Pierre's some ideas on the specs

Note this predates Agaric's proposal for the WSF2008 project.

Hi Jason and Benjamin

in the spirit of our chat of last thursday i have tried to go further
in some aspects - this may help for the monday chat to which i cannot participate- will post on the wiki soon

a.. Why link signature and right to edit activity spaces in the wsf2008.net site
b.. The signature as person affiliated to an organisation or as represetnative of this organisation is an first step in actively participating to the decentralized preparation - the call in berlin was designed to be co owned by all organisations taking part in the initiative - the number of signature can grow rapidly in the last weeks before january26th if signature is used in the communication strategy
c.. Signing allows people to show individually and collectively their interest - the list of represetnative signing can be considered the orgnaisaiton signature and the rest is individual with mention of the
d.. The signature module become an informal directory of the mobilization a collection of individual /represetnative signature which can be sorted by city by country by organisation by network it is a very useful tool for everyone, although being very simple
e.. Requesting to sign the call in order to be able to declare an activity seems realistic and allows to have some track of who is co- editing which activity -
f..
a.. No groups in that site ? OK but accountability of co eds of an activity .
b.. This site is activity centric and has a minimal structure - no registration of organisation or groups is required just spelling them at time of individual signature (where an organisation website can be given also ) -
c.. however there is a need for accountability and to know who is editing a given activity page -which need to be short - and who is choosing the photos and the one minute video that will be in the activity space- this can be done by a simple system where someone being known as an editor of a given activity can extend his/here editing right to other people which are in the mailing list of the activity and have also signed the call the right to edit an activity to a list of people.
This editors would appear publicly and automatically in the activity space as "editors of the activity" - with mention of the organisation that they would have mentioned when signing (and a website where to get more information about their organisation)
d.. if people having mentioned an organisation are not considered as reliable representatives by peer of their alleged organisation - they have to face the criticism that is why it is important to know who is co editing which activity in a global directory of " affiliated individuals
e.. of course if people sign the call in personal capacity and do not mention any organization - this will be taken into account by the mailing list members of the activity
f.. this system is horizontal - simple - public and brings ownership and accountability- it does not give advantage to the first editor -there is no formal group, everyone is on the activity mailing list -just the co editors are listed in a special field
g.. (a collaborative group existing in a collaborative space outside the wsf2008.net site can be mentioned in the activity description as the collective responsible for the activities
h.. activity registration is available to a person right after having signed the call and selected or created a local page ( there is a trade off between creating more local pages and having some clustering of activities even though these are not located in exactly the same place - this can be supported by a system where according to the location you mention for your presence during the you are directed to a series of existing local pages "close" to this location and can browse the actions /initiatives by growing distance to your own place- the decide if you will " live " in a given local page or wish to create one more
i.. inflation of activities will diminish after a while - since everyone can get into any activity mailing list - so communication can exist ( a system of messaging simultaneously to two activity mailing list would help the mediators who are trying to help two activity merge
j.. if the activity co editors are having conflicts they can erase themselves mutually - while staying in the discussion list which is open - if there are competing activities then people will talk or go away to create another initiative
k.. the activity has a mailing list - and is not just a blog because at the end of the day someone will have to edit the activity front page -and this cannot be unidentified individuals with a nickname
a..
a.. National commitees ? national pages editing ?
b.. To my knowledge there has never been an agreement on the fact that there would be "national committees" who would make decision about the forms and content of this global mobilization,
c.. there is a global call for decentralized initiatives ,so even if there are people that feel legitimate to form a national committee in a country , there may be others that may not follow the guidelines given by this committee and take actions locally in their local pages
d.. ( that is why it is important that at least all these people sign the same call , all that sign are entitled to create activities locally and start local pages where several activities could be made visible in order to maintain plurality locally if this is necessary
e.. no control on the local page - this is just a place where to see which are the initiatives on going -there is no specific editing linked to a local page
f.. Similarly no control on the national page - this is just a place where to see which are the initiatives on going -there is no specific editing linked to a local page
g.. The national page is a very sensitive issue - in the philosophy of decentralized initiatives there is no specific content to be created at national level-only give acess to local info the list of place where activities from cities of the country are made visible according to a standard and equitative protocol - since an activity can only occur in one place at a time ( otherwise there can be connection between initiatives, no activity can be given a major visibility
h.. Only the number of people in the mailing list and the variety of organisation in the co editor list can be a criteria to weight activities - not a statutory one (this is the activity defined by the national committee) - or a tagging/weighting system by call signer of the local page this should stay local this should be more frequently visible in the national page
i..
j.. The notion of connection between activities is also very important- -it cannot be overestimated
k..
l.. To summarize the choices of design currently made although to be refined are keeping things simple - clear-cut rules - and no successive registering
m.. If you want to co edit activity spaces you need to sign the call
n.. If not you may register separately but cannot register activities
o.. The list of activity co editors is permanently updated
p.. There is no edition of content in national pages just displaying what is below
q.. The list activities where a given person is co editor can be found
r.. So the organisation disappear as a structural notion in this GM200 site - which is a high price to pay for simplicity -Giving their own space to organisations in the data structure , beside other factors which are just not enough work on the site is part of the perceived complexity of wsfprocess.net

----- Original Message -----
From: Jason Nardi
To: Pierre George ; Benjamin Melancon
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 3:26 AM
Subject: Revised specs

Hi Pierre and Benjamin,

I have "cleaned" up the specs to make them more comprehensible - first of all to myself.

There is still a lot of work to do, but I think there was too much mixed information (especially with wsfprocess.net) in the previous version.

So please have a look...

goodnight,
Jason

Resolution