Talk:Communitas

Is the scope just Wikipedia or all of WikiMedia? --JWSurf 21:17, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

This is an interesting idea - (I suppose it's about Wikimedia rather than confined to Wikipedia - or, at least, I think it should be). It would be an interesting project to work on to help build a really useful body of research about the Wikimedia community and what other communities could learn or take from Wikimedians' experiences. One thing that strikes me, however, is that I anticipated something like this developing on Wikiversity - ie a learning/research community dedicated to the usage of wikis. Possibly this would be just another strand of the relevant parties that Charley has outlined here - possibly "Communitas" would be the outcome of that group's (and others') efforts. I see Wikiversity as a place to publish research - though this needs to be refined over the coming months. I'm not sure for now whether it makes more sense to have this on Meta or Wikiversity.

I'd also just like to question why the 'organisational structure' is outlined as it is - I'd like to see what develops out of a real community participation first, rather than create this from scratch. I'd say Sj is interested (and I hope he comments), and so I'd say we have a starting personnel, if you like (hopefully including John, above). Still, I'd like people to feel they could really get involved with the project from the beginning, make suggestions and changes as they see fit, and become part of the researching/writing/editorial team. If we have a sufficient interest level to get started, we should advertise around (such as on Foundation-l) to invite participation from the wider community. Cormaggio ^@ 11:29, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

The production copy is at the incubator on the page, Communitas! (note the exclaimation point). For the scoop on Communitas!, see w:Wikipedia:WikiProject Community. That's where the work is. This space here at Meta is a "buffer zone". See w:Community, w:Talk:Community, w:List of community topics, w:Portal:Community, etc. • Quinobi 12:48, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I know it's on the incubator, but why put it there in the first place? Is this envisaged to be a separate project? If not, it should be worked on on an existing wiki - Meta sounds fine, Wikiversity too, though Wikipedia doesn't really seem to be appropriate. As I see it, the Community Wikiproject has two main aspects to it - one is improving the articles related to community in Wikipedia, and the other is attempting to synthesise the various dimensions of community within Wiki[p/m]edia. The former is fine for Wikipedia, but the latter is more of a Meta thing in my mind. Still, the more I think about it, the better suited the project seems to Wikiversity (which is to be set up very soon). Cormaggio ^@ 07:40, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure where all it will go. b:Communitas! is for finished work, I think, but that's a lonnnng way off. Maybe I'm not clear on what the incubator is for. Gotta get some participation at the WikiProject level and meta up for now. w:Wikipedia:WikiProject Community/Communitas! has the assessment table, as of a few minutes ago. At the meta level, there's some places to add suggested topics and links to studies and whatever. Quinobi 08:00, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

The incubator is for testing new projects (or language editions of existing projects) - though, admittedly, its policies and processes need to be developed and made clear. What concerns me here is that we are possibly spreading ourselves too thinly. Why not develop all of this on Wikiversity or Meta from the beginning? Also, I've looked through the link above, and I'm not clear on what the focus of this project is - this project is about the Wikimedia community, and what we (and others) can learn from our experiences - yes? So, I'm confused that we would be focusing on developing articles about community on Wikipedia. As far as I understand it, this is seen as a peer-reviewed journal, presumably focusing on the outcomes of research. This is definitely in the domain of Wikiversity, as far as I see it - if we pitch it right, we will probably get the participation we need. Cormaggio ^@ 08:22, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Hello to my friend Cormaggio, and others. Please read my very opinionated statement below about #A Communitas example instance: The Perl Wiki in Wikia. Eric R. Meyers --Ermeyers 20:15, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

peer-reviewed journal

Can someone explain the journal's format and how the peer review process will take place? Is the idea to use an informal wiki peer review system or a formal system such as this? --JWSurf 18:19, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Starting where we are — friendly, informal and even fun, but building toward more formal as we learn how. (It still would need to be fun, IMO) At this time, we're focused on building a constituancy of mainly wikipedians willing to join the Community WikiProject. The process there is coordinated mainly through the Version 1.0 Editorial Team's Work via Wikiprojects assessment process. It's an alternative bot-assisted peer-review system based in the WikiProject way of doing things. see w:Wikipedia:WikiProject The Beatles

Wikipedia content that deals with references and sources beginning at the Community article and through the "big list" which includes at the bottom a growing body of source materials on community and community development topics. Portal:Community will be refactored (it's a bit of a mess right now) as a navigational aid to those, but includes a web resources section that can have a link to The Academia Wikicity.

The Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team's next round will pick up Virtual community. It's an attractic topic and could evoke a bit of communitas! (increased participation). I read somewhere - "A Wiki journal is a community. You can easily create a new wiki journal, but a wiki journal cannot function without a group of people who are interested in the topic and interested in wiki publishing." The thing now is to assemble that group. eh? • Quinobi 06:31, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Applied community development

Q. Why focus on the quality of Wikipedia content?

A. w:Wikipedia:Wikipedia as an academic source

w:Orchestration (computers) via w:Computational sociology

Abstract

Also, if we're going to say, develop research that is about our community experiences here, we would likely take the short road to sources out there in the real world of journal of -your area of interest here- and use Wikipedia to find background information. We want that info to be high in quality, easy to navigate and aligned with the language and methods of The Society of area of interest. The issue is, in my view, one of reciprocol participation: "You join my project and I'll join yours." That could attract expertice into The Wiki[p/m]edia Community.

Applied Community Development at Wikipedia:Wikiversity is born

Keywords: affinity, attention, channel, initiative, interface, lexicon, liminality, linguistics, morphology, reciprocity, role

And the same principle can work inside of the wiki[p/m]edia community:

An w:Affinity (sociology) between say, Wikiversity and Wiktionary could be :

1. Wikiversity sets up a w:linguistics program called w:Morphology.
2. The initiator goes to Wikipedia and joins w:Wikipedia:WikiProject_Linguistics and starts w:Wikipedia:WikiProject Morphology (which does not currently exist (12:31, 31 July 2006 (UTC)).
3. Wikiversity students then all go and join WikiProject Morphology along with Non-Wikiversity Wikipedians interested in word studies (thus being exposed to Wikiversity students).
4. WikiProject Morphology adopts w:Morphology (linguistics) as their "key article" and starts going all through Wikipedia pulling Morphology articles into their worklist.
5. They then build a Morphology article classification to prioritize the list with the key article at the top improving it bringing it to w:Featured article status (which will attract some attention - Yay!)
6. In the process of going through all of the articles, citing and sourcing as they go, they build up a massive list of primary and secondary sources eventually bringing every article on their worklist to good article or featured article status. (Yay!)
7. Now even their very worklist becomes a featured list and w:Portal:Linguistics has a fine new subportal w:Portal:Morphology that becomes a w:WP:FPORTfeatured portal.

By now these folks have become a full-fledged community of practice all experts in morphology. Wikipedia becomes renouned for it's fine content about Morphology and grateful morphologist all over the planet donate to the Wikimedia Foundation because they know the value of the materials and how easy and free they are to use.

The Category:Metamorphologists now join the Category:Metymologists (who developed on another channel) start applying what they know:

1. The combined worklists now become wordlists and are parced and pared with == Etymology == and == Morphology == sections on Wikitionary using tools developed over at Wikiversity's Comp-sci department. (seventeen other channels)

The MetaModel
Wiktionary + Wikipedia + Wikiversity + X / Wikiproject group = Communitas! :the spirit of community!
X = The project in the Queue (ready for release)

All the while, the Communitas project has been watching and documenting everything the participants have encountered. They note edit wars and other conflicts, citing how they were resolved. They coordinate massive collaborations documenting the interaction between the Morphology project and the other linguistics projects and observing, analysing and documenting all sorts of phenomena. Communitas sets up message boards on w:Category:Wikipedians by interest. They study how Wikipedians and Witctionarians get along. So forth and so on. Papers about the interaction between bots and humans can be written citing actual documented examples. Wikiversity's w:Computational sociology Department will have a live model for comparing their theoretical model to. All kinds of good things can happen. Of course bad things will happen, too. If we document our mistakes, then we learn from them... a true Learning community - w:Learning community, w:virtual community, w:community of practice, w:community of interest, ...

...Communitas!

challenges

• short road to sources - How can we help non-collegiate wikipedians find and cite sources
• community of practice - How do we w:define Meta a true w:community of practice
• define channel - Can we set up some w:channels for w:communities of interest

1. via Categories? Message boards?
2. via Template? Automation?
3. via Portal? Sound? Animation?

Is Wikiversity willing to tackle these challenges?

offering
I have been a long time fanboy of Model-driven architecture and MetaObjectFacilities. MediaWiki was a dream come true for me. Finally, I think I have enough experience with the application, the community and the culture to be a lead on applied computational sociology at Wikiversity. I know the term scares people senseless, but I also play the piano quite well. I think I can prove that Orchestration of contexts is possible. (Music to soothe the savage Beast - for air fair and accomodations to Boston, I'll prove it ;)
Too late? • #wikiproject • tractor
Inspiration can't be coerced into service; it comes exactly when it fells like it. That's an attribute of a Wikipedian and a property of communitas. It may be behind the success of Wikipedia.
Quinobi • 12:31, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

comments

"How can we help non-collegiate wikipedians find and cite sources" <-- I think Wikiversity should establish a starting place for its launch or what might be called a "pilot project". This Wikiversity "pilot project" should involve a goal that is very relevant to Wikipedia and Wikibooks and the educational mission of Wikiversity. It woud be sensible to have a Wikiversity pilot project devoted to helping members of the MediaWiki community find, collect, discuss and cite sources. (A logical first Wikiversity sub-project would be one devoted to helping WikiMedia users learn the basics of how to edit WikiMedia projects.)
This Wikiversity "pilot project" could be launched by inviting members of the WikiMedia community to start bibliography portals at Wikiversity, one for each subject/topic area. For example, Wikiversity could start with "bibliography portals" for Arts, Biography, Geography, History, Mathematics, Science, Society and Technology. These main hubs could all have subprojects, such as one specifically dealing with finding and citing sources relevent to communities. Each of these zzwikiversity "bibliography portals" would have a few basic components;
1) an introductory essay about the types of sources that exist for that topic area.
2) Lists of sources that have been cited by WikiMedia projects.
3) Discussion of which sources are most reliable and authoritative, which sources have identifiable biases and problems.
4) Lists of WikiMedia webpages that are in need of more/better sources.
Editors of WikiMedia projects who do not know how to find and cite sources or who do not tend to participate in constructive discussions of sources could be "sent to school" at Wikiversity in order to learn these skills. All Wikipedia articles and Wikibooks modules that need better sources and/or have content disputes could be linked to a relevant Wikiversity "bibliography portal". Over the years, there has been a series of WikiProjects devoted to trying to support the citation of sources at Wikipedia. I think Wikiversity could take a comprehensive education-oriented approach to this fundamental need of the WikiMedia community. At the same time, such a Wikiversity project would help attract participants to Wikiversity and launch the Wikiversity project. Doing this well would be a good test case for applied community building in the wiki environment.--JWSurf 14:37, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

On "challenges"

"Is Wikiversity willing to tackle these challenges?" - I would say: yes :-). The point of Wikiversity is 1) to create learning materials (so that people interested in learning can use them for self-study or those interested in teaching can use them in their classes), and 2) to develop learning communities around these materials/topics. One of those learning communities which I feel will be most beneficial/successful (as well as those outlined by John on finding sources and editing Wikimedia projects), will be on the nature and work of the Wikimedia communities and mini-communities (like WikiProjects), and other wiki-based activities. This work is what I understand the Communitas project to be (unless I have misunderstood it) - ie, if it is about researching and collating the experiences of the Wikimedia community, then it could operate under the umbrella of Wikiversity, as well as publish its results there. I say this, however, in the knowledge that we still need to develop the framework and guidelines for what research is allowed within Wikiversity - I hope that all this is possible within Wikiversity, and I see no reason why it shouldn't be. If iit is, and providing we construct the scope of Communitas well enough, we should be able to face any challenges we meet along the way - collaboratively. I think this is one of the key characteristics of a community of practice/learning community - and I think we will further define it as we go along. Cormaggio ^@ 19:52, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

A Communitas example instance: The Perl Wiki in Wikia

• The Wikicommunity Scope of Communitas should be broadly extended outward to include all of the Wikimedia namespaces, so that the Wikipedians will eventually learn to become Wikimedians in the larger Wikimedia community. Guiding the Wikipedians, and others, outward to expand their Wikimedia horizons.

• The Wikicommunity Scope of Communitas should be broadly extended outward to include all of the Wikia Wikicommunity namespaces, and to all other external Wikicommunity locations, reaching into all of the excellent Wikimedia Foundation project content.

The Perl Wiki in Wikia:Perl is a new global Perl Wikicommunity that I'm currently building, architecting, engineering and inventing, and the Perl Opinion section that used to be very heavily discussed and contentiously debated about in Wikipedia:Talk:Perl has found its safety in its new perfect Perl bias-friendly home. It's now living in its new, free and open Forum of Perl Opinion in Wikia:Perl:Opinion articles and the Wikia:Perl:Forum:Debate live forum for freely and openly discussing Perl opinions.

About the Wikiversity/Scope#Using Wikis that User:WiseWoman wrote about: Wikia:Perl is an offsite non-Wikimedia location where newly developing Perl related content can be produced freely and openly, for eventual conformance efforts and easier introduction into the public Wikimedia namespaces, which have very strict rules about unbiased, verifiable, etc., content. Some Perl Wikipedian people have called this more biased content more "helpful detail," see Wikia:Perl:Talk:Main_Page#Anonymous helpers.

Someone said in a discussion above that Meta:Communitas is currently being used as a buffer zone for the Wikipedian's discussion about Communitas.

In the future, the Wikia:Perl site is intended to be an Everything:Perl buffer zone for all of the global Perl Wikicommunity experts, who are intended to be both Wikians and Wikimedians of all sorts who will use and contribute to both the particular private Wikia content and the general public Wikimedia content, as these relate to the Perl community of practice and the Perl community of interest.

Everything Under the Sun needs to be used, and Everything Perl being contributed by Perl people will need to go into its proper location either in Wikia or in Wikimedia namespaces.

Might I be so bold and daring to suggest to you Meta:Wikimedians that you create Wikia:Communitas to get the general discussion of Communitas out into a more appropriated location? This is not a Wikipedia specific discussion any more. Take the particular discussion out to the more appropriate general dicussion area.

I hope that this helps.:) Eric R. Meyers --Ermeyers 19:34, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Eric. I'll just say that the scope of Wikiversity is not simply to study or develop Wikimedia projects/communities - it's broader than that. So, if you want to help contribute to the "Perl" or "Wiki Research" (or whatever) learning materials/communities on Wikiversity, you're very welcome to do so. But this won't be necessarily helped by setting it up on Wikia - we have already been creating a project about generating knowledge (Wikiversity) - I don't see the point (in this instance) in creating another one. Cormaggio ^@ 19:59, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I truly understand it all honestly, and I'm just trying to get everyone to understand the bigger picture that I see. Wikiversity is the Wikimedia Knowledge Base that I've also thrown my own two cents of opinion into the public discussion for its much needed creation, and that is it, the right answer is the Wikiversity:Main_Page to be fully realized, today, now and ASAP. The future global Wikicommunities or Communitas that are going to make Wikiversity truly successful, like you said on foundation-l, are going to exist somewhere outside of Wikimedia namespaces, with real people living in the real world of particular use, contribution and personal opinion, someone called the particular community of practice and the particular community of interest. This general Wikicommunity or Communitas concept is what is being talked about here, a thing I call Wikicommunity and someone else called Communitas, and I'm simply trying to bring the scope of the discussion out to the more proper scope of discussion, which includes my particular Perl Wiki efforts. The Perl Wiki University at Wikia:Perl:University is going to be as much a part of a Wikia:Perl:Wikiversity as it can possibly be to promote the good use and growth in general contributions to the successfull development of the general Wikiversity which I believe is for The Common Good, that we both agree on.

Quite simply, the discussion about Wikicommunities or Communitas should not be constrained by the fairly narrow perspective of Wikipedians. Eric R. Meyers --Ermeyers 20:51, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedians are a powerful force. I think we all need to be realistic about the ability of Wikipedia, due to its great size, to distort the wiki landscape. I worry that Wikipedia has become so large that it sucks up wiki editors like a black hole. This can create problems for smaller wikis that are trying to establish functioning communities. In the shadow of Wikipedia, smaller wikis need to plan carefully about how to attract and keep participants....small wikis probably need to come together, or at least work together, in order to survive. I hope that Wikiversity will have reciprocal links with essentially all other learning-oriented wikis. Wikiversity, as a WikiMedia sister project, will have the right to create direct links from Wikipedia and Wikibooks and this will be a huge advantage over other wikis such as those in the wikia system. Many people naturally wonder if there is a real need for many different wikis; do we need a wiki for every specialized topic? I think there are key differences that will come to set Wikiversity apart from other WikiMedia projects, such as openness to original research. However, I worry that if Wikiversity is not bold about developing clear differences from Wikipedia (such as support for original research, being more welcoming to experts, allowing collaborative groups to protect their work from outside edits), most potential Wikiversity editors will feel that there is no point to investing their efforts outside of Wikipedia. If Wikiversity cannot find a way to exist along side the great sucking mass of Wikipedia, I worry that there will be mostly just dark and lonely days ahead for many other independent learning-oriented wikis. If Wikiversity cannot prosper, probably the only other learning-oriented wikis that will have a good chance to survive are those run by conventional schools. --JWSurf 21:18, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi JWSurf, Absolutely! This topic needs to be taken out of Wikipedia, and placed somewhere more neutral. I've been absolutely impressed by the sheer force of what has been happening in this new world, as a result of the Wikimedia Foundation projects such as Wikipedia, and I'm personally sold on all of it.

One of the first things that happened with the Wikia:Perl site is that a good and honest home for Perl personal opinion was founded. Good personal opinions about good things belong somewhere in this world. And, I gave the Perl Opinion section a good and honest home. Opinion has a shelter in this world! My experience with the Wikipedians is well documented in Wikipedia:Talk:Perl. I went by the book to announce my newly developing home for Perl particular people, including Perl Wikipedians and Perl Uncyclopedians, and I was immediately cut off at the knees and criticized for having an underdeveloped Perl Wikicommunity. But as you obviously know, new Wikis can't grow correctly without the right people getting involved, and to me the Perl Wikipedians and the Perl Uncyclopedians are natural first candidates for a greater participation in a larger Wikicommunity, beyond what is currently known to them, and understood by them. I've had great difficulty overcoming their current Paradigms of the known Wiki world. But I don't give up that easily.

I personally don't worry about the number of wikis in the short term, as long as we end up with "The Right Wikis" in the long term.:) Eric R. Meyers --Ermeyers 21:43, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Let's just talk about Wikians, instead of just Wikipedians, to include everyone involved.

Hello Meta-Wikimedians,

Wikians is a good name for all Wiki interested persons involved in this Meta-Wiki discussion about Communitas or Wikicommunity development. The term Wikians includes people from all global Wikis in this general discussion, whether they are specifically from Wikimedia, Wikia or some other external Wikian site. We can all be easily considered Wikians in the more general form, I believe, so please let your Communitas document reflect the opinions of the many of us and include the more general Wiki community. This is simply an issue of good leadership. Eric R. Meyers --Ermeyers 22:53, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

NO! Wikia and Wikimedia are two separate ventures - Wikimedia is about the sum of all human knowledge under a free licence - Wikia is about building wiki communities under a free licence. I understand that you wish to create a larger umbrella community - but could I ask that you take that discussion elsewhere? Meatball is possibly the place that you're thinking about - a wiki about wikis. Still, like I've said, we can devote space within Wikiversity to resources and learning communities about using wikis - and I sincerely hope we will do that. But let's nip the "Wikia" thing in the bud. Cormaggio ^@ 09:22, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

WAIT! b:Communitas! is the title of a proposed Peer-reviewed Community Development Journal about w:Community studies similar and conversant with other journals such as w:First Monday (journal). It is also a program for building the community that takes part in the Wikipedia project and its "sister-projects" the first of which was Wiktionary, if I'm not mistaken. The papers I want to compile are about how all this came about.

I was inspired by a couple of authors, chiefly, w:Andrea Ciffolilli and w:Ilkka Tuomi although many other authors and journals would appreciate good papers (conformant to academic journal standards) written by and/or about mainly Wikipedians. The readership will consist of a world-wide audience of educators, sociologists, community practitioners, anthropologists, application programmers and a host of other professionals, semi-professionals and interested parties.

HUGE w:Attention is paid to Wikipedia in the sphere of community development. It is the most visible part of the organization that lets us play with their servers. Very little attention is paid to Wictionary, (which is in need of attention in my opinion - see proposed solution above) Meta, Wikibooks, Wikia, and on down the line. Maybe Wikinews attracts some scholarly curiosity, I don't know yet. The article that started me thinking toward writing this sort of "original paper" is

Phantom authority, self–selective recruitment and retention of members in virtual communities: The case of Wikipedia by Andrea Ciffolilli. Another paper that I found interesting and relevant is Internet, Innovation, and Open Source: Actors in the Network by Ilkka Tuomi.

Scores of other Journals are much more focused on science and less lenient on opinion such as The Journal of the Community Development Society or the Oxford's Community Development Journal. Plus there are newer of these types of journals like the International Journal of Electronic Commerce (examplary article). Here's one about w:Cues-filtered-out theory from the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.

What? I'm proposing that we here at Meta, Wikibooks, Wikia, or wherever we choose to work, especially at Wikipedia build on the culture of academic excellence that has already started and get better at citing, sourcing and developing our own knowlege and understanding so that when we do get smart enough, we can write papers that have merit to the "outside" world.

Plus: Communitas! (compare to First Monday) will be freely available to the Internet public. But because Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia it can't live there. However a body of reference works can live there. Fasttrack to Sources is a reference section I would like to write about citing and sourcing references on Wikipedia. Prioritas! is a program to help Wikipedians to aleviate the problem of gobs of stubby, unsourced articles. Based on an assessment from a community development perspective, It is a key concern to the whole community from me to Jimbo.

So... Communitas! and Prioritas! are not simply w:memes, but they are w:genres through which to strengthen the community that builds Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wik... [stop] <-- back up <-- How do you build a community that builds? • Quinobi • 06:14, 3 August 2006 (UTC) prioritas!

Pivotal sources

As I've stated before, I'm not an academic and I have many times been bewildered while hunting-gathering and citing sources. I've put an example of such a source, Connections: New Ways of Working in the Networked Organization here at Communitas#Pivotal sources and another one 'down' at 'pedia &mdash w:Internet, Innovation and Open Source:Actors in the Network I know a lot of these journal sites have easy-to-browse listings of articles that cite prior articles. Same goes for Books.

The Prioritas program extends Communitas into the dark and mysterious realm of who said what a long time ago. As Tuomi points out in w:Internet, Innovation and Open Source:Actors in the Network#Thought communities: a brief review:

"Bakhtin argued in the 1930s that speech and texts can only be understood by analyzing genres (c.f. Morson & Emerson, 1990). According to Bakhtin (1987), genres are created in a historical process where concepts, their use, and their practical context co-evolve."

So this "historical process" is ongoing, and now with hyper-text, it's getting 'easier' (for some) and 'harder' (for the rest of us) at the same time. MediaWiki makes it much easier. I've started a section w:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Community/Communitas!#Fasttrack to sources to try to get a handle on where these things are on Wikipedia, which ones are needed most and which are the most cited works. Developing these skills, for me personally is a good reason for me to spend time on it. But saving time is important for us all.

Running down the true source (not just a cite) is difficult for us blue-collar types. For example, at the bottom of Tuomi's article, all I can find is a 1987 book, so how do we "know" that such was said in the 30s? Is that a reprint of the old book. Of course it would have to be. Do I have to buy that book? So here's what I get from the Tuomi article:

• M. Bakhtin, 1987. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.

And here's what it will look like if covered properly:

• w:M. Bakhtin, 1987. w:Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin: w:University of Texas Press.

It's work, but once it's done it's done. Scads of academic folks are already doing thes types of synopic articles, but they must be done correctly or they will clog up Wikipedia.

I know that there is a meta-project to re-build meta and server resources are like blood around here. I just believe that a massive amount of redundant effort can be avoided if those who are digging and finding stuff out there that is truly pivotal start a worksheet here at meta that everyone (regardless of language) can access and throw down on. Then when it's complete it goes back to Wikipedia.

I propose doing away with the pseudo-namespace Wikipedia:WikiProject_some_topic and allow a few selected WikiProjects at a time to work 'up' here in 'meta' until the project is stable and the main articles and the articles that support the major sub-topics are covered. I thought that was what meta was for. That and coordinating Language 'pedias and 'tionaries. We must streamline things! That's why the Wikiproject group and w:Wikipedia:WikiProjectCentral were created. A person who was zealous to 'clean up' the Wikipedia:project namespace scolded me and convinced me to back the project down. w:Wikipedia:WikiProject Keywords was going to be for helping Wikipedia and Wiktionary talk better together and to aid translators. (see User_talk:Quinobi#WikiProject_Keywords). I just didn't have a good handle on how to go about it. I think it's all about focus and right now, my focus is on w:Community studies and Community studies. A sort of yin and yang approach.

The Version 1.0 team, espescially Sunray has done a Lion's share of the work on the core article w:Community. We reached a consensus that a logical next step would be to perhaps organize a COTM on the w:Virtual community article for which the meta-reference Connections: New Ways of Working in the Networked Organization could be a starting point and synopsis articles like w:Internet, Innovation and Open Source:Actors in the Network can be finish lines. Classification of source articles about source article is a meta-community thing. Wikipedia has a reputation for "keeping up" but it can do better, IMO. Meta ought to become a w:Hive mind but there needs to be a "queen bee". Communitas want's to be just that.

The series of articles on the template I was playing with represent the meta-contexts: w:Community, Community studies (builds references - including self-references up here) to be refined and placed down there in w:Community studies. Then on to w:Virtual communities, w:Community informatics, w:Discourse Analysis, w:Computer-mediated communication, and all the other little goodies the professionals want to study about this community.

So to answer User:Cormaggio's question something like "Why does communitas have to bounce around all over the place?" It's about the separation of content and context. This is very time-sensitive stuff and the people that are studying us are eager for data. (Some even willing to pay a premium for it, though it ain't for sale). It's in our best interest. That is of course, my opinion, and subject to debate.

Communitas is an effort to meet needs. Prioritas is an effort to meet them swiftly. Quinobi 15:00, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

contact

Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology Volume 26, Issue 3, Pages 15-17 Published Online: 31 Jan 2005

American Society for Information Science and Technology

Special Section:

• Social Interaction in Computer-Mediated Communication(2000) Jong-Young Kim
  • Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL email: Jong-Young Kim (kim24@uiuc.edu)

See also: SWIM - Information search strategy

Purpose–built communities

Now, back to User:JWSchmidt's, question:

Is the scope just Wikipedia or all of WikiMedia? --JWSurf 21:17, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

The scope is community, in particular online or virtual communities of both interest and practice, in particular this w:virtual community of pactice and interest.

I'm not ready to make any more assumptions about what the Foundation may or may not allow... but I do know this: Wikipedia has not gotten this far by being exclusive —

Phantom authority, self–selective recruitment and retention of members in virtual communities: The case of Wikipedia —

"... it is worth recalling an earlier distinction between open–membership associations and closed–membership ones. The latter are to be included in the category of clubs. The former are generally non–exclusive; some are open affinity–based groups while others are purpose–built communities, such as open source and open content endeavours ..."

by Andrea Ciffolilli

Now we see that Ciffolilli identifies:

• Wikipedia = open source and open content endeavour - a purpose-built community
• Wikiversity = ditto
• Wictionary = ditto
• Commons = ditto
• ...

But what of Wikia? Are they not "open affinity–based groups" that share the 'wiki' part with all of the above. That's something in common and therefore part of a commonality. I certainly think that Meta has an affinity with Wikia, as well as a heap of cross-membership. Wikia is obviously quite free, ad-hoc and interest-driven. The way I understand the policies, It's up to each individual wikicity to decide if it is "purpose-driven" or not. But the way I interpret foundation policy is that it is separate, for now anyway. I may be wrong.

I think it's possible that sociologists, would study this very debate in a couple of years. Quinobi 16:34, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

BTW, The article w:Affinity (sociology) appeared on Wikipedia, just the other day. Before that, the only context for affinity, in human terms was of marriage or family. Quinobi 16:34, 3 August 2006 (UTC)