This language thread -- which I probably wouldn't be able to follow even if I read through the archives to see how it started before I joined -- seems like it has all the characteristics of the type of out-of-control Internet debate that Brainjammer was designed to avoid:
- It has metamorphosed into a discussion *about* the discussion, rather than about the original topic - Has so many individual points to be made on both sides that nobody can keep track of them all, therefore even if one side is "right" there's no way the rest of us could even tell - Contains a good deal of personal attacks on other members
I urge you, just *give it a try* and see if you make more progress than has been made so far. Go to www.brainjammer.com, create a new account (code to create a new one is "muskrat"), and one side or the other can post their arguments.
Sorry to steer the discussion this way, but I do want to help, and it's quite frustrating to see all this effort being wasted and obviously getting people angry, when I think I might have a way to avoid it all. Even if there's only a one-in-ten chance that it would work, wouldn't it be worth it if it might help avoid tense discussions like this in the future?
-Bennett
[Warning: this post will drift further off topic the more of it you read. :p]
On 15/07/05, Bennett Haselton bennett@peacefire.org wrote:
This language thread -- which I probably wouldn't be able to follow even if I read through the archives to see how it started before I joined -- seems like it has all the characteristics of the type of out-of-control Internet debate that Brainjammer was designed to avoid:
Perhaps before you start advocating the use of this system, you should put somewhere a description of what it *is*. Looking at some of the existing threads, I couldn't immediately see anything other than a bog-standard forum.
I presume your "killer feature", as it were, is the ability to mark posts with a "status" in terms of their relationship to the parent. This seems like an intriguing idea, but imperfectly implemented. I know it's just the germ of an idea right now, but given that you're publicly advocating its use, here are some criticisms:
* The most obvious imperfection is that the status labels are not particularly clear - why is "awaiting response" styled the same as "incorporated into parent"?
* What's more, if the premise that posts can be made redundant by altering their parent holds, why are "incorporated" and "withdrawn" posts shown at all? Deleting them outright would be foolish, but surely showing them by default defeats the object of
* Who decides when a post has been successfully incorporated? If Bob replies to Alice's comment, and Alice amends the original comment, it seems to me that first Alice must tell Bob that she has done so, and then Bob must accept the amendment and withdraw the reply. If your existing model follows this process, it's not obvious from the presentation.
* Your presentation also lacks any kind of "audit trail" - it would be nice to see how Alice has changed her post, and how Bob responded to her claim to have incorporated his response. Your forumish interface doesn't seem suited to tracking such things.
And finally, you realise this is more-or-less exactly how discussion works on a "traditional" wiki (e.g. c2.com, meatball, etc)? i.e. the aim is to refactor a discussion ("ThreadMode") into a coherent "DocumentMode", and to encourage opinions to be expressed by amending and expanding the existing text rather than simply creating a "rival" document. The main difference seeming to be that you are aiming to create a structured and non-redundant discussion thread, rather than a stand-alone document.
On 7/16/05, Rowan Collins rowan.collins@gmail.com wrote:
And finally, you realise this is more-or-less exactly how discussion works on a "traditional" wiki (e.g. c2.com, meatball, etc)? i.e. the aim is to refactor a discussion ("ThreadMode") into a coherent "DocumentMode", and to encourage opinions to be expressed by amending and expanding the existing text rather than simply creating a "rival" document.
See also http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LiquidThreads for a proposal to combine traditional wiki editing with forum features.
Angela
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org