Stigmergy, wiki evolution

[Sam Rose]

Mark mentioned stigmergy in the SL thread, and it made me think about
something we're working on at CommunityWiki

Basically, we have some interesting and useful basic design concepts
evolving from our constant experimentation with many different wiki
engine software.

What we've done so far is figure out how to:

* Allow instant "open wiki" creation, where anyone can quickly and
instantly create a new wiki within a wiki "Namespace". So, if I have
a wiki setup at http://socialsynergyweb.com/cgi-bin/wiki/FrontPage,
you can come along and create a new wiki at
http://socialsynergyweb.com/cgi-bin/wiki/MyNewWiki/FrontPage, where
"MyNewWiki" can be whatever new namespace you want. Simply visiting
the url produces a fresh new empty wiki.

* These new wikis are tied to the "main" wiki at
http://socialsynergyweb.com/cgi-bin/wiki/FrontPage We all this a
"WikiHive". There is a "Hive Changes" that shows all of the changes
for all of the namespaces in the "WikiHive". Also, we've figured out
how to tie together the Unified recent changes of several "WikIHives".
The result of working with wiki this way over the last 1 1/2 years is
that it seems to open up many channels for Stigmergic communication
layers.

* So now, the next thing we are workign on is: http://www.communitywiki.org/en/2007-08-01
thinking about how to open up these channels between different wiki
engines, like Media Wiki, MoinMoin, Dokuwiki, and other common Open
Source, and even commercial wiki offerings. This is an attempt to
acknowledge that:

" 1. Collaboration is dependent upon communication, and
communication is a network phenomenon.
2. Collaboration is inherently composed of two primary components,
without either of which collaboration cannot take place: social
negotiation and creative output.
3. Collaboration in small groups (roughly 2-25) relies upon social
negotiation to evolve and guide its process and creative output.
4. Collaboration in large groups (roughly 25-n) is enabled by
stigmergy."

http://collaboration.wikia.com/wiki/Stigmergic_collaboration

Wiki itself is a great medium for social negotiation in small groups.
Wiki Net Hive Changes is a step towards stigmergic collaboration
across many, many groups.

The many groups that have been involved in the creation of wiki
software to date have sought to create uniform standards among wiki
engine creators and users, and this has met with mixed success. So, to
help enable stigmergic collaboration across technological boundaries,
I've started to think about how a "third" piece of software might
exist that can connect two existing pieces of software. Something that
can do the translating and uniformity-making, and some thing that can
output content that can be easily used natively from one wiki to
another. The direction that seems to have emerged is XML-RPC, that
allows sites with diverse content types to "talk" with one another.

Anyway, I look forward to any feedback positive or negative about
these concepts. Much of what I've talked about above exists in
currently working examples, like http://socialsynergyweb.net/cgi-bin/wiki/HiveChanges
and http://socialsynergyweb.net/cgi-bin/wiki/WikiNetHiveChanges for
instance. It's mostly a matter of refining the technologies so that
they are useable by many more people than just people like myself.

[Mark Elliott]

Wow Sam, that's really very interesting. In the further development of stigmergic collaboration in my dissertation, the notion of contirbutor groups became much more important. Contributor groups arise as a result of stigmergic, emergent teaming creating ad-hoc collections of users attracted by environmental stimulus representing a field of shared interest. Basically, mass collaborations (collaborations where the numbers of participants scale beyond the traditional limit of c.25 participants) are composed of sub 'contributor' groups which at times work in conscious conjunction with one another, but more often, without specific knowledge of one another.

While what you are describing regarding wiki-hives sounds like it is currently being applied in more traditional collaborative contexts (below the 25 member limit), I'm curious if this is actually the case, because the capacity to create wikis within a larger wiki and provide stigmergic cues across them seems like it would go a long way towards facilitating and stimulating contributor groups within the wider wiki workspace. This in turn, at least theoretically, seems like it would help boot-strap mass collaboration...

The idea of a third piece of connecting software then might also work similarly if the separate wiki communities that it would connect are seen as contributor groups for a wider super-system of wikis...

My phd is currently under examination right now, which, with any luck should be complete & ready for wider reading later this year. I'm excited to share more of the many ideas that have been developed since the original article on stigmergic collaboration was published, especially in relation to such an active experimental/application context!

Something I've been giving some thought is trying to stimulate a mass collaboration (perhaps at MetaCollab.net) with those involved in mass collaboration / stigmergic collaboration on the same subject. Seems like you'd have many valuable insights to contribute Sam.

mark

--
-----
Mark Elliott
PhD Candidate

The Centre for Ideas
Victorian College of the Arts
The University of Melbourne
234 St Kilda Rd
SOUTHBANK 3006
Victoria, Australia

Mob: 0421 978 501
http://mark-elliott.net/, http://metacollab.net/
m...@mark-elliott.net

[Sam Rose]

Amrk, I'd say that what we are calling the "wiki net" is composed of
several groups that all exceed 25 members each in total. Although
consistently *active* people could be 5 to 25 people per group (not
always the same people) in each group.

I can give a rundown of the "wiki net" (it changes over time):

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki? (+25 total)
http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl? (+25 total)
http://communitywiki.org/ +25 total
http://communitywiki.org//odd/ (OddWikiHive) (+25 total)
http://wiki.crao.net/ (+25 total)
http://s23.org/wiki/Main_Page (+25 total)
http://socialsynergyweb.net/cgi-bin/wiki/FrontPage (about 10-12
people)
http://socialsynergyweb.net/cgi-bin/wiki/FrontPage (about 10-12
people)
http://www.aboutus.org/ (thousands, but numbers around 25+ in people
who actually participate in "wiki net")
http://barcamp.org (thousands, but 25+ who are actively engaged in
"wiki net")
http://barcampbank.com (growing to several dozen)
http://pinkomarketing.pbwiki.com (hundreds)

We do not yet have all of these "jacked in" to the "wiki net" in terms
of unifying recent changes. part of the problem is the technoligical
barriers, and that is why I am exploring the creation of a tool that
can over come that. Plus, this is spilling over into blogs

The thing that you are talking about is absolutely confirmed by our
real-world experiments: most mass collaboration that has happened in
the "wiki net" has been the result of conscious and unconscious
"conjunction".

In other words, concepts, projects, and work towards goals that popped
up on one site or among one community have spread across many of them.
Sometimes this happened with the help of individuals who started pages
on many wikis to try and raise awareness. But those pages may have
morphed into a "tree" of local content, whiched spawned new ideas that
in turn may have found their way back around the network in different
forms, as useful "patterns" that are applied to different solutions.
The intercommunity connections open the channels of communication that
make this possible. Much of it has been manually done, by way of
"WikiNodes" that connect wikis, and through collaborative cross-wiki-
posting. Now that we are able to merge recent changes, and now that we
are sometimes able to see things like "this page on other sites", this
happens even more, when items come up that people are really
interested in.

What could really be useful is to let people filter these unified
recent changes in ways that useful to them, possibly through tagging
content natively, and then sorting via tags. Basically, because so
many people have so much invested in a plethora of different wiki
engines, wiki markup, etc, I think it's time to create a piece of
technology that can let people tie them together, and make conent and
activity within them findable, in useful ways. Not to mention also
connecting blogs, RSS readers, education and other content manaIM/IRC
etc. That is connecting people through activity, findability, and
content.

Really looking forward to your PHD completion. I've learned a lot from
it over the past year or so. Would be cool to really start connecting
metacollab.net community (and cooperation commons for that matter)
with all of the other "stuff" related that is going on out there, not
to mention the projects that are trying to apply these concepts. Let's
do it!

Sam

On Aug 2, 6:46 pm, "Mark Elliott" <m.elli...@vca.unimelb.edu.au>
wrote:

> On 8/3/07, Sam Rose <samuel.r...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Mark mentioned stigmergy in the SL thread, and it made me think about
> > something we're working on at CommunityWiki
>
> > Basically, we have some interesting and useful basic design concepts
> > evolving from our constant experimentation with many different wiki
> > engine software.
>
> > What we've done so far is figure out how to:
>
> > * Allow instant "open wiki" creation, where anyone can quickly and
> > instantly create a new wiki within a wiki "Namespace". So, if I have

> > a wiki setup athttp://socialsynergyweb.com/cgi-bin/wiki/FrontPage,

> > you can come along and create a new wiki at
> >http://socialsynergyweb.com/cgi-bin/wiki/MyNewWiki/FrontPage, where
> > "MyNewWiki" can be whatever new namespace you want. Simply visiting
> > the url produces a fresh new empty wiki.
>
> > * These new wikis are tied to the "main" wiki at

> >http://socialsynergyweb.com/cgi-bin/wiki/FrontPageWe all this a

> > andhttp://socialsynergyweb.net/cgi-bin/wiki/WikiNetHiveChanges for

[Mark Elliott]

Wow, well then it does sound like your experimentation is definitely within the mass collaboration subset of stigmergic collaboration.

Your assessment that:

because so
many people have so much invested in a plethora of different wiki
engines, wiki markup, etc, I think it's time to create a piece of
technology that can let people tie them together, and make conent and
activity within them findable, in useful ways. Not to mention also
connecting blogs, RSS readers, education and other content manaIM/IRC
etc. That is connecting people through activity, findability, and
content.

reminds me of one of the core tenets of stigmergy - that stigmergic environments may employ any form of topology, including graphs (networks), indices (catalogues) and Cartesian coordinates (space). This enables the possibility for simultaneous multipule representations of the same interaction space, but utilising different topologies (think categories vs hyperlink representation/navigation for wiki topologies for instance). The value of employing such multiple representations is also noted in one of the Coop Commons reports ' Toward a New Literacy of Cooperation in Business' (p. 33) - 'the ability to position resources across multiple structural perspectives increases the likelihood of cooperation and the perceived value of the resources'. The point being, it seem like most of the useful/valuable information you are describing is already being produced by the various pieces of software, the new information needed is where and how to best re-present this information... Do you think?

I'm also excited to get started pulling this all together (applied mass/stigmergic collaboration research communities), though currently my biggest challenge seems to be finding time between twins and teaching during semester (Jul-Nov) to get my head around what the best starting points might be. Perhaps a collection of core issues could be developed to use as a starting point for the initial discussions such a community might engage? - In combination of course with the usual aggregation of ideas, research, examples etc perhaps at MetaCollab.net?.. - i also own the url http://masscollaboration.net ;-)...

mark