Re: Groupware for Learning LO2419
mbayers@mmm.com
Tue, 15 Aug 1995 20:16:14 -0500
Replying to LO2362 --
John writes:
>Can a corporate knowledge base consisting of a stream of consciousness
>be of any value unless validated in some manner? In any of today's
>working systems is there an example of a moderator whos decides what
>information is valid?
Well, in one sense, a moderated list on the Internet seems to represent a
'validated stream of consciousness' -- someone has presumably filtered all
of the input to determine which has some relevance (however remote) to the
topic at hand, even to the point of assigning a subject or topic to a
given communication.
'Validation', however, remains problematic in the extreme. Valid for ...
a given time and place? all times for a given place? a given time for all
places? Some of the postings which I receive from various lists I deem
clearly written by someone with a background or perspective which has
utterly no relevance to where I find myself today. That is, I find them
totally invalid for me, now, here. Others, I sort of file away thinking
that, 'Well, not today, but maybe tomorrow I can use this somehow.'
In our organization we have begun to use Lotus Notes quite extensively,
both for the development of 'applications" (ugh!) and also for the sharing
of 'interesting and potentially useful discovered or invented stuff'.
Sometimes the owner (read: moderator) has to prune items which have turned
out false, or consolidate several items into one item, or delete items
which appear to have had only a very limited useful shelf life. That's
Work! Trying to decide what -we- know, what parts of that -others- do
-not- know but might need to know, and how much we need to -keep- in order
to enable them to get from where they are to where we are with ideas . . .
well, I find it very challenging. Internally we refer to this as making
sure we have long enough arms to reach from where we find ourselves to
where others find themselves. Sometimes we pull them to where we are,
sometimes they pull us out of the clouds and back to earth.
So the 'job description' might read something like: editor, consolidator,
censor, biographer, historian, evaluator, judge, jury, educator and on and
on.
-----
Host's Note: I do filter out a little bit, but I do not set a standard of
distributing messages which are 'valid'.
-- Rick Karash, rkarash@world.std.com, host for learning-org
-----
--
Michael Ayers
mbayers@mmm.com (612) 733-5690 FAX (612) 737-7718
IT Education Svcs/3M Center 224-2NE-02/PO Box 33224/St Paul MN 55133-3224
All ideas expressed in this note represent the author's thinking
and do not represent the positions of any organizations -- or --
I take credit for the implications, you do for the inferences!