So, sharing is a behavior that can be designed into systems and features. Attribution, citation and quotation all go hand-in-hand for this. All three are preferred behaviors in a sharing culture and correspond to rewards, open connections and actions. Put them together with some technology and you might get what I'll refer to as an ODSCS ( Open Distributed Social Content System ). Please note the lack of management in that acronym. Applied to learning it could be called a Social LCMS.
I've been working on a similar post and decided this should be it's own post after reading Jim Groom's response to a comment of mine. Those are in the comment's of Articulating the Bus post at Bavatuesdays, related to the Mozilla Open Education Course.
Attribution
Attribution works as a built-in, self-balancing reward system. You did it, so you should get credit for it, be it good or bad. Being an open system, I do expect people to lie, cheat and steal, but some call me cynical. Fortunately there are ways to counteract those less desirable behaviors.
Basicly, it's a matter of digital identity and branding. While you should be on the look out, you can make it obvious which things are official via an official website. If it links back to a copy on the official website it's official.
Citation
Citation is how the attribution actually counts. By linking back to the official version and giving the correct information about the authors, the readers have plenty of information to work with. They can find out how authentic and new the resource is. They can find out who writes materials they like and don't like.
You can become known for creating resources, finding resources and/or sharing resources. All these need citation to really take off. After all, somebody needs to tell others about your greatness. That's verbal citation.
Quotation
Quotation is how your resources are shared. Attribution is the rewards and citation the connections, but neither is worth much if nobody talks about the resources. That's where quotation comes in. Even paraphrasing with links is a form of quotation with citation. Another name would be sharing, the act of sharing.
If you can make quotation with accurate citation easy, you've accomplished something great. That's how you get people into sharing. Better than that it's sharing and creating connections with a built-in, self regulating reward system. There are rewards for sharing and creating resources, and the tools to share them, but not much in the line of compatibility and ease.
Ease
Yes, I just said that those tools out there are not easy to use. Why? Most don't give growth paths. Tutorials are talk that will be forgotten. Videos aren't much good either. You need action. For instance, it would be cool to have a quotation add-on or plug-in for browsers and programs. Highlight, quote and have all the citation information, meta-data, there for easy use. Unknown works as an answer.
What kind of growth path was that? It's a sharing growth path. A button at the bottom of a blog post or wiki page that reads, "Quote Me!" or something would be a good start. It's done in BBforums to get people to make quoting within the system easier, but what about a web-quote button?
SODT
Standardized Open Distributed Technologies could be the answer. It's possible to use things like YAML and XML for quotes and cross-platform compatibility. That's the kind of thing that would make a syndication based design possible and easy to use. That's an option for creating systems and programs that are designed to help people share.
Syndication is a beautiful tool for these efforts, because it is a way for different technologies, programs and platforms to communicate in an automated fashion. The same discussion becomes visible in multiple locations on the web for multiple communities. It could also be possible to create a program, browser expansion, service and/or webpage that is just for the conversations on the web that you're interested in and those that you're a part of. Hopefully you're interested in the conversations you're a part of. More on this later.
ODSCS
This is the type of technology an ODSCS would have to be to really work the way I'd like it to. Personally, I have three details to the concept I'd like to have in the design; an open distributed wiki behavior, a file and file system organization scheme and a small & open back-end implementation. Here's why.
I want an open distributed wiki behavior. First this is for collaboration, cooperation and sharing. Each source of resources in the system then can point to each other and pull from each other. Second, this allows for branding and quality assurance. Identity and integrity can be maintained while still giving access to a greater collection of resources. Third, there isn't a dependence on a single, central repository of knowledge. If Wikipedia went down, it'd be bad. This idea is naturally redundant and creates back-ups of itself through emergent social behaviors, kinda like Lenix.
I want to use files and file system organization rather than a "program". First, this doesn't require downloading a program, because the tools can be online. Second, all your data is easily navigable in it's natural format. Third, if YAML, or something similarly easy to read is used, the content could just be saved and used as is without a special viewing software. Fourth, people could create an organized set of notes, lists, resources etc for themselves using the same tools. Fifth, a file system design is compatible with the internet, because the internet uses the files systems of servers. I know this because of my studies and helping set up sites.
I want it to be a small, open back-end thing. This is the KISS ( Keep It Stupid Simple ) version of the things that will come of it. ( Just to reiterate, it's "Stupid Simple", not "simple, Stupid". The first is very simple, while the other is simple and insulting. ) Many people have made variants on Lenix from the basic version years ago that came from Unix. That's the kind of community development I would like to see.
The point of the Open Distributed Social Content System is to make the resource collections interoperable and able to cooperate with each other for the benefit of all. Companies want to share how their products can be used. Consumers want to find solutions to their needs and wants. Others try to bring those people together. That's in the business world. Then there are things like education, communities and other directions such a content system could be helpful in.
The why is pretty obvious to me, but that's because I've been looking at this stuff for a while.
Blog/Wiki/Forum
Here are some interesting and related things I've found:
http://onepresscommunity.com/
http://bavatuesdays.com/new-digs-for-umw-blogs-or-an-anatomy-of-a-redesign/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wiki-page-links/
http://www.cynapse.com/products/cynin/editions/open-source-community-edition
http://bodington.org/
At the moment it seems like mixing OnePress with WordPress Wiki functionality would give the best of the Blog/Wiki/Forum capabilities at the least effort. I used to think it would be a forum base that would be the easiest, but I haven't seen the progression towwards the merger in forum design that I've seen in Blog design. I've posted about this idea a few times ( Forum Wiki Concept and Open Communication Platform ) and still think it is the big direction to go when it comes to this stuff. Only now I've got another thing to add to the picture, distributed. I'll get to why this is so cool after going over the blog/wiki/forum concept.
If you think about it, the blog and forum match almost perfectly. Starting a thread is the same as posting a blog post. In the comments, discussions happen in response to the initial post. Tags and subforums are very similar, though tags are more flexible. Well, what if you could have a blog post and it's comment feed in an organized forum structure for you're own access to the discussions going on? Maybe create a redirection and syndication based interaction format?
Then there is the wiki to mix into the idea. Each "comment" and "thread post" could be compared to a version of a wiki page. Then there is the category way of organizing wiki pages, which is very similar to what I would consider a combination of subfuroms and tags.
So, what does the distributed concept add to this? First is the multiple views of communication being realized in functional design. The individual only looks at certain parts of the whole set of communication. Some of it they just look at, while other parts are continually watched. The group view is the combination of the actions and views of the many individuals, which you normally see on the social sites. Simply put, that's a built-in personalized interface that works the same as subscribing to forum threads and being e-mailed when new comments are made on a blog post.
Second, distributed structures are not dependent on the central structure, but work together like a community, or team, of structures. So, if any particular structure goes down the rest are still stable and functional.
Third, distributed structures encourage smaller groups to participate. Creating your own version of resources and resources for your own use are ways that the individual and small group might use a structure that allows such behavior. Now think about sites like W3Schools.com. They have a lot of materials that could be useful for walkthroughs and tutorials, but how do you access the information right now? The answer is links. That's nice for a blog post with quotes, but it could be easier to use. As one of many resources with it's pieces nicely quotable, and repurposible, those making the guides and tutorials can quote W3Schools and create a public resource with their name(s) on it. It then isn't just a webpage, but also usable in a webpage or service.
Fourth, this might be easily done using syndication-based architecture. Here are some posts on that interesting direction.
http://bavatuesdays.com/syndication-oriented-architecture-or-a-feed-frenzied-framework/
http://bavatuesdays.com/achilles-heel-of-the-syndication-bus/
http://ericschnell.blogspot.com/2008/01/syndication-oriented-architecture-synoa.html
http://etutorials.org/Misc/rss/Chapter+2.+Content-Syndication+Architecture/
http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/11/a-conversation-with-rohit-khare-about-syndication-oriented-architecture/
More
Here are a few links that might be interesting to those who have read this far.
http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=48531
http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2009/04/06/the-design-with-intent-toolkit/
http://blog.igenoukan.com/2008/12/designing-classroom-game-support-system.html
http://blog.igenoukan.com/2008/11/sharing-inside-and-outside-classroom.html
http://blog.igenoukan.com/2008/11/loosely-connected-to-who.html
Have fun, spread the word and tell me what you think,
Igen Oukan
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1 comments:
Thanks. I would also recomend to use PHP tutorial in addition to w3schools
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