[sugar] Fragmenting or providing a foothold?

[Martin Langhoff]

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 8:13 AM, David Farning <dfarning at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> With this in mind, the goal of creating new mailing lists is not to
> fragment the existing community.  It is to create footholds for other
> communities to develop around the central learning platform.

It's about economies of attention. Clay Shirky and Yochai Benkler are
probably the most insightful thinkers/writers on the matter. The
bottom line is (in my reading and experience):

 - do not split the meeting point until the signal/noise becomes
uneconomic for _most_ (not just for a loud minority)

 - do use tools that help individuals forage information better, so
that the split point happens later in time

In any case, communities are fragile and this is risky. Build up your
own community and then try to split it. Splitting the lists built
around laptop.org is going to be a lose/lose scenario, and you are
playing with a social environment that has strong cohesion around
laptop.org .

In some aspects, it's like proposing a split in a political party.

cheers,



m
-- 
 martin.langhoff at gmail.com
 martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
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