Wiki Conversation

Some topics generate questions and counterpoint. There is a desire to inquire, discuss, debate ... to fondle the cards until the way they interact becomes clear.

Interesting ideas and challenges, and responses to both, do often appear on this kind of page. Often a third or fourth party injects a notion that identifies a hidden issue or clarifies a position.

Still, wiki pages containing such matter quickly become chaotic. They can be inaccessible to people who newly come to the page, and often even confuse the main contributors.

You want to generate synthesis, and to ensure attribution of the ideas to all who chipped in.

THEREFORE,

Make an unsigned section at the top of the page, with an attempt at synthesizing some sense from the material below. If you move your own ideas up, remove your commentary below. If you refactor someone else's ideas substantially, consider saving a copy on your local machine, and leave them a message on their name page to check out what you did. Problem with this idea may be that a newbie wouldn't know to do it. But maybe a newbie wouldn't be editing this way anyway.

Add a Contributors line listing all authors contributing to the synthesis. If you disagree with the synthesis, remove your name or add (dissenting) after it, perhaps with a reference to another page. If you don't know who an author is, add "and others".

Contributors: MichaelFeathers RonJeffries and others.

See: DocumentMode ThreadMode

I feel uncomfortable when my name appears underneath something I didn't write. I don't mind when my whole comment is deleted, though, especially if its sense is newly reflected elsewhere. -- DaveHarris -- RonJeffries

At the same time, I very much welcome comments, questions or counterclaims, interleaved or below. -- RonJeffries

I would be happier with supplementation than deletion. If, for instance, I created DocumentModeSummary, and left DocumentMode intact, people could both refer to the consensus and the history. -- BetsyHanesPerry

I am always happy to see a posting edited for brevity. -- WardCunningham

And so we have a set of conflicting forces: conversation vs conclusion. Both are valuable! Conversation is temporal [don't delete, just tweek/add] and to come in to one "at the end" often leaves one out of touch. On the other hand there's soooo much to read and so little time, we might want to have the "2 minute recap" just to dive in or find out what was decided. -- JohnLetourneau

One of those forces is involved in a related conflict:

the desire of infrequent readers for a summary of a discussion (e.g., John's "2 minute recap"), and
the desire of (at least some) frequent readers to be able to incrementally follow an ongoing discussion.

The former find value in discussions that have either reached consensus or have converged opposing positions, and are well-served by a DocumentModeSummary. The latter find value in ThreadMode conversations that have at least some temporal stablity. The practices of interjecting argumentative comments into earlier parts of a conversation, of adding one's own views to the top of a page, and of frequently rearranging a converation to makes one's own position clearer often detract from the ability of a frequent reader to follow along, reducing their desire to participate. -- DaveSmith

So mayhap we have mileage to make out of a simple naming convention: we have

the `natural' name of a page, like WikiConversation here, and folk do whatever we fancy on this page;
we have a page called WikiConversationArgue on which we do the threaded stuff (we could use Threads instead of Argue, but I like the willful not pretending we're always polite of the latter); and
we have a page called WikiConversationAgree for the consensus (where we take out anything with which we don't agree, and maybe talk, on the Argue page, about why we didn't agree).

So now I'll create those pages -- Eddy (EdwardWelbourne).

Alternative Definition of WikiConversation:

The author (of e.g. LikePlusButton) uses the term WikiConversation as a literary tool for animated documentation, where a SocratesDialogue? is permanently optimized by the conversation partners, from a dialogue to a multilogue, from a teacher student relation to a new kind of relation, where everybody can happily play the roles of teacher or student. And last not least where even artificial conversation partners can be introduced , from SockPuppet s to agents of AI. -- FridemarPache

CategoryWiki CategoryWikiEditing