Slashdot Mirror
Using Social Networking Tools to Write a Book
WikiTiki writes "Safari Books Online has a new interview with Barry Libert, one of the authors of 'We are Smarter Than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business.' Barry and his coauthors decided to create a wiki and invite the community to help build this book which aims to give advice on using social networking tools like blogs and wikis to businesses. Barry has some interesting comments about both the challenges and payoffs in using social networking tools to create a book about social networking tools."
Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with - and so on, and so on, hour after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth. He had besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles,part of a jews-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, a dog-collar - but no dog - the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange-peel, and a dilapidated old window sash.
He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while - plenty of company - and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn't run out of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.
Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it - namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.
The boy mused awhile over the substantial change which had taken place in his worldly circumstances, and then wended toward headquarters to report.
-- Mark Twain
Get it mentioned on /.
you start getting things like "I had a scorpion on my bathroom floor once" skillfully hidden in passages about sea-turtles.
Barry and his coauthors decided to create a wiki and invite the community to help build this book
I think I've seen his book. There's a 600 page chapter that consists solely of links to online pharmacies.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I have to admit that I'm a bit skeptical about the premise that bringing more people into a problem will somehow make it better. Usually, the biggest disasters that have befallen mankind have had a committee in it somewhere, and a lot of this collaboration stuff really just is a way of even forming bigger committees. At some point, anything genuinely great happens because an individual groks the whole thing and jumps to the center of the stage with an answer. Sure, Linux has a bunch of contributors, and that's cool, but if you look in a bit more closely, it's really a federation of projects driven by a bunch of maniacal owners and visionaries.
This is my sig.
Very similar to what is going on at www.sanctuaryforall.com with
the idea of allowing fans to submit story ideas. Rumnor has it they are
rolling out a social networking site this week.
...that the amount of social networking elephants has tripled in the past six months?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
...you can use blogs and social networking sites to improve your bussiness...
...especially if you're into selling private data.
What exactly is the point of a social networking site? I've used slashdot for about 5 years regularly, read the articles etc, but I've never really made use of the friend/foe tagging.. I've never bothered to message others, or see their journals... So, what's the point of a site that takes all the crap that I don't want to know about and make that it's sole purpose?
Why UNIX?
in this country. VOTE HILLARY 2008!
English 'pull own teeth' as dental service decays
Oct 15 02:45 PM US/Eastern
Falling numbers of state dentists in England has led to some people taking extreme measures, including extracting their own teeth, according to a new study released Monday.
Others have used superglue to stick crowns back on, rather than stumping up for private treatment, said the study. One person spoke of carrying out 14 separate extractions on himself with pliers.
More typically, a lack of publicly-funded dentists means that growing numbers go private: 78 percent of private patients said they were there because they could not find a National Health Service (NHS) dentist, and only 15 percent because of better treatment.
"This is an uncomfortable read for all of us, and poses serious questions to politicians from patients," said Sharon Grant of the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health.
Overall, six percent of patients had resorted to self-treatment, according to the survey of 5,000 patients in England, which found that one in five had decided against dental work because of the cost.
One researcher involved in compiling the study -- carried out by members of England's Patient and Public Involvement Forums -- came across three people in one morning who had pulled out teeth themselves.
Dentists are also concerned about the trend.
Fifty-eight percent said new dentists' contracts introduced last year had made the quality of care worse, while 84 percent thought they had failed to make it easier for patients to find care.
Almost half of all dentists -- 45 percent -- said they no longer take NHS patients, while 41 percent said they had an "excessive" workload. Twenty-nine percent said their clinic had problems recruiting or retaining dentists.
"These findings indicate that the NHS dental system is letting many patients down very badly," said Grant.
"It appears many are being forced to go private because they don't want to lose their current trusted and respected dentist or because they just can't find a local NHS dentist."
Remember the whole "smart mobs" fad? The word would go out through a "social network" to show up on some street corner at some appointed time. And a few hundred people did it a couple of times, "proving the theory." How many of those happen any more? None. You can convince a mob of people do anything, once. The only reason why these phenomena work is that people love to do what other people are doing. But once they try it and find out it's the same stuff, in a new wrapper, game's up. Now, if you're a marketer, trying to sell the latest version of soap or crackers, this is great stuff. You just convince the people selling the soap or crackers that you know how to control the mob. Even better, convince other marketers that you know how to control marketers. Because that really impresses the people who sell soap and crackers.
1. Announce book topic showing the power of crowds, invite others to write your book for you to prove the thesis
2. Sit back, sip iced tea.
3. Profit.
Underpants gnomes ain't got shit on this guy.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
2) Get the social network to write a book about social networks for you
3) Profit!
(oddly, there's no ??? in there!)
Perhaps "we are smarter than me", but "we are also dumber than me". So how do you gather the smart bits and leave out the dumb bits? Perhps the answer is to use some sort of Linux-like peer review + benign dictator mechanisms. That might appeal to techies who see the benefit in code control, but will it work for the great unwashed; all hoping for their 15 words of fame and getting upset becuase they get edited out.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
[Citation Needed]
http://www.despair.com/meetings.html
The problem with using "peer review" in any non-technical field is that you end up with "group think". The most dominant personalities dominate the discussions.
With Linux, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. There's none of this "you wanted it to fail" bullshit.
In the social environments, everyone wants to lead the group. But no one wants to do the work.
Sorry for the inflammatory subject line, but I am the author of a best selling travel guidebook to Nicaragua http://www.gotonicaragua.com/. Travel guidebooks are one area that are the frequent subject of ill-fated "let's do a travel wiki" ideas that immediately turn into steaming piles of horse crap. Here's why: the crowds are stupid; many can't write, and everyone's pushing an agenda.
The reason why travel guidebooks continue to sell in the Internet age is because the Internet is a huge, unfettered mixing bowl of ignorance. People are still willing to turn to professional writers and editors to sort through all the horse crap and turn it into something concise, concrete, and helpful. I too would prefer to pay $17 for a book for my next trip to Morocco than trawl through the Internet forums trying to separate fact from fiction from propaganda.
These travel wikis come and go, but they all bear the same characteristics: huge number of Google ads, a couple of lame wiki posts that two or more prolific authors debate back and forth without conclusion, and huge chunks of background material, insight, or commentary. The masses can't produce that, and anyone who's ever participated in a corporate meeting where 7 people need to come to a conclusion about something they differ in opinion about, knows why.
There's a place for this kind of approach, but mass authoring as I've seen it done, only works if one person is the lead author and has near dictatorial privileges and the diplomacy and savvy to use that power wisely. If you let the madhouse run the party, you get a madhouse. And that's why people like me can still earn the big bucks selling travel information to a place like Nicaragua in the Internet age.
By the way, I helped introduce Linux to Nicaragua. That ought to be worth something on Slashdot! http://therandymon.com/content/view/68/98/.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
This was tried on the C2 wiki (the first web wiki, actually), at least as a "story", and it was a disaster. Part of the problem was that everybody had a different idea of the kind and style of book it would be. It was hurky jurky, going from one style to another.
In one paragraph it may go into detail about the beauty of the main love interest of the story, and then in the next paragraph a meteor smashes into her, killing her.
The next few chaptures talk about how the detective tries to prove that the meteor was a man-made conspiracy. Then somebody made the detective part of the conspiracy, which triggered a fight over whether it should really be a nested house-of-mirrors novel or not. The sci-fi nuts and the mystery nuts got into a fat holy war.
Then somebody changed the meteor into a plane-crash to make it more "normal", but didn't bother to change all the references to the meteor and astronomer consultants.
It is kind of like improv Jazz: fun to play, but not always fun to listen to.
Table-ized A.I.
Buy my book "How to make a million dollars by writing a book about how to make a million dollars!"
No one modded above "3".
(Oh, there must be a voting mob clobbering down the scores...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Does no one remember the 1969 novel "Naked Came The Stranger?" This was an early attempt of what it looks like Barry is trying to do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_Came_the_Stranger A similar conceit was seen in the piano/orchestra pieces "The Yellow River Concerto," composed by a Maoist collective of Chinese composers. I don't want to spoil it for you, but it sucked. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_River_Concerto As far as I can tell the only masterpiece ever created by a committee is The King James Bible.
Someone call me when their contributors sue for royalties.
In 1969 a group of writers decided to write a book together. The basic idea was that it should be badly written and still become a best-seller, just to demonstrate how bad was the American cultural standard at the time. For some time it was the #1 best-seller book in the US. Read more about it in Wikipedia.
I tried developing a group screenplay writing wiki for years but was met with nothing but fear and hostility from the industry. Now why didn't I change it to book authoring? (open source screenplays)
This doesn't apply to SlashDot, since even unpopular / off-topic / odd / even a disident's posts are almost never removed by moderators.
(Isn't it only Court Orders that lead to SlashDot taking down such posts?)
Australia if different. Lacking a Bill of Rights & having NO Freedom of Speech legislation, seems to have affected how its Social Networking Tools are written and whether posts are routinely removed by those who operate or moderate a web site based on them.
Moreover, posts are deleted by small groups of chosen (ie, by the site's owner, not elected) moderators. We wonder why they invest the time to moderate users' posts. As they remain unknown to even member of the Social Networking community. The 3 "senior moderators" of one site are young (2 x in their 20's & is in low 30's) I can't tell you how they come to have so much time to devote to their moderation tasks; we suspect they are public servants, at gov't work sites & Internet-connected computers.
Our example is: http://whirlpool.net.au/ - apparently organised as a user group for those intending to get on the Internet, as well as for more experienced Internet users. It features a reasonable (if somewhat out-of-date) "BroadBand Connect" ISP plan search tool that must have been top of its class, before ISPs started changing plans in all directions (eg, selecting various speeds, to which shaping is done (after user's data limit is exhausted), etc.).
Whirlpool reportedly attracts some interesting, talented and, sometimes, influential people to its Forums. In fact, in December 2006, a Nuclear Scientist appeared on the site (for an hour) to answer questions. Have a look at the thread (riddled with signs of user post deletions) here:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=648235
Interestingly, one doesn't see all of Whirlpool's forums when first joining... later in one's WP existence, additional ones appear that long-term members have seen for yonks. One wonders what other hidden forums might appear, ie, to those with special interests - don't ask me what they might be...
Blinkering new members to just those forums, that comprise what Whirlpool is / was supposed to be all about continues, it seems, ie, when one is posting.
Recently, someone posted seeds to an analysis of Australian News reporting trends in the Whirlpool "In the News" forumm, only to have it swiftly deleted.
If SlashDot has readers in China, they may be quick to suggest that, surely, that poster must have written something that put at risk Australia's National Harmony...?
No, the post simply contrasted recent news reporting trends - with more Quantitative content - giving some general examples, based on actual reports, from sound bites or TV interviews... with a (proposed) Quantitative reporting style, ie, those including specifics on costs.
Some exampled were given, in the form of "cost-equation" skelatons for quantitative news reports on those issues, for:
- Australia's & New Zealand's very different responses to asylum-seekers & their children
(Anyone living here can tell you that Australian news reports
were very sparse on New Zealand's more cost-effective approach)
- Australia's response to a major report on sexual abuse of Aboriginal kids
- the hot issue of whether Australia should build Nuclear Power Plants for itself
In any case, the post was removed, despite being described as "otherwise perfectly fine"
by one of Whirlpool's senior moderators (one of a group of 3).
As if as a consolation, the poster was offered only a relocation for his post
- away from the more serious "In the News" forum - to a more leisure-based "Lifestyle" foum.
(I don't know if the Leisure forum is seen by Whirlpool's new members...)
Now, anyone bas
"Naked Came the Stranger", by "Penelope Ashe" was published in 1969. It was actually written by 24 writers, five women and nineteen men, mostly newspaper reporters. It was an effort "to collaborate on a sexually explicit novel with no literary or social value whatsoever."
Huge commercial success. Made the New York Times best seller list.
...is it backward compatible with web 1.0?
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
Distributed authorship for a book: bad
Distributed authorship for code: the only acceptable alternative
Help?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Egos
The grandmasters guiding the discussion boards biased the voters.
- "[move 16] sparked loud grumbling on the bulletin board that Krush had "taken over the game". Those who complained were not overstating Krush's influence; her recommendations were selected every single move from the 10th to the 50th.
- But perhaps even greater than the effect of [Kasparov's 35th move] on the position was its effect on the psyche of the bulletin board....As the World Team began to panic in a dangerous position, the flames, insults, and petty bickering reached heights...
(Technical loopholes) Microsoft- someone bragged to the bulletin board that he had tricked MSN into letting him vote multiple times,
... the ballot-stuffing method he outlined was indeed workable, as several bulletin board members verified on the 59th move
- Both 58...Qe4 and 58...Qf5 looked reasonable, but the bulletin board had analyzed the former to a forced loss, so Krush duly recommended the latter. Due to an e-mail glitch, her recommendation and analysis were not received on time by the MSN site, and voting proceeded for some time
- several disgruntled members of the bulletin board, knowing the game to be lost, suggested the 59...Qe1?? move which would quickly lead to a Kasparov victory. This was meant as a protest against Microsoft and the whole competition.
I was surprised to learn that With his 62nd move, Kasparov announced a forced mate found by the computer program Deep Junior. So it was more like Kasparov and Deep Junior vs. 4 grandmasters guiding a few amateurs on a bulletin board."Follow me" the wise man said, but he walked behind.