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Wikis and Knowledge Sharing Survey Following a survey on weblogs, Seb published on on wikis. What's interesting about the results is how the demographics differ -- wikis are definately earlier in the technology adoption lifecycle. To generalize, they have a different purpose: weblogs help people from different disciplines meet each other, while wikis help groups form.
Results of Seb's "wikis and knowledge sharing" survey. Hot on the heels of the weblog survey results, here are the results for the survey on how wikis are used to share knowledge. 167 people responded, but they are not a strict subset of the sample in the weblog survey. It is interesting to compare the professional background of respondents in each survey (questions 22 and 12). Webloggers' backgrounds were rather diverse, while the wikizen distribution was much more slanted towards technologists - with double the proportion of self-described technologists relative to other backgrounds.
I think this may indicate that the mindset needed to get drawn into wiki land, as opposed to blogspace, is different and closer to "programmerthink". Two examples: first, each new page needs to be given a meaningfully constructed name that is subsequently used for referencing that page. This is reminiscent of the naming and referencing of procedures, object classes or variables that programmers do all the time. Second, most wikis still use the loathsome CamelCase syntax, which instantly alienates many of the would-be users. [Seb's Open Research]
2:14:59 PM 
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Social Software Alliance CALL FOR DISCUSSION: Social Software Alliance
PURPOSE AND SCOPE
We propose a trade group of social software developers and other interested parties who work together to create and promote open standards for the social software community. Social software blends tools and modes for richer online social environments and experiences. Some examples of social software are weblogs, wikis, forums, chat environments, or instant messaging, and related tools and data structures for identity, integration, interchange and analysis.
Social software is a dynamic and constantly evolving environment, rich with possibilities to create better connections between people. With a growing number of active developers, we need a central nexus to help drive the process of coordination and interoperability between different developers' products.
The alliance will:
- aid discovery of developers working on synergistic projects and standards
- assist in shaping open standards that mesh well with other alliance and Internet standards
- help promote each standard to gain wider adoption
The fast-paced nature of the social software space now argues for developing light-weight, easy-to-implement standards, following the Internet tradition of rough consensus and running code, but perhaps moving faster than the larger standards bodies. It is expected that those standards promulgated by the alliance which become widely adopted will be proposed to the appropriate general standards body or bodies: W3C, IETF, ISO, etc.
PROPOSED SCHEDULE
- First CFD published: April 16, 2003
- SSA Happening (voice/online meeting): April 18, 2003 (time TBD based on participants' time zones)
- BoF at Etech conference: April 22-25, 2003
- SSA Happening (voice/online meeting): May 2, 2003 (time TBD based on participants' time zones)
- Alliance announced with founding members: May 15, 2003
DISCUSSION
There is an email list and a wiki set up for the purpose of discussing the formation of an alliance.
list subscribe: blank email to social-subscribe@lists.polycot.com
unsubscribe: see List-Unsubscribe header in any list email
help with list server: social-help@lists.polycot.com
digest: social-digest-subscribe@lists.polycot.com
archive: http://lists.polycot.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi/2/
wiki: http://www.socialtext.net/ssa/
registration for editing: http://www.socialtext.net/ssa-registration/
It is expected that similar and/or additional discussion and collaboration tools will be migrated to the alliance's web presence, once it is created.
FOUNDING MEMBERS
Danny Ayers
Ideagraph
Stewart Butterfield
President, Ludicorp Research & Development Ltd.
Marc Canter
Chairman, CEO Broadband Mechanics Inc.
Ward Cunningham
Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc.
Greg Elin
Noah Glass
Listenlab, LLC
Mark Graham
VP of Technology, iVillage
Meg Hourihan
Co-founder & Director, The Lafayette Project
Peter Kaminski
CTO, Socialtext Inc.
Elizabeth Lawley
Asst. Professor, Rochester Institute of Technology
Jon Lebkowsky
CEO, Polycot Consulting
Kevin Marks
Instigator, mediAgora
Ross Mayfield
CEO, Socialtext Inc.
Matt Mower
Novissio Ltd.
Mitch Ratcliffe
President, Internet/Media Strategies Inc.
Clay Shirky
Benjamin Trott
Co-Founder & CTO, Six Apart Ltd.
Mena Trott
Co-Founder & CEO, Six Apart Ltd.
Paolo Valdemarin
Evectors Software
David Weinberger
Writer
Nancy White
Online facilitator, Full Circle Associates
7:50:41 AM
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Utility Maxima Tim Oren provides some constructive feedback on the latest Ecosystem of Networks post:
First issue: This version of the diagram is centered on the individual. Fair enough, that's the unit of action. However, the 'network value' schemes are all more or less at the level of the entire system. The issue of the 'commons failure' is notorious in all forms of collaboration, and particularly in groupware. Commons failure results when individuals optimizing their own utility does not result in overall systematic optimization of utility (handwaving the small matter of freedom). Since this framework doesn't provide a way to compare the two, it's got a ways to go.
Good point. I put the Me in the center to contextualize, but I didn't adequately address "...the bipolarity opposition between the Net and the Self." Note to self, need another framework to explain how self-serving utility pursuits result in emergent value. Note to Net, feel free to chime in.
Second issue: All of the value functions are positive. That can't be right. If it were so, then networks in each of the categories would grow continually. That not only invalidates the classification scheme, but flies in the face of everyone's experience that serious problems arise when trying to scale up. The lack of a model for individual utility certainly plays a role here. But there are costs at the whole group level, i.e., coordination and rule making, that are unaddressed. Considering that this particular post is within a context of designing network and software systems to reduce such individual and group costs, coming up with a conceptual framework for the downside is as essential as for the benefits.
Great point. A big problem from what I know of social network analysis is that it assumes all links are positive (read: need for Opinion Tags). Also, there is a matter of total system costs. But my spreadsheet time is being put to better use for now.
Third issue: Competition. No network or individual exists in a vacuum, particularly in these media saturated days. It's a zero sum game over individual's time, and in some cases money. IIRC from my CompuServe days, we found that the average forum (syn. bulletin board, newsgroup) user participated in two and a fraction groups. To poke at another received wisdom, Sarnoff's Law doesn't explain the competition among 'political' networks, and why some smaller size, niche audiences support higher revenue and margin per user. Metcalfe's Law arguably has no proven relationship to overall value, but is simply a rubric that explains why some platforms or networks will 'run away'' from others in a competitive situation.
What I have described so far has yet to introduce the dimension of time or constant of change. First I have identified constraints, differences in modes and scaling and value measurements that could apply to a snapshot of a whole system. No such thing as a static system or a closed system, however.
People have limits. Only so many active working relationships, social transactions one can take part in and things to subscribe to. Recognize this scarcity underpins an economy of attention and participation energy.
The new abundancy is decreased transaction costs for shifting attention and participation energy. This in and of itself increases competition of groups and ideas; Says Law drives the market to arbitrage abundance, yielding diversity through Ricardian specialization. Value is created not by new ways to scale -- but to speed, scale and scope.
I find this an interesting discussion and thought experiment, just because we are now able for the first time build an approximate instrumentation and modeling framework, given that blogs, e-mail, IM, and so forth amount to taking reasonably large chunks of human interaction and sticking them into a virtual test tube. (Google, blogger, and Terry Winograd take note.) My suspicion is that we will find once again that it's the people that are the scale determining factor, and it's no accident at all that the local utility maxima for group size are about those of a tribe, and family or working group. [Due Diligence]
Organizations realize utility functions not just how they define hierarchy and process to scale activities. I am not in pursuit of expanding the size of the tribe or group. I do believe there is tremendous value to be achieved when people are part of complex adaptive systems. Sharing, social filtering and opinion tagging drives attention across spaces. Attention and memory drives and underpins edge logic for participation energy. Economies are created through dynamic decisions of what to focus the organization upon -- at a lower cost to process actvities (speed), sequence them (span) or change them (span).
12:01:51 AM
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