I thank you both for your efforts, and I would like you to leave the initiative here to others for a while. In both cases, I recognize that you are well-intentioned, but what you are trying to do is directly opposite to my intentions, and you aren't in touch with my reasons.

Andrew, your Index is directly contrary to the best data engineering in wikis. Your solution looks right to you, but it would end up making the problem worse.

The right solution in wikis is to make each topic a Topic, with a page of its own, and a "Talk" page attached to the topic for discussion about its contents. That about which there is consensus remains on the main Topic page, and that for which more interaction is necessary to establish the content of the Topic remains on the Talk page for that topic. Those who want to see how and why it works can study the Wikipedia. Refactoring then is largely about moving conclusions from Talk to Topic, and revising Talk to maximize the productivity of future Talk. Ian and I have been planning the editorial interventions needed to reduce the clutter caused by such un-wiki behavior as Topic and Topic2 (which caused much levity and head-shaking among the wiki-theorists I showed it to). Now here you are asking people to invert what experience has shown to be the best structure in order to make what could literally be called the anti-best structure.

Has it occurred to all of you that one of the "hidden" objectives of the course (where, as Andrew says, Form and Content are indistinct) is to teach you how to use wikis to collaborate, because my work with my own lawyers in my firm and with others in the software industries around the world shows me that this is how you can learn to be more creative in your practices and more effective in your results? Don't try to take over the course mechanisms in the interests of "democracy" or "free speech" at least until you've learned what skilled craftsmen decades cannier and more experienced than you can teach you about how to use the tools. Makalika pointed this out last week and nobody listened to her, even after I pointed to her contribution so no one would miss it.

Barb, you are making the same mistake at another level. The wiki--with the exception of the papers-- should be about the intellectual structure and content of our investigation. About the readings and what they mean, about the inferences and questions that come out of them, about the "and" (and not so much of the "but") of what we learn from what we read. Classroom discussion allows us to investigate what it means to who we are as often as it allows us to clear the obscurities identified in writing. There are many reasons for this, including the benefit of training in collaborative editing--it is hard to edit someone else's personal statement, but easy to edit someone's reading of a passage or question raised by a conclusion. That's what you're going to use collaborative media to do in practice, as you assemble documents from many hands and minds. More importantly, to write about the personal and speak face to face about the impersonal inverts the emotional structure for the benefit of psychic defenses--shows of virtue, avoidance of confrontation, levying of accusations--which deprives us of the reality of the way human beings actually talk. I use Lawyerland for a reason, too, which we haven't begun to exploit yet. Wikis do not necessarily work well for poetry.

Your decision to invert the priority here, and then your show of self-confidence shading into arrogance in issuing instructions to me for the implementation of your decision, were bad judgments. My firm, as the lawyers who work there will tell you, is a quantum level lower in hierarchy than the traditional law firm. But we don't forget that every team has a leader, and nobody does there what you think it's ok to do here.

Both of you have decided to make tactical decisions about how to run the course based on inadequate knowledge and understanding. Because I collaborate to produce the course doesn't mean that your unprepared decisions based on taking and constructing the course at the same time should, could, or will be allowed to displace my decisions, which are made on the basis of years of experience and preparation, and are the decisions that constitute my job, with which no one in power is allowed to interfere. Collaboration, here and elsewhere, is not equality.

You are both very frequent contributors to our work. You have been valuable and you will be valuable again. But I lead the band around here, and it is time for you to sit out a couple of sets. Thank you.

-- EbenMoglen - 03 Feb 2008