Talk:Glossary

Todo

• Social Sustainability
• Social Capital
• Consensus Reality
• Potential Management

Priorities

You are invited to add terms or improve terms already in the glossary as you see fit, however for the requirements of Organic Design, organisational processes, resources, links and workspaces are currently highest priority.

Criteria

Wondering whether you want to write up a term or link to an exisitng Wikipedia one? Maybe these criteria can help you:

• Is it project-specific (or a twist added to an existing term)?
  • Examples: Workspace, Peer-based Organisation
• Is it an area of your personal expertise which isn't defined satisfactorily on Wikipedia?
  • Examples: Social Sustainability

Introduction

As part of the effort to set up a regularly-synchronised glossary for terms we often refer to and would like to collaborate on, I propose changing the way we currently manage this category. This would involve moving the terms that are currently in the Glossary article as a list to this, the talk page. From there, we could slowly change them into their own articles which are placed in the glossary category. The current glossary article could then itself become the definition of what the glossary is, how it is used and how to contribute to development. Of course it, too, would then be placed in the Glossary category and regularly synchronised with the other XMLWikis/Peers in the field.

Proposed structure

The glossary category could be added to the peer's sync-list via list-cat as well as being added to the template list. This would apply to the "Organisational Templates" and "User Guides" categories too. Their definition articles can be collected and developed via the "Collaboration Portal" which is currently being set up. In everyday usage, the templates and definitions would be embedded withing the relevant categories. For instance, the term Aggregation is embedded in the category page of Category:Aggregation.

That way the definition can remain synchronised using the Peer, the content of the category, or the layout of the definition article is unique to the organisation using it, however.

excellent. Should the term contain an "OD" example as well for a sort of template for other organizations? --Phalseid 10:11, 15 Jun 2006 (NZST)

Reasoning

One could of course suggest to just create these terms on Wikipedia or improve existing articles. However, the point of linking to an article is to give satisfactory clarity on a specific notion. Linking to a general article on Wikipedia may not work for a specific context. Neither would changing the article on Wikipedia until it suited our purposes, it would obviously be reverted back to a definition which carried a greater shared meaning.

The other goal achieved by creating our own glossaries (categories of terms) is that we can now develop project-specific terms in a collaborative way. We can further add our categories as described below to template or synchronisation lists, allowing us to distribute and synchronise the content through multiple wikis.

Template stuff

• put generic org-terms like this in OD and add them to OD:Gir/wikiSync/Meridian
• also I'll do a template soon for mentioning to edit the source which only comes up on not-OD

with a link to the source like this https://www.organicdesign.co.nz/Glossary

i agree their should be some sort of template for the "definitions". The ones from DiV0 all need help, they are just seeds to get this going. --Phalseid 10:11, 15 Jun 2006 (NZST)

Discussion

Just a quick comment on that: When we started the glossary it was more in an effort to capture the notions that had specific organisational or development meaning which had evolved through the work on the project, such as Workspace or Potential Management. That's why I haven't really contributed much to the whole glossary thing, although of course I could go into great detail about things like Culture, etc.

I want to keep my involvement high-level, more like the Collaboration Portal article and when specific items within the glossary need to be defined more clearly, I will be adding or changing terms as they come up. On a practical level, this means I only put in work to define or clarify things based on an established requirement. Also, I focus on clarifying terms that are used only within The Project or have been given a new twist to work within The Project. There is another category of terms like Social Sustainability which I feel I know a fair bit about and that aren't strictly project-related, but aren't clearly defined anywhere and get mentioned a fair bit amongst people working on The Project.

While I don't disagree with what you're doing, I do see where Aran is coming from when he says that we shouldn't get caught up with names/terms too much. This is just my everyday, non-philosophical stance on the issue. --Milan 13:13, 16 Jun 2006 (NZST)

Maybe the best idea would be to create an organisational-terms subcat of glossary, and you could sync that cat to the other wiki's instead, then it doesn't matter how wide the glossary gets. I don't mind what terms go in or how vague they start, all I was really saying was that in the nodal environment, these concepts will exist independently and exhibit as associations various names in various languages and contexts, or in other words, names are like comments in code; they don't change the functionality in any way, but are useful for Humans --Nad 13:32, 1i 6 Jun 2006 (NZST)

is there value in having somee terms here at all, i guess is the question? I am famialiar with the AFD discussion at wikipedia, but on the other hand i don't want to clutter this up with junk. Three personal reasons for moving this over here: 1) Div0 is a client site, and this stuff doesn't really belong there, 2) I feel this is an excellent forum for discussion and evolution of our mutual understanding of the world with some pretty sharp folks, and 3) we need to understand what people mean by the words they use, if not agree on what they mean.

That said, I understand there are distinctions here and this crosses over some of that. There is the technical aspect, of which i have the least understanding and need to develop my vocaulary. Some of the concepts seem to cross over into the metaphysical realm (the core concept of Node being one of them). We have the organizational (organic + mechanics) part of this, which touches Business Process Management (Theory)... and then we have the human part of this, which brings in the whole Emotional and Religious and Subjective part that is foolish to try to define.

So, the question I put out is: Is there value to "defining" these terms here (and where does it stop?) (I use the term "define" losely, of course)

I don't think there's any problem moving your semantic network in here. Even if we don't have a holistic enough environment to define them within currently its still good to have nodes for various concepts and their related associations and information. But I think its generally best to prioritise work based on current informational needs rather than doing an intense data-dump of information that may not be required for quite some time. In general organisational processes, resources, links and workspaces are currently highest priority. --Nad 18:11, 16 Jun 2006 (NZST)

Another question, does anyone (besides me) see the self-referential connection to the wikipedia:Borromean rings that keeps seeming to crop up in this? (Briefly, 3 Borromean rings is the minimum set of rings that can be linked and self contained. Removal of any one of the rings disconects the others.) Or am i just high? :) ---Phalseid 20:55, 15 Jun 2006 (NZST)