[VBbuilders] why NING after all?

[Mark Petz]

There are myriad social networks out there:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

and much has been written about features in them that are useful

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network

but we are in danger of ending up with

Bonini's paradox <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonini%27s_paradox>

if we try and build in every feature we want on-ine to be in our network.

Better I feel is to look at 3 or 4 nets and just go for one. I am glad we
are doing this. At the moment I like Wiser Earth (Franz evaluated this) or
Appropedia (he has the contacts and the guys are positive about working with
us). BUT I don't want to spend months prevaricating and discussing.
Meanwhile people get bored and we loose the connections we have.

So a fast decsion is good. It should form part of a strategy (an information
strategy), NOT a Global Village Development Strategy (which I think some
want to bring in everything under one roof), Business Plan (which I feel
Helmut and Andrius would warm to). Such wider strategic aims should be
something the GIVE Institut focuses on. To my mind with 2 or 3 clear
projects:

VideoBridging (could be one project and would work well if the political
views are not focused on. By that I mean just like a wiki can be used by
anyone from  any belief, but the development of wiki technology is
independent of the actual beliefs. The same should apply for our VideoBridge
development in my view. We can focus on the community part and the technical
part seperately.) Then I think it can be useful for many and a stronger
collective mind raises efficacies.

Of course we may have our own orgs and organizational priorities - but that
is something else.

I hope this expedites the decision making process.

Ciaokka!

Markus

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 9:43 AM, Franz Nahrada <f.nahrada at reflex.at> wrote:

> In a discussion with Markus I wrote up some points that I find essential
> about NING.
> .
> a) the potential to form groups of individuals that have thematic
> coherence; a very good balanced relation between community spirit and
> embeddedness in a larger space where individuals can move freely (you can
> bring your friends from other networks) , fractal in its approach that
> gives us sense of belonging. (*)
>
> b) in the framework of this:  the ability to request theme specific
> profiles and not just general profiles like in Facebook or Wiser Earth.
> This is very important to understand the degree and kind of motivation
> that people have from the beginning.
>
> b2) in the framework of this: the ability to add one level of fractal
> subgroups in a theme, with its own membership and discussion fora.
> *** I wanted us to do this in the videobridge NING, so we can identify our
> technological etc. capacities.
> *** I wanted us to do this in the globalvillages NING, so we can identify
> our research base
>
> c) a very good and fine tuned email notification system that allows me to
> leave the community and only be drawn there only when it is necessary.
>
> d) a very flexible way to upload files in thematic contexts. I lack that
> for example in even similar systems like MIXXT.
>
> I gladly learn from others how they feel about this. I think its important
> to think about ways of organizing cooperation online that are realistic
> and coherent.
>
> And I know tons of things are missing in NING. But I feel we need a kind
> of center or several types of centers to group other patterns around them,
> like Skype, GoogleDocs, Facebook,
>
> The natural centers for me are mailing list and social network.
>
> Franz
>
>
> (*) Wiser Earth is not fractal enough, it gives me endless lists of people
> and solutions and does not carry through even its internal order system
> which would provide ordered fractality. The internal order system is
> detailed but it lacks some categories.
> Also, WE is still extremely buggy - I tried a test network there also and
> it behaves weird. http://www.wiserearth.org/group/globalvillages
>
>
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>
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