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Just a minor point of clarification. I wrote the first paragraph, "The OAC is the...", and was quoted by Francine Barone.
John,
I Archaeology may be one of the Four Fields, but it is severely underrepresented here.
3.What new projects might like to set up for public collaboration in the near future?
With due consideration of our other obligations of course, but nothing succeeds like success. Any ideas?
John,
I'm certainly intrigued by your observations and proposals. The idea that full members would need to commit to a minimum level of time/labor in order to reap benefits makes a great deal of sense, and is certainly in line with the way I have always understood a cooperative to function.
Work rooms sound similar to what I originally expected might arise from the Groups, with collaborative teams using the Wiki as a repository for for all the information needed to move a research project forward.
I've been kicking around the idea of starting some discussions in the Southwestern Archaeology group that might lead to greater sharing, and possibly some collaborative work using existing site reports and data sets. The sad truth is that the few archaeologists who joined the OAC in the early days seem to have moved on. Archaeology may be one of the Four Fields, but it is severely underrepresented here.
Could this situation be changed? Yes. But the price would be a change in our current totally open and egalitarian ethos. Instead of one, perfectly flat community with totally porous borders, we would shift to concentric circles. The outer circle would remain totally open and egalitarian, imposing no obligations on associate members free to come and go as they please. Joining the inner circle would require the approval of the full members and be conditional on a track record of contributions in the outer circle [details remain to be worked out]. The benefits of inner circle membership would include access to seminars and OAC Press working papers and, perhaps, what I am going to call work rooms [more about that in a minute]. An innermost circle would comprise the administrators, who would typically be recruited from the inner circle.
The Work Room: A space where an individual or project team posts a running record of a current research project, with links to resources that would remain wherever the individual or team members choose to keep them. Projects under way in Work Rooms will be listed on the front page, but access to them will be restricted to those allowed by the individual or team that occupies the room.
John points to a possible tension between openness and certain forms of cooperation and suggests that we shift away from the present open and egalitarian model to a hierarchical model of concentric circles in which the obligations and benefits of membership increase as one goes up and inward. I appreciate that certain forms of collaboration are not best conducted in an open room where anyone can redirect workflow in a new and probably unproductive direction.
That said, the suggestion somewhat evokes in me the image of Minas Tirith with its seven concentric walls, and pass-worded gates, and at its center the dead White Tree of Gondor and tombs of kings. All kidding aside, I think that the metaphor ought to be modified somewhat to make clear that what is being suggested is not a pyramidal hierarchy (a single rooted tree), but a heterarchical system of concentric circles:
The important difference is that there is not a single core membership that determines what others can or cannot do at the OAC as a whole, so much as a distributed system of control by which certain areas of the OAC fall under the domain of different admins. Owners of work-rooms, organized seminars etc. have the right to set up access limits, etc., but the ability of general members to set new ones up themselves is best left completely open.
In any case, can Ning support such a model?
John McCreery said:Could this situation be changed? Yes. But the price would be a change in our current totally open and egalitarian ethos. Instead of one, perfectly flat community with totally porous borders, we would shift to concentric circles. The outer circle would remain totally open and egalitarian, imposing no obligations on associate members free to come and go as they please. Joining the inner circle would require the approval of the full members and be conditional on a track record of contributions in the outer circle [details remain to be worked out]. The benefits of inner circle membership would include access to seminars and OAC Press working papers and, perhaps, what I am going to call work rooms [more about that in a minute]. An innermost circle would comprise the administrators, who would typically be recruited from the inner circle.
The Work Room: A space where an individual or project team posts a running record of a current research project, with links to resources that would remain wherever the individual or team members choose to keep them. Projects under way in Work Rooms will be listed on the front page, but access to them will be restricted to those allowed by the individual or team that occupies the room.
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