This discussion reminds me of the paper by Shipman and Marshall called
"Formality Considered harmful". They show how and why people don't take this
extra step of documenting code, structuring their discussions with IBIS
(which the explicitly name) etc. It's not a long paper and is easy to read.
You can get it at:
http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/~shipman/formality-paper/harmful.html
Quote:
"Reported experiences with mechanisms to capture design rationale -- from
McCall et al's use of PHI (McCall, Schaab, Schuler, 1983) to Conklin and
Burgess Yakemovic's
use of itIBIS (Conklin, Burgess Yakemovic, 1991) -- can be interpreted as
limited successes. The
methods resulted in long-term cost reductions, but success relied on social
pressure, extensive
training, or continuing human facilitation. In fact, Conklin and Burgess
Yakemovic reported that
they had little success in persuading other groups to use itIBIS outside of
Burgess Yakemovic's
development team, and that meeting minutes had to be converted to a more
conventional prose
form to engage any of these outside groups.
Shipman then went on and wrote another paper on a system they designed which
helps people incrementally formalize:
http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/~shipman/tois-hos.pdf
Shipman's home page is at: http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/~shipman/
Gil
-----Original Message-----
From: Eugene Eric Kim [mailto:eekim@eekim.com]
Sent: lundi, 10. septembre 2001 10:10
To: unrev-II@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [unrev-II] Semantic Community Web Portal
On Sat, 8 Sep 2001, Jack Park wrote:
> I have a confession to make.
>
> I have a login password for Bernard's web site. I have yet to use
> it. Why? Because I am lazy. It is far easier to hit NewMessage in
Eudora
> and type "unrev" and then ship off some gem, than it is to fire up my
> browser, type in enough of a url to get the browser to remember where I
> want to go, then log in, then navigate to some appropriate page, then
offer
> up some gem. Eric Armstrong has been right all along: email is easier.
This is an important quandary. A little effort can result in an order of
magnitude return. However, most people don't want to blindly expend that
effort without knowing for sure that the returns will be worth it. And
even then, most people are too lazy to expend the effort. Witness the
reluctance most programmers show in documenting their code.
If we can erase the need for that effort in the first place, then the
problem is solved. This, however, is far easier said than done.
> But, email is far less useful in a couple of senses: it's not well
> organized (in contrast to a well-designed web site as is Bernard's), and
it
> tends to allow rambling, which, I think, calls for some structure, as
for
> example IBIS provides. But then, try to put IBIS threads into email and
> you lose the structure of the discussion; web sites are better for
> that. So, I conclude, email is easier and for those of us of the lazy
> persuasion, better. But, I also conclude that, for purposes of logical
> coherence in discussion and knowledge space, web sites, particularly
those
> designed as knowledge portals like Bernards, are better. Go figure.
[...]
> Were I to conjure a summary of this response, it would be:
> What we need is a knowledge portal that is as convenient as email, and
as
> powerful as a web site.
I have been experimenting with the following:
1. Use e-mail for unstructured discussion.
2. Have a designated group facilitator create a structured IBIS dialog
map of the e-mail discussion, with links to the original e-mails.
3. Use a Wiki to collaboratively build a web site that integrates the
content from both the e-mail archives and the dialog maps.
I am convinced that this combination of tools and methodology greatly
improves the collaborative process. However, in the absence of better
tools, some effort must be made to conform to the methodology, things like
periodically checking the dialog map and Wiki in addition to following the
e-mail discussion. My challenge is convincing others that this effort is
worthwhile.
-Eugene
--
+=== Eugene Eric Kim ===== eekim@eekim.com ===== http://www.eekim.com/
===+
| "Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they
|
+===== can have an excuse to drink alcohol." --Steve Martin
===========+
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0.0 : Mon Sep 10 2001 - 01:52:36 PDT