revdocs

[Marielle Lange]

Hi Jonathan,

> If you see my response to David's post - I basically said "sign me up,
> I'll contribute"

Great!!! :-))))

> So, if folks are willing to put time and energy into answering a  
> single question (which our list's history has proven) then there is  
> every possibility that they will be willing to put a very small  
> amount of time and energy into adding an answer (that they have  
> already answered on the list) to the wiki.

I am afraid, by experience, this doesn't work like that. If you are  
interested in reading more about motivation theories:
http://choo.fis.utoronto.ca/FIS/Courses/LIS1230/LIS1230sharma/ 
motive1.htm
http://choo.fis.utoronto.ca/FIS/Courses/LIS1230/LIS1230sharma/ 
motive4.htm
(I am a psychologist by background... I did industrial psychology in  
parallel with cognitive psychology during my undergrads).

It's probably easier to explain by giving you an insight on the way  
this would work for me. Paradoxically, I sometimes end up spending  
half an hour answering an email, going to rev, writing a short  
program, testing ideas... but I find 5 minutes of switching between  
applications too tedious and I don't do it. Psychologically speaking,  
I reach my goal (helping the person) with the email, I get my feel  
good dose for the day writing the email... I do have a wiki.... it's  
in an open browser window all day most of the time. It only takes me  
a alt-tab to go there... I don't do it. I don't have enough extra  
motivation to go to the wiki.

What would it be for persons who are required to connect to the wiki,  
register, type in an environment they are not familiar with? There is  
also the fact that you are obvioulsy an adventurous person. You like  
to do things just for the sake of learning. New environments are fun  
for you. That's great attitude... You will go far. Not everybody is  
like that. Adventurous persons are great starters. Less adventurous  
ones are great finishers. They are the ones to guarantee the quality  
of the material. We need everybody in the boat.

> It just has to become a habit - which means we have to gently pester
> each other with comments like "hey, great explanation, please put  
> it on
> the wiki" or some such thing.

This I did for 2-3 months on the education list.
http://revolution.lexicall.org/stacks_education.php?lastadded=added% 
20any%20time
http://revolution.lexicall.org/wiki/tiki-index.php? 
page=TutorialsTeachers
http://revolution.lexicall.org/wiki/tiki-index.php? 
page=RevolutionProjects

This toke me 1-2 hours a day, a lot of energy, a lot of commitment. I  
enjoyed it very much because people are so nice there. But do you  
have 1-2 hours a day, every day, to give to the community? I have  
been very busy over a month and stopped doing it. The education  
mailing list is about completely inactive now.

The lesson I have taken from this: If you have a structure which  
requires pestering, it will stop working when you don't have the time  
to pester anymore. Gently pestering isn't a good long term working  
model. This also has the inconvenient to start getting persons resent  
being pestered or resent having to pester.

If persons don't contribute that just means the structure in place  
doesn't make it easy enough. If the goal is to have them contribute,  
then let's reach that goal... but without the gently pestering being  
a requirement.

> Each contributor should be able to include a link to their website,  
> and
> if they contribute an original how-to article, then they should be  
> able
> to include a little bit of self-promotion along with their link.

Excellent suggestion! The important is to have one single portal with  
a complete index of the information available... but that doesn't  
mean that all information needs to be in the portal. We really don't  
want to do anything that could cause a negative impact for the  
commercial members of this list with this revdocs initiative. They  
have contributed a huge amount to this community.

> For those folks who teach revolution, having an online revdoc wiki  
> will be a big boon, so we might want to encourage them to  
> contribute as much as possible.

Students have more time than teachers, they are also more keen to  
show off than teachers. Shall we consider to make users' space  
possible for students? Under which condition (we for sure don't want  
them to use our site for storing their illegal mp3).

If we want the teachers to contribute on our website, we need to  
offer them support for their teaching activities on our website. For  
instance, we could without too much difficult set up a rev cgi on the  
website, following the model of the R statistical package.
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/statistics/staff/academic/firth/ 
software/cgiwithr/
http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/~rking/R/help/04/05/0319.html
his would have the additional advantage to let newcommers try out  
revolution directly on-line (without having to download it).

> Perhaps you might consider the concept of a 'vestibule' or  
> 'conditional
> acceptance' of material that everyone could view, but would realize  
> that it
> was possibly flawed or redundant.  The purpose would be to encourage
> contribution with fear of 'damaging' or accidentally introducing  
> mistakes
> that would affect others.

Thanks for reminding us of this (I believe this was briefly mentioned  
in reference to zope which allowed for that). We want this but this  
requires persons with moderator roles (to approve or contact the  
person to recommend to improve the material). Turning roles could be  
a way to spread the load (you get to be a moderator for 3 months,  
then another person, etc.)

> We all want to be correct and complete, but growing into and up with a
> language as rich at Transcript is daunting.  Those needing info  
> that has
> been reviewed could request viewing only that, but those willing to  
> learn by
> working with all of the material could choose to do so.

Sounds like a requirements we want to adopt.

> It may only be that material is labeled 'new', 'untested', or such,  
> but then
> the user community would have a better feel for the guidance.

David is an expert in trust metrics, I believe.
You will find information about this at:
http://www.advogato.org/trust-metric.html

(1) Trust of the information, as you suggest
(2) Trust of the person who posted this information
Advogato performs certification to three different levels:  
Apprentice, Journeyer, and Master. This is actually done by running  
the basic trust metric three times, using the "level" value in the  
certificate as a threshold. Thus, certification of Apprentices is  
computed using all certificates, while Master is computed using  
Master certificates only.

This also gives an extra incentive for the experts to do their bits  
to make sure they are ranked as masters on the wiki :-).

> Also, I would like to see a mod date or something, since the  
> internet is
> filled with data from 1999, but no way of knowing.

Yep.

Good brainstorming... anybody with other ideas?


Marielle
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--------
Marielle Lange (PhD),  Psycholinguist

Alternative emails: mlange at blueyonder.co.uk, M.Lange at ed.ac.uk
Homepage                                                            
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