Thanks for your suggestion, I just sent him an email

Hey, all:

Several quick observations (not all specifically on topic):

As I become more and more familiar with the AofFs, I am becoming more interested in the "Tags" idea, but I have relatively little experience with tags. Tags with some level of monitoring and control, to avoid a chaotic proliferation of tags, seems better than continuing to revise/reinvent the AofFs. I do not mean to criticize the AofFs--but I know I am--since to some extent they suffer from work done by committee or by consensus, which is a difficult outcome to avoid.

The so-called 'taxonomy' used in the AofFs is very inconsistent and not a taxonomy at all. A taxonomy has a more rigid, logical, general-to-specific flow which is absent here. The example of Gender Equity brought up by someone a while back is a good illustration. The sloppy interchangeable designations of "sub areas", and "sub topics" and "AofF" itself doesn't help. The "AofF" term should occupy the lowest level of designation by itself, and higher levels should have more general, distinct labels applied to them. "Field of Interest" for a more general level is an idea.

"PofF" ("Point of Focus") would have been a better choice of labels, instead of AofF. "Focusing" on an "area" is somewhat contradictory, and may explain some of the interchanging going on.

The term "AofF", with the "of" spelled out, is a very good way (maybe the best) to abbreviate the term (thanks Deborah) since it helps clarify the expression.

I heartily second the idea of doing more to bring in a broader range of participants, especially globally. The site is still maturing, still under the illusion of a California/|West Coast USA website, let alone North America. A simple examination of the names of the "Groups" reveals this illusion. This Illusion translates into perception for the rest of the world, with the implication that the site IS for California.

Some centers of focus for organization should be urban activists, college campuses, rural communities, agricultural regions, environmental health concerns (e.g., Lead, Mercury poisoning, asthma). ALL OF THESE SHOULD BE DONE GLOBALLY, AS ALL ARE GLOBAL. (Man, I wish we had "bold" available.)

The "Country" group focus is a good idea to offer a place for global participation, but as a jumping off place for further interaction.

Finally, more to the subject, I have been contacting a few people based on their AofFs and comments I've read, to try and enlist them in working on AofFs as stewards.

I have also edited some of the AofFs on my own, just in areas where I have some knowledge, to improve on some of the observations I made in an earlier comment here. Until we decide to really recruit--more and greater participation--with the use of a serious mailing effort--much of this editing is and will be a lonely effort.

David
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

AoF Stewards/Interns/Etc. The more I think about it, the more I want to discuss the idea of directly working with particular departments in universities and offering supervised interships here at WE for college students to earn credits by functioning as AofF stewards ... this would be in their particular domain of study. So, for example, MichaelKs ICT AofF group (which he currently stewards, I understand so we are just using this as an example). We have a student at UCB who is studying in Global Studies/Education either 4th year or grad .... takes this area and builds it up both as a functioning community and as a resource base for all applicable organizations, news topics, events, etc. We create a group of WE "mentors' who serve as supervisors to the interns. We could begin this locally, so that in effect there could be some real time connection say once a month between student and mentor but the core of the work is virtual. It is then WEs responsiblity to flesh out exactly what each AofF includes (a template, as suggested elsewhere) ...

bowo: ah sorry if that was taken out of context. I just really want to see tags on the site, but don't think they're compatible with a tags. Tags would be at an equal level with aofs, unlike sub-topics. The sub-topics won't receive equal attention, because users would have to dig under a level to find them, and thus I don't think it would be fitting to consider them on par with aofs.

bowo: "it "will be" possible to "allow users to build their own areas of focus"

I don't think the sub-topics section really equals "customizable areas of focus" (which I feel are more like tags for everything on the site). Anyways at least we're thinking about it. Im now skeptical that subcategories are right way to go.

David: "Isn't the Stewards initiative a means of addressing some of the above issues? "
Molly is offering a temporary solution, which I think is good, but the tech team already has so much on their to-do list already, so Im thinking it'll be faster to build a base of stewards.

Hey, all:

The most obvious observations on the AoFs and the pages for each, have to do with the level of coverage in the texts. Some are very scant and rather too general, and many suffer from a lack of simple expertise. I realize being able to focus great expertise is not easy, and so I mean no criticism. I have edited some of the AoFs on a minor scale to address some of the above weaknesses, but only in the areas where I can bring some expertise, and I would expect others to have the same motive in a wide range of expertise.

For me, updating is not so much of an issue as is the above. Many AoFs are fairly static, but some are subject to changing events, but that distinction can be dealt with as editors step up and take on AoFs.

Isn't the Stewards initiative a means of addressing some of the above issues? As these Stewards/Managers develop much of the concern expressed here should fade away. Am I off-base or ill-informed here? Somebody wanna clue me in?

David
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

Hey Molly! That seems cool, but Im concerned about how we decide what data is fed into these aofs, as there might be many sources to choose from. Or in some cases, maybe not many sources we can trust for completely relevant and appropriate information.

I'm leaning towards urging the tech team to just develop the other asked-for features on our site first, so that we could reach that critical mass of editors quicker. As of now, updating the aofs doesnt seem to be high on the demand list, and isn't a place I imagine that many people "check out"...so the site structure needs to direct users towards the aofs too.

see - http://wiserearth.org/group/aof

current name: Area of Focus Stewards

Hey all,

James, I like your idea of automatizing the process of assigning AoF editor role. This would be a good reward mechanism for active users/editors. However, most of the time, I believe the real expert on a particular AoF will be more active outside of WiserEarth than within it, and just may not have the time to get connected or connecting entities within a particular AoF. So, the mechanism could be amended by a more deliberate selection process for the role.

And additional reading for this thread will be the upcoming AoF portal template, especially the "people and groups" tab @ http://www.wiserearth.org/article/6014a9b2f8e4681eb4d9c722d323bff5

And a comment posted in the discussion about the roles, privileges and responsibilities of editors @
http://www.wiserearth.org/forum/view/8c0b3b1df27f0f54a90a9b5609d0115c/group/WiserEarthEditors
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... under the "People and Groups" tab in the "People" section, we have the following division:
- Simply Interested
- Experienced Activists and Workers
- Experts

I'm not sure how the template will actually work to facilitate this division, but I imagined that editing privilege for the "Knowledge" tab should only be given to the latter two (Experienced and Expert), which can be given a WE Editor status, while Simply Interested people (regular WE Users) can put up suggestions to improve the "Knowledge" tab in the "Discussions" tab.

We can also accommodate Simply Interested people to contribute under the "Sub-Topics" tab, which can be made freely editable/add-able by regular users. Selected contents from the "Sub-Topics" can then be further refined by Experienced and Expert people to later on be moved over under the "Knowledge" tab.
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I like the idea of creating (a) default Areas of Focus editor/manager/resource role(s). The idea being that users with connections to the greatest number of entities falling within an Area of Focus would automatically become an editor for the Area. Then, users who connect to an Area of Focus perhaps could veto the authority of the default editor by clicking a report editor button (we could write some kind of formula to govern how many negative reports an editor receives.

What do you think of this proposal?

Thanks!