Blog Backlinks Enabled on PurpleWiki

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

If you view the Backlinks on any of my Wiki pages, it will now display Backlinks from both the Wiki and also this blog. For example, if you view the backlinks to “DougEngelbart”, you will see a list of all of my Wiki pages and blog entries that mention Doug.    (SG)

The beautiful thing about this feature is that it maintains context for all of the different concepts described on my Wiki. I list several Patterns on my Wiki, with some level of detail on each page. But when you look at the Backlinks to those Patterns, you see a list of all the stories where the Patterns are mentioned. I tell the stories as I have before, and the tool explicitly ties the concept to the stories that describe the context. That’s augmentation! As Chris Dent said, it “makes the universe bigger.”    (SH)

My essay, Wikis As Topic Maps, describes this phenomenon in further (and slightly more technical) detail.    (SI)

Open Source At Work    (SJ)

How this feature finally became implemented is a wonderful example of what makes Open Source so great. We’ve wanted it for a while, but didn’t have time to implement it. Last month, I started thinking more seriously about implementing the feature, because I wanted to demonstrate it to some potential clients. Unfortunately, I was swamped, and didn’t have time to do it myself.    (SK)

David Fannin to the rescue. David had installed PurpleWiki and the MovableType plugin, and liked it. However, he also wanted the Backlink feature. So, he wrote it, and contributed it back to us. Neither Chris nor I nor anyone else in the small PurpleWiki community knew David beforehand, but as you can imagine, we welcomed his contribution.    (SL)

David’s patch was just a hack. Chris had some ideas for refactoring the PurpleWiki code to better integrate this feature. So, he implemented them, and released a preview of the code. Chris’s refactoring made it very easy for me to write a similar plugin for blosxom. Suddenly, we had the feature I had been pining for.    (SM)

As an aside, I had grander plans for how to implement this feature, and those plans haven’t gone away. (See my notes on TPVortex for a preview.) The important thing is, David and Chris’s approach worked. It may not do all of the whiz bang things I eventually want it to do, but it does what I want it to do right now. More importantly, it may very well inspire others to implement some of the grander ideas. Release Early And Often is an extremely important pattern of Open Source development, because it enables collaboration, which accelerates the implementation and dissemination of ideas.    (SN)

Precedence    (SO)

Ours is not the first integrated Wiki and blog. Notable precedents include Kwiki and Bill Seitz‘s Wiki Log. These tools all had the integrated Backlinks feature before we did.    (SP)

The key difference between these tools and ours is that they require you to use a single tool. You have to use Kwiki as both your blogging tool and Wiki to get all of the features. Our approach integrates PurpleWiki with MovableType, blosxom, and conceivably any other blogging tool. This is consistent with our overall philosophy of improving interoperability between tools using Doug Engelbart‘s ideas as a unifying framework.    (SQ)

We’ve only taken baby steps so far. We plan bigger and better things. More importantly, we want to encourage other tool developers to adopt a similar approach, and to collaborate with each other to do so.    (SR)

Battling Group Think

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Geoff Cohen asked:    (PM)

As we build different kinds of groupware/social software, what’s the role of consensus, and how powerful is it? Does software make reaching consensus easier or harder? For purely message-driven systems like email lists or USENET, consensus is much harder to reach than it would be in a real-life meeting. But once consensus is reached, breaking that consensus often brings down the flames of wrath. All of this is somehow invisibly coded in the interstices of the software architecture and human nature.    (PN)

…    (PO)

Could we architect social software that fought groupthink? Or does it just make the gravitational attraction of consensus, even flawed consensus, ever so much more irresistable?    (PP)

Seb Paquet responded:    (PQ)

I think the key to avoiding unhealthy levels of groupthink has to do with designing spaces that consistently exert pull upon outsiders (or social hackers or community straddlers), so as to keep the air fresh.    (PR)

…    (PS)

I think the blogosphere exhibits this kind of “outsider pull” much more than topic-focused forums.    (PT)

…    (PU)

But what about action? A diverse group has fewer blind spots, but on the other hand, agreement in such a group can be harder to establish, so there is a real possibility that the group will go nowhere beyond conversation. Is a core of agreed-upon ideas necessary for group action to take place? I think so. Does this mean that group action requires groupthink? Not necessarily, because some people are able to act upon ideas without believing in them so strongly they can no longer challenge them.    (PV)

Ross Mayfield added:    (PW)

He [Seb] is right that groupthink is avoided by a social network structure that allows a dynamic and diverse periphery to provide new ideas, but the core of the network needs to be tightly bound to be able to take action.    (PX)

That’s the main point of Building Sustainable Communities through Network Building by Valdis Krebs and June Holley.    (PY)

…    (PZ)

The ideal core/periphery structure affords a densely linked core and a dynamic periphery. One pattern for social software that supports this is an intimacy gradient (privacy/openness), to allow the core some privacy for backchanneling. But this requires ridiculously easy group forming, as the more hardened the space the more hard-nosed its occupants become.    (Q0)

Finally, Bill Seitz commented:    (Q1)

I think a shared mission is necessary. Whether that amounts to groupthink is a fair question.    (Q2)

There are a goldmine of ideas here, and the discussion is highly relevant to issues currently faced by the Collaboration Collaboratory. I’ll address them one at a time.    (Q3)

Group Think Versus Group Action    (Q4)

Bill’s comment points to the crux of the matter. What qualifies as Group Think or Group Action? We’ve discussed this question a lot at Blue Oxen Associates. In our upcoming research report, we draw a distinction between bounded and unbounded goals, and individual and collective goals. Generally, having shared unbounded goals is enough to constitute group alignment, but having shared bounded goals is required before you can call an effort “collaboration.”    (Q5)

The larger the group, the harder it is to define a shared, bounded goal that every group member will endorse. A good example of where this happens are elections. In the case of Howard Dean supporters, for example, the community is defined by a universally shared, bounded goal — voting Dean for president in 2004. As we’ve seen in the Dean case, having that universally shared, bounded goal was a galvanizing force for a previously unseen community of progressives in this country.    (Q6)

For large groups, I don’t think it’s necessary to have universally shared, bounded goals, although it’s nice when it happens. It’s enough to have small subgroups sharing different bounded goals, as long as they do not conflict with the unbounded goals, which must be universally shared.    (Q7)

The Intimacy Gradient Pattern    (Q8)

An aside on terminology: Intimacy Gradient is an excellent name for the phenomenon I first tried to describe in a previous blog entry, where I introduced the Think Out Loud and Whine In Private patterns. The problem I had in describing the Whine In Private pattern was that some spaces — blogs being the best example — felt like private forums, but were actually public. So people whining on their blogs are not actually Whining In Private; they just feel like they are.    (Q9)

Ross also used the term Backchannel, which I had also recently noted in my Wiki as a good name to describe this mostly private, but partially public space.    (QA)

Community Boundaries    (QB)

One of the founding principles of the Blue Oxen Collaboratories is that the products of the discussion and interaction should all be freely available to everyone. This is why the mailing list archives are publically available, even if participation is restricted to members.    (QC)

There is an Intimacy Gradient pattern involved here. There is a small barrier to entry to participate in tight-knit discussions, which makes the environment more conducive to parlor-style conversations. On the other hand, anyone can benefit from the resulting knowledge, which is our ultimate goal. Our hope is that the collaboratories act as a substrate for a much larger conversation.    (QD)

This has already begun to happen, and blogs play a key role. Bill Seitz, Chris Dent, Danny Ayers, and I have all blogged about discussions on the Collaboration Collaboratory, which expands the conversation to a larger group. The side effects include countering Group Think, as Seb suggests, and also attracting new members who want to participate more directly in the lower-level interactions. Similarly, we mention these blogs on the mailing lists, so the collaboratory members are aware of the larger conversation, thus completing the circle.    (QE)

Are there hidden costs to these Intimacy Gradients? Absolutely. Examples of blogs being read by the “wrong” audiences abound. Gregory Rawlins became a victim when he made some choice comments about another programmer’s software on a private, but publically archived list. (Sorry, Greg, but I always get a good laugh when I reread this.)    (QF)

Nevertheless, I think the benefits outweigh the downsides. I recently joined Howard Rheingold‘s Brainstorms community, and have wanted to link to some of the discussions there, but couldn’t. It’s unfortunate, because those linkages are lost, but it’s a tradeoff I understand. Finding the right balance is tricky.    (QG)

How Open Should Wikis Be?    (QH)

Our original intention with the Wikis on the Blue Oxen Collaboratories was to treat them the same as the mailing lists — restrict writing to members, but allow anyone to read the content. However, we did not configure our Wikis that way, mainly because we couldn’t — UseModWiki doesn’t have this feature — and it was low on list of things to hack. (See PurpleWiki:RoadMap.)    (QI)

Based on our experiences with this configuration and further examination of other Wikis, I’m reluctant to change this model now. One potential compromise is to require registration to write to the Wikis, but to make registration free. The difference between this and simply allowing anyone to click on “Edit This” is subtle, but significant. I’m still a bit undecided on this issue, although I seem to be leaning in favor of extreme openness. The reason for this is simply that we’ve had some interesting contributions and comments to the Wikis that probably would not have been made if there were even the slightest barriers to entry. Again, it’s a good safeguard against Group Think.    (QJ)

This issue recently cropped up again, because both the PurpleWiki and Collaboration Collaboratory Wikis were vandalized for the first time. Chris Dent discovered the act first and quickly fixed it, noting, “In a way this is sort of a good sign. Infamy is almost as good as fame….” My reaction was, “Good catch, by the way. A good sign of a healthy Wiki is how quickly the community fixes vandalism.” Notable in both of our reactions was that we simply fixed the problem and moved on, instead of rushing to implement access control.    (QK)

John Sechrest, however, suggested that access control was exactly what the Wikis needed, which led to some interesting philosophical debate about the openness of Wikis. My response to John wasn’t very deep, but it does sum up my feelings on the matter: “Wikis are successful because the cost to contribute are zero. There are downsides, but there are also upsides. Get rid of one, you also lose the other.”    (QL)

Knowledge Management as Information Brokering

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

David Gilmour, CEO of Tacit Knowledge Systems, wrote an excellent (and short) essay in the October issue of Harvard Business Review entitled, “How to Fix Knowledge Management.” The gist of the article:    (P3)

The problem is that most organized corporate information sharing is based on a failed paradigm: publishing. In the publishing model, someone collects information from employees, organizes it, advertises its availability, and sits back to see what happens. But because employees quickly create vast amounts of information, attempts to fully capture it are frustrated every time. Even the most organized efforts collect just a fraction of what people know, and by the time this limited knowledge is published, it’s often obsolete. The expensive process is time consuming, and it doesn’t scale well. (16)    (P4)

Gilmour’s solution:    (P5)

Instead of squelching people’s natural desire to control information, companies should exploit it. They should stop trying to extract knowledge from employees; they should instead leave knowledge where it is and create opportunities for sharing by making knowledge easy for others to find. This requires a shift away from knowledge management based on a publishing model, and a focus on collaboration management based on a brokering model. (17)    (P6)

Tacit Knowledge Systems‘s system does this by scanning all of the email and other documents on a corporate network, and building profiles of individuals based on these behaviors. The system can then alert people to other individuals with similar interests, brokering an introduction between them. If you think there are potential privacy problems here, you’re not alone. Josh Tyler‘s SHOCK works in a similar way, but distributes control of the profile to the individual; see his paper, “SHOCK: Communicating with Computational Messages and Automatic Private Profiles.”    (P7)

IT as Commodity and its Contribution to Productivity

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

There were two interesting articles about IT and productivity in the Harvard Business Review this past year: Nicholas Carr’s “IT Doesn’t Matter” (May) and Diana Farrell’s “The Real New Economy” (October).    (OK)

Carr’s title is a bit misleading. It’s not that IT no longer matters at all; it’s that IT is less important (for most companies — a subtle, but important disclaimer) from a strategic standpoint, because it has become a commodity. Carr writes:    (OL)

What makes a resource truly strategic — what gives it the capacity to be the basis for a sustained competitive advantage — is not ubiquity but scarcity. You only gain an edge over rivals by having or doing something that they can’t have or do. By now, the core functions of IT — data storage, data processing, and data transport — have become available and affordable to all. Their very power and presence have begun to transform them from potentially strategic resources into commodity factors of production. They are becoming costs of doing business that must be paid by all but provide distinction to none. (42)    (OM)

IT, according to Carr, is infrastructural technology, and like the infrastructural technology of the past (e.g. railroads, power grid, etc.), once it’s built-out, the potential competitive advantages for individual companies go away. Just as most companies don’t develop strategies centered around usage of electricity, neither should they invest considerable resources into developing strategies centered around IT.    (ON)

Based on this argument, Carr proposes three “new rules for IT management”:    (OO)

  • Spend less    (OP)
  • Follow, don’t lead    (OQ)
  • Focus on vulnerabilities, not opportunities    (OR)

He closes his article by saying:    (OS)

IT management should, frankly, become boring. The key to success, for the vast majority of companies, is no longer to seek advantage aggressively but to manage costs and risks meticulously. If, like many executives, you’ve begun to take a more defensive posture toward IT in the last two years, spending more frugally and thinking more pragmatically, you’re already on the right course. The challenge will be to maintain that discipline when the business cycle strengthens and the chorus of hype about IT’s strategic value rises anew. (49)    (OT)

The “vast majority of companies” is the only disclaimer in the entire article, but it’s enough to appease me somewhat. Carr is absolutely right. Most companies are not in the position to leverage IT in innovative and strategic ways, because they lack the in-house expertise. This is evident in how most companies overspend on IT — for example, on upgrading PCs and software too aggressively.    (OU)

However, while many things we associate with IT have indeed become commoditized, I still don’t think it’s right to call IT as a whole a commodity. Perhaps the problem is with the breadth of the term; we need something more concrete in scope.    (OV)

This is somewhat evident in Farrell’s article, where she addresses the famous Productivity Paradox. In the past 10 years, national productivity numbers have increased significantly, and yet, upon closer examination of the data, Farrell did not find a significant correlation with investments into IT. According to Farrell, a combination of innovations in technology and business practices is responsible for the productivity increase. These productivity increases intensify competition, which then starts this cycle of innovation anew.    (OW)

Farrell concedes Carr’s point about the rapid diffusion of IT eroding individual competitive advantage. However, she also notes that coupling IT with more unique capabilities restores that advantage.    (OX)

Farrell concludes her article by identifying three common practices in companies that have successfully invested in IT:    (OY)

  • They targeted investments at productivity levers that mattered most for their industries and themselves.    (OZ)
  • They carefully thought through the sequence and timing of investments.    (P0)
  • They didn’t pursue IT in isolation; instead, they developed managerial innovations in tandem with technological ones.    (P1)

This last point is crucial. IT is inherently different from other infrastructural technologies in that its potential for coevolution is enormous and still largely unexplored.    (P2)

George Soros: “The Bubble of American Supremacy”

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

George Soros has an excellent article in this month’s The Atlantic Monthly entitled, “The Bubble of American Supremacy,” where he decries the neoconservative Bush doctrine and proposes an alternative. Soros compares the Bush doctrine to a financial bubble:    (OE)

The quest for American supremacy qualifies as a bubble. The dominant position the United States occupies in the world is the element of reality that is being distorted. The proposition that the United States will be better off if it uses its position to impose its values and interests everywhere is the misconception. It is exactly by not abusing its power that America attained its current position. (65)    (OF)

One of Soros’s criticisms is that framing our fight against terrorism as a “war” instead of “crime-fighting” dooms it to failure. (See my previous entry on George Lakoff and framing.) War assumes that there is an enemy state, which is not currently the case. Terrorism has always been a problem (although the scope and form in which it took place on September 11 was unprecedented), and will never completely go away. Worse, war implies and, in some ways, condones the existence of innocent victims, some of whom will undoubtedly become terrorists themselves in response. Soros says:    (OG)

The most powerful country in the world cannot afford to be consumed by fear. To make the war on terrorism the centerpiece of our national strategy is an abdication of our responsibility as the leading nation in the world. Moreover, by allowing terrorism to become our principal preoccupation, we are playing into the terrorists’ hands. They are setting our priorities. (66)    (OH)

Soros concludes by proposing a cooperative approach towards building collective security:    (OI)

I propose replacing the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive military action with preventative action of a constructive and affirmative nature. Increased foreign aid or better and fairer trade rules, for example, would not violate the sovereignty of the recipients. Military action should remain a last resort. The United States is currently preoccupied with issues of security, and rightly so. But the framework within which to think about security is collective security. Neither nuclear proliferation nor international terrorism can be successfully addressed without international cooperation. The world is looking to us for leadership. We have provided it in the past; the main reason why anti-American feelings are so strong in the world today is that we are not providing it in the present. (66)    (OJ)