Hi Nellie, Allison, Ben Great discussion and valuable insights as we mature and become more productive while having fun!
The great thing about open self-organising communities is that spontaneous and more structured approaches can be nutured in parallel with each other in the wiki. The glue which keeps this together and provides positive direction for the WE project are our community values. Utitmately -- the core value of sharing knowledge freely. I don't see Community Workgroups as restricting informal and spontaneous innovation in our project. At the same time -- the Community Workgroup process is a necessary investment in honouring our commitment to democractic, transparent process, especially in cases where the outputs of the proposed workgroup would have a community wide impact. You know what they say -- if you want to learn about democracy, join a wiki! Simplicity is definitely a goal to which we should strive in our work. At the same time I hear the warning of the late Bill Readings in his great text, "The University in Ruins" where he warns against reducing complex realities for the sake of future simplicity. Some things are complex --- the art is getting the balance right? In WE have have the best of both worlds! Gee, you got to love self-organising communities :-) Cheers Wayne 2009/10/2 Alison Snieckus <[email protected]> > Nellie, > > Interesting reading on how informal and formal interaction patterns are > thought to effect outcomes. The informal social/work setting is much more > appealing, no argument from me on that. Certainly we should be striving for > open, spontaneous, loose (as opposed to tight) and fun places to be. We're > volunteers donating our precious free time :-) -- WE deserve some fun. > > I think Ben's right that it's possible to achieve the benefits of > behavioral and situational informality within a structured situation. > Speaking personally, I'm looking to be part of groups that have (or could > have if we worked on it) a bit of structure so I can be productive, but fun > along the way will be essential to keep me going. > > I agree with you that simplicity is also one of these cornerstones to > encouraging community volunteers and keeping them engaged. In my post > promoting the idea of a community workgroup, I was hoping to advertise how > easy it is to get started. Go ahead. Make a workgroup. Use the Workgroup: > namespace. Invite people to join. It's fun! (OK, looking back at my post, it > seems much too stodgy to be implying these ideas, but I'll continue anyway.) > > Yes, the "official policy for community workgroups" is full of required > steps and lots of "musts", and maybe what we're hearing here and in other > discussions is that it's a demotivator...it's too much, at least right now. > One way to deal with that is to just put it all off. I saw the following on > Wikipedia in my on-going search to understand how wiki's work: If a rule > prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, *ignore it*. (It's > in the wikipedia policy article > Ignore_all_rules<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules> > .) > > I think community workgroups are a good idea, and they can work to the > betterment of the WE community. But, in my opinion, the promotion of these > "formal" groups, should not in any way discount Informal groups that arise > out of a shared vision or need. WE need both tools in our toolkit. > > Alison > > > > > > -- Wayne Mackintosh, Ph.D. Director, International Centre for Open Education, Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand. Board of Directors, OER Foundation. Founder and Community Council Member, Wikieducator, www.wikieducator.org Mobile +64 21 2436 380 Skype: WGMNZ1 Twitter: OERFoundation, Mackiwg --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
