User:OneKarma/Forum

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This page is meant to host discussion of the following proposal: Establish within this wiki a centralized, equal-opportunity forum for Occupy Boston.

Premise

There is a huge lack of clarity and unity because of communication difficulties. Current modes of communication, especially mailing lists, are not only varied in effect, but also cumbersome in use. There must be a central 'information resource provider' to support the Occupation.

  1. Mailing lists 'force' un-filtered information upon individuals, but a wiki simultaneously hosts the most pertinent information (and its discussion) while being navigable per content. A wiki represents a tree of knowledge; it should be organized and coordinated as such.
  2. The front-information on a wiki may change frequently due to broad intelligences, but the front-information in a mailing list is only the most recently updated (responded-to) conversation. Changes on a wiki should be seen as evolution, but updates in a mailing list will never be more than converstaion.
  3. A wiki hosts updates right away, but mailing lists require hours of waiting for a response. There have been many queries within the mailing lists regarding whether messages are being received or not. The wiki would not have this issue, because everyone can see that their contribution has been published when they save a page.

Proposal

Issues

The major issue with using a wiki seems to be understanding the process of contribution, which is, in my opinion, much easier than reading and replying to a number of massive email lists. Becoming familiar with editing functions, navigation tools, and special pages can be daunting. We should therefore post guidelines proposing a specific structure and method that can be scaled and adapted to the many sizes and specialties of groups. We should unify to determine our ideals and the best methods to attain them. We should host a fully public, round-table discussion to determine the first steps of action. This discussion cannot cease until a central forum has been established.

If the Occupation appears to the mainstream to lack unity, clarity, definition, or priority, it is because the Occupation has failed to create the pathways that maximize the efficiency of crowd-sourced social evolution. At best, unity in the Occupation is extremely vague, and can generally be summarized in a single word: discontent. Indeed, the Occupation has barely agreed upon a few 'official statements'. The discussion is limited by the structure of the forum, or lack-thereof.

Concepts

There will be a much larger foundation of voices if all contributers are able to navigate the forum. By following the basic structure of topics and their nested discussions (a natural aspect of every wiki) we may build a professional feel upon the face of the wiki, and individuals will be able to quickly find and discuss the issues of greatest personal interest. A wiki is meant to crowd-source information - I suggest we use OccupyBoston's wiki to crowd-source a revolution.

Any organization of dedicated individuals can maximize efficiency by coming together as a whole to agree upon goals, methods, and tasks. This should be a first prioroty of any organization, and the discussion should be 'alive' as long as there is anyone in support of the forum. The Occupation movement has reached a massive scale, but it does not present a navigable structure, so the whole is more of a chaotic mob than a committed organization. The mess of communication methods shared by contributors has led to a lack of definition. Each medium should represent a specific function within the goals, methods, and tasks that is determined by the whole via round-table discussion.

Goals

The ultimate goal of the Occupation (and truly the ultimate goal of any compassionate act) is the creation of (or evolution toward) a perfect society. Rather than acheiving perfection, the most difficult task is defining perfection. Coming to a working agreement on 'perfection' would allow us to determine pathways for acheiving that perfection. After conceptualizing our goals and sorting out the best potential methodology, it would be necessary to create tasks which could be delegated to working groups. This process establishes ultimate authority within the people, leaving no room for modification.



To maintain a fully open and equal-opportunity forum, please follow these basic guidelines.

  • Most importantly, anyone can become a content creator/author, but no one is ever a content owner, as everything exists within the 'Public Domain' (see the link at the bottom of every page).
  • Etiquette should require no more mention than this.
  • Research is key to proper communication. One should always make an effort to learn more than is already known about a given topic before criticizing or suggesting alternatives.


Pages and Nested Discussion

Every topic page should represent a 'professional face' regarding its topic. The related discussion page (tab in top left) is the place for clarifying questions and development of the ideas described on that topic page.

Insert four tildes (~~~~) to post a 'signature' with a time-stamp on your comments so that others know how to contact you if your questions are answered. The wiki automatically inserts a link to your user-page when you click 'Save page'.

Frequently Used Pages

To save from 'editing wars' on discussion pages where a number of collaborators may be attempting to write simultaneously, authors should be re-directed to a live-updating document such as https://pad.riseup.net.

To ensure that your work is not lost in the case of simultaneous editing, open a .txt document on your computer (Microsoft has a program called 'Notepad' with which some may already be familiar) to write an update. Go to the Edit tab, then select all (ctrl+a on Microsoft) and paste it into your .txt document. Then click 'Cancel' (to the right of 'Save page', 'Show preview', and 'Show changes' buttons at the bottom) or just leave the page. Perform all your editing in the .txt document (don't forget to save!), then go back to the Editing tab and replace the 'old' version with your update. It may also be helpful to check the History of that page if you have been working for a while, in case others have updated it while you were working on your .txt. In this case you may have to track the differences between the version you were editing and the version created during your working period. It is likely that this will never be the case, but it is good practice to back-up all your personal work.

Formatting

Every page (both topics and discussions) should follow a few basic formatting guidelines. Visit User:OneKarma/Help or http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Formatting for the basics.

User:OneKarma/Forum Table of Contents
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