SSPs

This is an attempt to begin presenting and gathering requirements for improving the filtering for content based on an accumulation of relevance and quality scores associated to content in a variety of ways, including mechanisms for having varying impact of scorings based on the "Credibility" of the scorer, and how that credibility is derived.  A second goal is the coincidental improvement of the quality of content by thus rewarding constructive feedback and consensus building.

If you want to understand what those Polls about Credibility and Respect were about, then please read.  Ther are some related conversations that tie in to this.

The following was originally a sideline reference to a conversation located at http://www.bsgalliance.com/convs/show/4049-if-the-bsg-hub-appropriately-rewarded-you-with-a-meaningful-amount-of-credibility-credits-which-then-affected-your-public-standing-in-the-community-via-a-real-time-published-position-in-the-pack-score , and meant as an appendix to a specific reply to Marilyn Davison at http://www.bsgalliance.com/convs/show/4185-deming-and-senge-on-star-ratings . 

Here is an excerpt from another conversation where us ex-Iconixx newbies to e.Locate are trying to figure out how to use the Hub as a collaboration knowledgebase in support of a specific use.

>>A knowledgebase of solutions/problem resolution should probably be a top level, main "Blog" I guess. We should be able to post a Blog entry of a significant problem, and then later, its resolution, with discussion on the problem ad resolution being in the related "conversation".  I would like to see one "knowledgebase" of the problems/resolutions that looks more like a Wikipedia Blog, with links both ways to conversations that happen(ed) in understanding the problem and in formulating the solution.  That way a search on key words might hit a rejected solution in the conversation, that then leads to the preferred solution in the Blog (= SUCCESSFUL! use of our SITE.), while leaving a clean problem/solution educational Blog useful for efficient learning.  Here is a place where I should explain the value added by my "wish list" feature of being able to attach Reviews and Flags to items like this. 

A pie-in-the-sky goal of mine is to build a knowledgebase that benefits the on-site consultant who is working 60+ hour weeks and simply does NOT have time to go searching for, or read thru all the "good" postings each week, much less daily.  To do that, I suggest that our SITE needs an emailing application that respects a participant's Profile choice to ONLY selects items that have been Reviewed and Flagged by others of high credibility, as being "5 Star" or "Must See" for the Skillset or interest group member.

<< 

I hope that illustrates a few key goals. The example implies some sort of systematic way of building, keeping, and using some nebulous "ratings" and "credibility" concepts that I believe are absolutely necessary to take any collaboration knowledgebase in the direction of building a "Learning Organization" ala Peter Senge.  I also have a very preliminary solution set proposition for what I have labeled "5*star" review ratings and "HI-Q" credibility scoring, and the Poll questions are meant to troll for some feedback on those.    

Days ago, inspired by your reply, I quickly threw down paragraphs of discussion points and supporting thoughts and examples, and then saw that there was just way too much information to throw out there unstructured.  Now I will try to reorganize my thoughts to show some "top down" structure to the problem context I see as applying and guiding the evolution of a "Learning Organization" and more specifically, the whys, wherefores, what-nots and how-tos of the functionality embodied in these review ratings and credibility scoring features.  I have been seeking help and collaboration in trying to define these new requirements and a prototype view of their implementation, and now would love to bring this discussion into the BSG arena. 

Proposed Addons to Collaboration Hub :

Merit Value Based Filtering, "5*Star" Ratings and "HI_Q" Scoring

Methodology

Here are brief explanations of the top three structures of my top down design method (madness): (Oh and I apologize in advance if you find my "Acronymns r FUN" (Frickin Useless Nonsense) hobby less entertaining than I do.)

1.  A High Ontological Level Design (HOLD - just trying to have FUN with acronyms; don't take it seriously please. ) vision metaphor that communicates a Vision within a "System thinking" view (Senge's "System Map") along with the Problem Target goal(s) that can clearly be seen to belong, and to be of obvious importance.  (I think that metaphors leverage a few words to paint a large, almost spiritual vision, and should always be considered in high level discussions to enliven and animate the "Vision" if possible, so the team can "take hold of it and run with it".  Another "axiom" that I stress is "If your Vision is so far sighted that you are legally blind to today and this week, then you will find and follow other sense perceptions, and may have trouble running."  This means that a group of individuals will use their own senses for direction, wherever the organization's "Vision" does not explicitly provide adequate guidance; and thus those setting the Vision must find a way to make it real, and connect the target goals of the "System Map" to each day's tasks.)

2. A Main Organic Requirement Embodiment (MORE - more FUN, excuuuuuse me, please) Component List, with some description of each set of requirement functionality seen as "organically" embodied into a main component of an initial prototype.  (I think metaphors related to the HOLD vision are very useful at this level of requirements definition, to stress the functionality to be prototyped into a "component". Keeping the component in view as "an embodiment" of requirements, should help to separate the implementation specifics from the requirement, and thus make it  easier to later accurately build more test cases that support the large view of the component's requirements.)

3. Traditional (or True) Object Technical Specifications (TOTS - the real FUN comes when we share the "Tools Of Your Skillset" for TOTS later. ) can then be done under the shadow of and tied to specific features of the HOLD MORE components.  In this piece of "conversation" I won't go there, but this gives you a look into my fun "Organic Structured Object" Design methodology ( OSO - please bear with me, since I'm doing this on my time.), which I think best suits a structured set of requirements loosely tied to an truly modular object oriented design.

High Level Ontological Design (HOLD) Vision Metaphor and Problem Target(s)

This is an attempt to discover and document the requirements for some "wish list" features that might be addons to the e.Laborate collaboration Hub software.  The process below is like reverse inventing from the design proposed in a separate document for "5*star" review ratings and "HI-Q" credibility scoring features, in that the specific implementations suggested were based on intuitively perceived requirements, instead of normal, documented requirements.  This means that there is no business driver or stakeholder or any other basis for the features, and I am therefore challenged with establishing these as being reasonable, high value, easily implemented, accurate embodiments of correct extrapolations from a valid "System Thinking" vision of a collaboration knowledgebase that we should be seeking.

I choose to use the practice of applying the metaphor of a biological organism of a higher life form to help communicate and connect the philosophical and visionary spirit of a Vision to analogous real aspects and processes being discussed and proposed.

A successful highly complex organism (and thus organization) will have a strong ability for self awareness, as well as self discipline, and self tolerance, self esteem, introspection and self correction.  The successful non-parasitic organism will also have to possess adaptive social skills and the ability to attain and grow a positive public image within their social environment.  An advanced organism will enter into commerce (e.g. nit picking) in society and, if to succeed at that, will have to learn how to apply all the above self discipline its own set of desires, feelings and urges, in order to focus and apply all of its abilities and infrastructure in finding and then leveraging its best, most marketable talents and strengths, in order to attain to their optimal level of participation in the social and commercial environment.  This metaphor as expanded below, supports the proposition that for our learning organization's collaboration hub to succeed over the long run, and drive the success of the business, it must not only be a well enabled collection of knowledge gathering and idea manufacturing partners, but also have an effective means of enforcing the accepted Vision discipline of the Organization, because that Vision is not constrained as is the biological organism which has only a single set of eyes.   

We must note, when applying this biological metaphor, that the collaboration community is NOT a biologically complete and finished creation of selfless non-self-sufficient parts sharing a vision of preservation of the whole; but rather, at best an attempt to organize under a biologically inspired Vision discipline,  by an amalgam of different people with a myriad of different natures and experiences, brought together by a network of chance and common need for collaboration in attaining their completely unrelated financial and social goals and true priorities.  

Problem / Target 1 - Information overload / Merit Value Tag based Information Filtering

The need for protection from tidal waves of data is unavoidable in succeeding to gather large masses of information.  To move a quantum leap beyond literal content based filtering, I believe that we should use what we know about the human brain in building a knowledge database. I propose that the mind of the collective knowledgebase should use input preprocessing and filtering technologies similar to that of the human mind, which has a myriad of different specialized preprocessors identifying, cataloging, rating for significance and relevance, storing and then filtering all the input that comes into the human consciousness.  That is what is behind my desire to get to a place where all contributions to a collaboration database have some sort of meaningful and programmatically useful valuation (like 5*Star and HI-Q) to avoid information overload and disengagement for self-preservation.  

The reality of the challenge of building a successful technical collaboration knowledgebase is that such efforts generally fail, at least by my standards. :)    How do we break the "Catch 44" (a double whammy catch22) of the systemic struggle in which those that have the valuable technical experience and artifacts are also those that are kept fully billable, overly busy, and whose productivity would most benefit in the long term from the short term sufferings of any efforts to share resources, experiences and artifacts, is compounded, and perhaps overshadowed by, the conflict between the long term interest of the company in being reputed as more efficient technically, and the short term interest in maximizing the revenue from projects, secretly, even subconsciously, allowing each project to "re-invent the wheel" because of the profit in so doing.?  I think we have to throw in some "Leaven" and hope to slowly convert the whole batch (help I'm in metaphor overload!), by using some bits and pieces of the psychology behind the successes in the internet marketplace and social networking sites and games. 

Problems 2 - Motivation and Discipline / Targets 2 - Credibility Scoring and Review Ratings

The 2^nd biggest problem I see is that the learning organization faces, is the lack of effective means of discipline and motivation, in focusing the collective extra energies of an organization to be in sync with a Vision formed using Senge's "System thinking", to have far sighted accuracy.  I like to sum up this problem in what I call the "Third Law of Thermodynamics" - "People are going to do what they want to do",  which means that " People will intrinsically seek to bring in to balance their abilities and circumstances to reach a state where they feel they are doing just what they really want to do."   I believe that any theory of motivation must deal with this, along with the tension of political correctness and the incredible diversity of the parties involved. 

This brings me to addressing "Deming and Senge"'s admiration of the goodness of humans. I have seen and surmised that there are still some politically incorrect and thus mostly overlooked realities that should be handled.  A high portion of people, especially successful technical business persons, are by nature and nurture, highly competitive, and strongly self-sufficient. Those on the outside trying to figure out the inner ticking of the top technical talent category of human resources, may have had their conclusions overly skewed by the abundance of the outward manifestations of the humor, camaraderie, and capacity for team synergism found innately in this type persona, and in a few corporate flashes of familial flourishing found flowing from functionally fear-free firms. (Sorry about that - I got carried away, remembering some amazing, wonderful dotcom startups.)  We simply must respect the powerful drives of self preservation and dominance, and our resulting intrinsically selfish natures, when we consider how to maintain a high degree of motivation for collaboration in the technical consulting/delivery business space.  Oh, that the "Golden Rule" and "Sermon on the Mount" were attainable by those of much less vision than Ghandi.  What can we learn from the rare success of a few elite teams pitted against each other in RAD (Rapid Application Development) prototype experiments?  From my own experience, I know that extremely talented individuals enjoy sharing and cohering and are selfless in pursuit of business success, as long as they perceive (and they are extremely perceptive) that their contributions to the team  I suspect that successful mass collaboration mechanics are good for the masses, but if you want to engage the top 1 percent of technical talent into such a common market of knowledge, you will need to add some functionality that engages and benefits that 1 percent, and succeeds in bringing the top 20 percent into a closer collaboration

This drifts into some of my variances with Senge's Fifth Discipline propositions in his use of relative terms like "High levels" and "mastery" that inherently imply a higher value and superiority of those that succeed in some area.  In that model those that are better at learning are more highly valued than those that cleanup their messes.  I prefer the view of "if I am not doing evil, but am pursuing truth and honestly trying to do the best I can with what I have been given, then my value is maxed out, and no one is in any way better than I."  This puts a huge responsibility on those that have been given the ability and power to motivate, educate and lead others, to use the tools and knowledge given to them.  "To whom much has been given, much is required." (And this is not referring to rewards given, but raw materials given.)   True, there is a value dimension of the part to the whole in which an eye is worth more than a fingernail, but that value was given to the part, not earned, is owed to the community.  This is way too philosophical and unnecessary to explore the lesson that false value (i.e.Pride) is a corruption that although necessary for a capitalistic market system, only confuses the reality and joy of true meaning. (jump off of soap box)

Ideally, those who are good at creating, researching and learning will be busy creating, researching and learning, and contributing to those that are good at generalizing, who will do that, and, those that enjoy and are good at editing, reviewing, cataloging and judging will do those tasks, and those that are good at applying and acting on the collective knowledge will be able to do so efficiently (profitably), etc. , with no one feeling they are any more or less important than any other, because, they know now it is true in the teleological sense as well as the spiritual.   Even those whose skill and passion is housekeeping! (think about the condition of the average grad students bedroom "nest".)  Here again the organic metaphor model points out that not every body part is able to see, or smell, or bite, or nurture, or hit , or attract, or fend off, or extract the last nutrients from food while helping to expel the waste.  Likewise, a Learning Organization should not consist only of people attempting to find value in their abilities for learning.   That means the data structure for storing info about Titles and Positions that will be likely to support accurate motivation and function should not be built on the presumption that all need to be incented to accomplish the same "levels of mastery", etc.   Of course there are problems: in the anarchy of politically correct democratic (communist?) equality, those with superior skill for analysis and organization will be disincented to stay, since they inherently can analyze the organization dynamics and recognize their market value elsewhere, in an old fashioned business structure.

<Lack of Editor note: this has gotten way too big for a conversation, so I will stop now, and "shut up and listen"  The vestiges below are left just because they are there. >

Main Organic Requirement Embodiment Component List

The 3 main groupings of Organic Requirement Embodiment (ORE) components presented below are not listed in any order of importance, but rather in order of data dependencies, defining the data, before the uses of the data. 

MORE-1. New Organizational Data Structures - - more to come

MORE-2 New Motivational "Merit Value Tags" - - more to come

MORE-3. New Information Filtering Components - - more to come