I am interested in seeing if folks want to set up some guidelines for our online collaboration. I am going to add one or two here and then, if you think this will facilitate our collaboration, you should add your own. Hopefully this will increase comfort level with the medium and, as a result, increase engagement.

1. Don't make assumptions about a contributors personal story (class, country of origin, etc.)

2. Read something twice, assuming the best intentions of the author, before responding (reading your own comments twice before posting)

3. Criticism should be both constructive and respectful in order to facilitate collective learning (SC)

-- AdamCarlis - 25 Jan 2008

Criticism is an important part of debate and discussion. But, our goal is to learn collectively so criticism should reflect that goal. It should be both constructive and respectful.

-- StephenClarke - 25 Jan 2008

N+1: An author should indicate, where relevant,
A. What stage of completion his post is at (e.g. early draft, late draft, final), and
B. What form of critique he prefers (e.g. none until edited, answer the questions only and/or put other critiques on a new thread, suggest improvements).
N+2. Respect those requests.
N+3. As soon as JustinColannino is no longer editing this document, someone can assign a value to N and delete N+3.

-- AndrewGradman - 25 Jan 2008

I think that most of the non-Gradman norms so far pretty much boil down to what most of us would consider (construct as, sure) common sense.

However, I disagree with Andrew's drafting protocol (though as a practical matter I am sure people will respect such requests if they're reading carefully enough). The RSS and e-mail update notifications--even WebChanges--are a lot more useful if you draft your work in its own place (your computer, another web service, the Sandbox, or where-have-you). Why not wait to post until you're ready for people to reply?

-- DanielHarris - 25 Jan 2008

Some folks WANT a burger and fries without a soda, an HP without printer cartridges, a lift ticket without insurance. If you'll predict whether my half-baked ideas have a future, I'll withdraw the ones that don't, and save us both the misery.

For example: now I won't tell you what rule N+4 was. (Hint: it violates rule 3)

-- AndrewGradman - 25 Jan 2008