This document is under CC0 aka equivalent of public domain. People may fork it at will so it will travel through space and time without a precise ownership and might blossom in thousand of branches.
You may fork, rewrite a poem, take a stroll and make a photo album with it, add a comment, it doesn't matter. At least a few branches or outcomes of this document might create something owned by our collective mind more than individual. Maybe it will die, it doesn't matter. It really depends on the desire of the people involved to make it alive.
The first version of this document had a lot of "I", it encouraged others to contribute with their names instead of making the document more general in a way that people could be involved. This version is an attempt to remove the "self".
→ David: I disagree on that point, removing the author is important if the expected result is a consensual summary but I prefer the discussion between people (I'm not writing a spec but opinionated thoughts ;))
A small note in David Larlet's thoughts says he is frustrated about not having interactions in his thoughts. Christian Fauré made a comment on twitter about:
- Writing in French instead of English.
- Having the possibility for comments.
A tweet was too short for answering to Christian and David. Twitter is not the right place for articulating Thought. Then it becomes a start for conceptualizing on sharing a stream of thoughts.
Usenet was quite practical for this in the past. Very handy for sharing thoughts and discussing at the same time without any approval… until the first spam on Usenet, but we digress or more exactly it is too early for the argument about spam which should have its own section.
(This section needs more love, would a personal usenet work with the constrains of multi-devices and synchronization. Not in a way that could not work, but let's explore what could work.)
Choosing a language in starting discussions will auto-select a community. People mastering one or more languages will be able to participate in the discussion. Some people will become bridges by changing the initial language to another one allowing other people to communicate. In some countries, it is common to mix languages in the discussions (Quebec, Singapore, Malaysia, …).
We choose a language because
- we are more comfortable with at the time
- we want to reach out a specific community depending on the context
- we read something initially in a specific language and decided to continue with that language.
Commenting systems on blogs recreates a mini centralization. An initial blog post then a series of comments made through a Web form. People do not keep a copy of their comments, they add "value" (positive or negative) to the initial text. The person who becomes aware of all comments is the owner of the initial blog post. This notifications of contributions is happening either through the Web interface for managing the blog and/or through mail notifications (changing the protocol used for this information).
Commenting Systems do not bring value to the discussion by themselves. They are giving values to the owner of the initial blog post. What brings value to a discussion is the system which keeps the discussion alive. The fact to bring thoughts of someone else's thoughts is less interesting than to share this thoughts in between a group of people.
Subscribing to David's Thoughts (blog posts) create a group of people (mostly not knowing each other) interested by him and what he has to say. We do not create a community. We do not exist. We could exist if we could start communicate altogether. The frustration for David is not about a random person commenting but about having an interaction with the community.
For this interaction to exist, you need the infrastructure to let the message to come in (commenting system for example) but you need the infrastructure to let the message be shared in the community (often a commenting RSS feed). This redistribution of comments is the interesting and lively part of it. Without it, there is no community discussion (decentralized interactions).
(Maybe there is something not completely right to this. It needs more thinking. Can we have a community without knowing each others. What are the bounds of a community? The Social Contract which would lead to an interesting and constructive discussion)
We can note that technically the interactions are done with different technical means. In the case of Embruns for example.
- Blog Post creation: HTTP POST
- Blog Post distribution: HTTP GET on feed or web page
- Comment creation: HTTP POST
- Comment distribution: HTTP GET on blog post Web page or on Comments feed
Another case of interactions Gerald Oskoboiny (which is mostly dead now because Gerald doesn't post anymore but it's fine). Gerald created FOGO which means Friends of Gerald Oskoboiny. This is a mailing list for people who want to share things together. It seems it stopped maintaining it, but during the time it was maintained the thoughts of gerald and is community were archived on the Web. So people could interact through mails knowing that their thoughts would be publicly archived. The interaction is really multi-directional because every thoughts is being shared again with the rest of the community.
There are a few issues with archiving mailing-lists on the Web. Most of the systems show individual pages for messages and not really the flow of the discussions on 1 Web page. Maybe there should be a page for one thread. Another issue is people do not know how to use their mail software (top posting, replying instead of creating a new thread, etc.)
Another system of "Thoughts machine" (can't find anymore where it was) but the combination of post and commenting system as a wiki. The thought is the initial starter of the discussion and then the commenting-wiki is a zone where people will build an argumentation for creating something which pushes further the discussion. This will not work in an open environment and requires people who are willing to abandon the ownership on their own thoughts for the good of the community (harder for some people).
Wether by email or via wiki it requires skills that we do not need with a basic commenting system. It depends on the audience too. The context of the community is important to the contribution mode.
Spam is endemic of the infrastructure. It relies on a few things such as
- the cost of publishing
- the return on investment
- the maximization of the action
There is spam because it is working be for money, for attention, etc.
- Tent can play that role in a decentralized and open way.
- Archived mailing lists
- Usenet