Thanks Gil for the pointer. I find Prof. Shipman's paper: "Supporting
Incremental Formalization with the Hyper-Object Substrate" very relevant
to the OHS Launch Community efforts.
You can find more info about the OHS Launch Community at: <
http://www.eekim.com/ohs/lc/index.html >
Gil Regev wrote:
>  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.htmlQuote:
> "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.pdfShipman'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 - 12:32:39 PDT