Discuss Ch6Part15 here

While reading this chapter I was thinking about how code affects this project, and how norms do.

This chapter: the goals are to first collect examples of current online communities and then choose some to replace AOL and CC with examples that are more up to date. Yet the Code doesn't encourage this behaviour. To begin with, the chapter opening page has no attached discussion page (so I am starting a discussion in last page. Is there another place to discuss this? If tere is, it is not apparent when looking in the opening page or most everywhere else).  The tools available are just for editing the pages directly, and to go to a discussion page for each page separately, that is "well hidden" behind a single link. To see the discussion you have to go check if there is something in that page for each page separately, and then go back to the page itself if you want to navigate to another page. I wonder how many people actually do check the discussion page before proceeding to another page. I checked the revision history of several pages, and all I can see is slight corrections of typos, and some transfers of content from page to page (i.e., aggregation of paragraphs belonging to a particular section into one page). Probably many of these comments should go to the developers of this wiki, but right now I am reading this chapter, so I am more interested in how the architecture of this wiki, and of choices made in how to use it to edit this book are affecting the behavior of members of this "community".

The book: most of the comments on the chapter are relevant to the book as a whole. But there is also the way norms affect our behaviour here. Though we are quite anonymous here, it seems we hesitate to make changes to the text. We do bring with us outside norms, and though the author of the 1st edition says: "here it is on a Wiki, you are free to change anything, try to follow some guidelines", I see almost no editing of content (at least not up to this chapter, at the time I read each chapter there was no real editting done to what I was reading). Are there so few readers? I started reading this book online several weeks ago. I wanted (and still do) to read the text, and contribute ideas if I can. But first I have to read the whole text, or at least most of it, otherwise my comments on whatever's in the first chapters might be irrelevant due to content in later chapters. And I saw no point in editting anything in the text itself when it is clear that the text is one whole, and whatever I edit interacts with parts I haven't read yet. This is one limitation, and it probably cannot be changed. whatever code is used, it would still be a whole book that is being revised. This fact cannot change. But then there's another fact inherrent to this book: much of it is written in the first person. That makes one hesitate before changing anything. Whatever you change, is putting words in Professor Lessig's mouth (or pen, or keyboard...) that would be attributed to prof. Lessig, even if efforts are made to publicise the fact that the content was massively editted by the "internet public" (hoping that the word "massively" would be applicable in the near future ;-) ) And another important fact: the book is well written, and the examples, though some of them are slightly outdated, are still relevant. Changing them requires massive editting, and one cannot "wiki style" just replace the name "AOL" by some other name and expect that the other participants would gradually evolve the sorrounding text until it makes sense. (So it is true that if we want to replace that example, we should first have discussion, where gradualy possible replacements woulkd evolve until someone feels that it is ready to be pasted into the text itself).

I think that the wiki platform can be used effectively for a project like this one, but should be used a bit differently to achieve this result. One thing is that it could display the original version near the edited version (yes, I know there's a "revision history" link. I mean having the original version more accessible, in a way that doesn't make one feel like changing the original, but rather like creating a new version that goes side by side with the original.) Another thing is to make discussion much more prominent and accessible. As I see it people would be much more comfortable in replacing a pargraph after it has been discussed and some consesus is reached. A wiki is a very lonely place. A discussion forum is not. If we had here the option of structured discussions with threads and everything online forums can give, email notifications etc.,  all tightly tied to the text being revised (both original and revised) we would probably see much more action.

Sothis is how I think the choice of code affects this project.

(-) hadaso