On Nov 6, 2007 9:05 PM, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
The thing is... Copyright is hard. It is a brick wall that is high, and I don't know of any way of getting around it easily or quickly that isn't cheating,
[snip]
We already have the most important tool to overcoming hard problems: People.
We have a huge number of experienced commons folks for which the majority of typical copyright issues are *not hard*.
Yes, there are fuzzy gray corners all around the edges copyright which are fundamentally hard, areas if anyone claims to know *for sure* they are fools or they are lying.. but those generally aren't the areas where most new users have problems.
We need to build better ways of connecting new users with friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable community members. Once we have those many of these issues will go away.
I don't mean to trivialize our challenges, for they are real and substantial. Scaling our community while preserving the kindness and knowledge we need to pull this off will not be easy. But we have the right components to start with, and I think that building a clear path forward is within our ability.
What do people think of automatically assigning new users to a user advocate who speaks their language? Something where experienced users can sign in when they are around and new users will be assigned to them? Would that help? I don't think we need to worry about scaling it at first: if we are unable to assign advocates for everyone, we could at least help some.. and that would be an improvement.