[Foundation-l] LiquidThreads almost ready for deployment

[Eugene Eric Kim]

On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 9:25 AM, Teofilo <teofilowiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is an alternative wording for saying that the Strategy wiki's
> users have been used as guinea pigs for software experiments without
> their consent. Being treated as a guinea pig means in my case that my
> computer freezes. I want apologies for this and that the software is
> removed from the strategy wiki.

I'm very sorry that you've had trouble with LiquidThreads. If we want
participation, then the software has to work, and when it doesn't
work, that defeats our purpose.

I made the decision to use LiquidThreads on the strategy wiki, knowing
full well that it was beta software and that it would have warts. For
those of you who have found LiquidThreads to be a barrier, I take full
responsibility for that, and I'm doing everything I can to address
that. For the rest of you, I thank you. Andrew Garrett, the author of
LiquidThreads, has been incredibly diligent in fixing problems and
improving the software since installation. Everyone who has
contributed to strategy has been very patient in reporting problems,
learning the nuances of the tool, and most importantly, using the tool
to engage in strategic discussion, which is ultimately what this whole
thing is about.

To take this discussion onto a more constructive path, I think there
are two interesting followup threads:

1. If our goal was to broaden and improve participation on strategy,
was LiquidThreads the right decision?
2. How should the decisions to try new things be made?

I'm going to make a few points here, and I encourage people to
continue the discussion at:

http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/LiquidThreads

First, was LiquidThreads the right decision? The goal was to broaden
and improve participation. There have been hiccups, as Teofilo and
Ziko have noted here, and as others have noted on the wiki.

On the other hand, in the two months LiquidThreads has been running,
there have been almost 200 unique contributors to the discussion, many
of whom were new to strategy wiki and some of whom were entirely new
to wikis period. There have been 2,000 total posts, for an average of
about 30 a day. Additionally, overall contributions to strategy wiki
continues to rise.

Most importantly, the quality of the discourse overall has been
outstanding. Contributors have been doing productive work with the
help of voices that may otherwise have not participated.

Participation on strategy has been very good since LiquidThreads was
installed. It's impossible to be scientific about the causal role that
LiquidThreads has played in this, but the notion that LiquidThreads is
disastrous, as some have attempted to paint it, is completely
ludicrous. Based on actual experience, we can make a strong case that
LiquidThreads has been beneficial to this process.

Second, how should the decisions to try new things be made?

One of the themes that has emerged from the strategic planning process
is that there seems to be a community-wide paralysis when it comes to
trying new things. People fear backlash. Some have espoused the view
that every decision should be put up to vote before being made.

I find this ironic and sad and scary, because what makes wikis
wonderful is that they are empowering, and the enemy of ongoing
success is stagnation.

Ours is the first and best example of doacracy-at-scale. Why is this?
Wikis are permissive. (Has there ever been anything more empowering
than, "Edit this page"?) Wikis are also forgiving. (They have this
beautiful feature called, "Revert.") Permission and forgiveness are
what allow innovation to happen and beautiful things to emerge.

If we want to retain this original spirit (which seems to be waning),
we first need to acknowledge and honor it. We then need to think about
how we can support it. What social and technical infrastructure could
be put into place to better support experimentation? Who should be
empowered to make these kinds of decisions? How can we as a community
learn how to build up rather than tear down?

The Movement Roles Task Force is exploring questions like this, and I
would strongly encourage everyone to post their thoughts there:

http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Task_force/Movement_Roles

That discussion is using LiquidThreads, so if you haven't tried it
yet, that would be an excellent place to start. :-)

=Eugene

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Eugene Eric Kim ................................ http://xri.net/=eekim
Blue Oxen Associates ........................ http://www.blueoxen.com/
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