requires that we trust others). That last bit is critical; people have repeatedly suggested a certain mistrust underlies the repeated flareups. Well, the reason that mistrust has grown so much is because we are often impatient, and take shortcuts in order to get things done (or so we believe). The impatience manifests on all sides--to illustrate: volunteers get impatient about the effort needed for any kind of policy change, chapters get impatient about requirements to develop internal controls and share reports on their activities, staff get impatient about time involved in consulting with the community. Everyone thinks it would be so much
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
We could create a Facebook page, Wikipedia Chill, where only positive interactions are permitted... Only half joking here. We can consciously design interactions in terms of their emotional tenor should we chose to. In an example taken from life, we can keep vicious dogs for the effect they have on the possibility of constructive dialogue and collaboration, or not. Fred I just wanted to add another thought to this, which occurred to me on the bus in to work this morning. There is an insight from a school of psychotherapy called Transactional Analysis* that, while all of us have a basic need to interact with one another, that need is fulfilled as much by negative interactions as positive ones. If positive interactions are lacking (which they often are, because we are socially conditioned to avoid providing positive interactions unless there is a good reason), then negative interactions will substitute for them because they fulfill the same psychological need, just in a much more dysfunctional way. I wouldn't recommend this as rigorously-proven scientific analysis but I've often been surprised by how true it can be. Perhaps when email lists are quiet we should simply praise each other more? ;-) *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 8:31 AM, Chris Keating chriskeatingw...@gmail.comwrote: Thank you Michael for the thoughtful post! I very much agree. I read somewhere (don't ask me for a citation!) that the physiological effects of anger - increased levels of adrenalin and cortisol, high heart rate, and the like - take about 30 minutes to return to normal after something happens that makes you angry. Back in the day if you received a letter that made you angry, you would have several hours to write an immediate response, which would then probably take several more hours to reach its recipient, who would probably respond the next day... plenty of time for the physical reaction of anger to subside. Email, usenet, PhPBB, wikis and the like means there is a technological method of ensuring that responses can be written and shared instantly (and angrily) and, indeed, in heated threads you can quite happily exchange messages which provoke an emotional response quickly enough that your flight-or-fight reflex is being triggered repeatedly over a period of hours with every ping of your inbox. So basically; yes, I agree. Regards, Chris On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 7:45 AM, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.comwrote: I originally wrote this message last year on a nonpublic list. It seemed to be well received, and some people asked me to share it publicly, but I didn't get around to it then. I think this would be a good time to share it here now. It is not specifically directed at recent issues here, but I think it does have some relevance. (I have some thoughts more directly related to those matters as well, which I hope to share when I have time to write them down. That might not happen until late Friday, which is probably not the best time for it, but based on recent history perhaps I can still hope some people will be reading then.) Internet technology is known for letting things happen much faster than they did before we were all so connected. This speed now seems normal to us and, being immersed in that culture, we have come to expect it. Wikis, as one aspect of that culture, have the feature of making that speed a personal tool - you can make something happen right away. How many of us got involved because we saw a mistake and figuratively couldn't wait to fix it? And when we discovered that we literally didn't have to wait, we were hooked. One result of this is a culture that caters to impatience, sometimes even rewards it. And that's why we are often tempted to think that being irritable is a way of getting things done. We imagine: this problem should be instantly solved, my idea can be implemented right away, I will be immediately informed about whatever I care about. But as our culture grows in scale, none of that remains true (and perhaps, we get more irritated as a result). I wish I could say that because it's a matter of scale, technology will take care of things because that's how we handle scaling. However, the issue is not about whether the technology will scale, but whether the culture will scale. On a cultural level, scaling issues are not handled by technology alone. They are handled by establishing shared values (be bold, but also wait for consensus), by agreeing upon standard procedures (which provide important protections when designed well, but also introduce delays), and by dividing up responsibilities (which requires that we trust others). That last bit is critical; people have repeatedly suggested a certain mistrust underlies the repeated flareups. Well, the reason that mistrust has grown so much is because we are often impatient, and
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
True Yet... on the other hand... on many private wikis, there is - either no one to do that job of curation/tagging/cleaning (in which case the wiki ends up being... a collection of disparate elements with no benefits in terms of gaining time when looking for information) - or that job is done by an appointed person (in which case, the wiki ends up being organized based on the mindset of one person rather than based on the actual thought processes of most users). In both cases, the promise of fast search (fast find) fails. Flo On 5/15/13 10:34 AM, Andrea Zanni wrote: I don't know if relates opn what you said, but I'd add that a wiki is a great way to work on different, related documents at the same time, and it's useful t tag/categorizes them, and to have a bunch of integrated documents all together. Writing all together a single document is difficult also on Etherpad, because, well, people don't share their minds. Aubrey On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 10:29 AM, Dan Rosenthal swatjes...@gmail.comwrote: Florence, I agree with you almost completely, but I would also note that it is also partially about the user's thought processes and business norms that determine how fast it is. My employer, for instance, has a wiki that's meant to be a collaborative resource where disparate elements from across the (several thousands of persons with access) organization can quickly iterate on a document the same way we make revisions to our wikis. In practice, however, we are so accustomed to a high level waterfall style process as you describe, with a primary author and several interested parties clearing the copy, it completely loses any benefit of the process and becomes no different to me than a Sharepoint site with slightly better UI. -Dan Dan Rosenthal On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 11:16 AM, Florence Devouard anthe...@yahoo.com wrote: Just yesterday during a meeting, a working partner of mine said that he really could not understand why on earth we were insisting so much that wiki meant quick. Whilst the edit itself maybe done very quickly, it actually lead people installing wikis to believe this will accelerate the production process (=increase productivity). It is actually incorrect; In most cases, collaborative editing using a wiki does actually take MORE time than the traditional back and fro of a document written on a desktop editor and forwarded to others by email (or dropbox or whatever). Traditional way of doing things is actually so boring than most multi-authored documents end up being essentially written by one and lightly copyedited by others, a process which is often much quicker than the slow and laborious co-writing process on a wiki. Of course, the second is likely to result in a better document, so that the argument to use a wiki should be better documents rather than quicker process. (No reference to conflict here. It is just a side thought emerging from my mind as I read this post about patience) Flo On 5/15/13 9:31 AM, Chris Keating wrote: Thank you Michael for the thoughtful post! I very much agree. I read somewhere (don't ask me for a citation!) that the physiological effects of anger - increased levels of adrenalin and cortisol, high heart rate, and the like - take about 30 minutes to return to normal after something happens that makes you angry. Back in the day if you received a letter that made you angry, you would have several hours to write an immediate response, which would then probably take several more hours to reach its recipient, who would probably respond the next day... plenty of time for the physical reaction of anger to subside. Email, usenet, PhPBB, wikis and the like means there is a technological method of ensuring that responses can be written and shared instantly (and angrily) and, indeed, in heated threads you can quite happily exchange messages which provoke an emotional response quickly enough that your flight-or-fight reflex is being triggered repeatedly over a period of hours with every ping of your inbox. So basically; yes, I agree. Regards, Chris On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 7:45 AM, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.com wrote: I originally wrote this message last year on a nonpublic list. It seemed to be well received, and some people asked me to share it publicly, but I didn't get around to it then. I think this would be a good time to share it here now. It is not specifically directed at recent issues here, but I think it does have some relevance. (I have some thoughts more directly related to those matters as well, which I hope to share when I have time to write them down. That might not happen until late Friday, which is probably not the best time for it, but based on recent history perhaps I can still hope some people will be reading then.) Internet technology is known for letting things happen much faster than they did before we were all so connected. This speed now seems normal to us and, being immersed in
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Patience
On 15 May 2013 00:31, Chris Keating chriskeatingw...@gmail.com wrote: Thank you Michael for the thoughtful post! Yeah, agreed. I always look forward to reading anything Michael's written. He doesn't write frequently, but when he does it is always good. Email, usenet, PhPBB, wikis and the like means there is a technological method of ensuring that responses can be written and shared instantly (and angrily) and, indeed, in heated threads you can quite happily exchange messages which provoke an emotional response quickly enough that your flight-or-fight reflex is being triggered repeatedly over a period of hours with every ping of your inbox. Yeah, this is true. I used to deliberately build into my day walks, so I'd have time to reflect on things before responding. But of course that strategy broke when I got my first mail-enabled phone :-/ I do deliberately wait an hour or two, often, before replying to mail on our lists because it's so easy to get triggered and reply in a way that makes things worse not better. Sometimes I'll write a draft response, reread it the next day and be kind of horrified by how badly my reply misunderstands the original mail. (Like, I will feel attacked where there really was no attack. I'll interpret something in the worst possible way rather than the most reasonable way.) It's the [[Michael Shermer]] thing: if we ignore the rustling in the grass and it's the wind, no harm done. But if we ignore it and it's a tiger, we're dead. So rationally, we behave as though everything is a tiger, without necessarily realizing that reflexively doing that has a pretty high price-tag. Anyway, yes. Patience, maturity, self-control and generosity for the win :-) Sue ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
