Cameron Neylon

I love [Stephen Sondheim](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Sondheim)
musicals. In particular I love the way he can build an ensemble piece in
which there can be 10-20 people onstage, apparently singing, shouting,
and speaking complete disconnected lines, which nonetheless build into a
coherent whole. *[Into the
Woods](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Woods)* (1987) contains
many brilliant examples of the thoughts, fears, and hopes of a whole
group of people building into a coherent view and message (see the
[opening](http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2wQww-6FuQ0&feature=related) for
a taste and links to other clips). Those who believe in the wisdom of
crowds in its widest sense see a similar possibility in aggregating the
chatter found on the web into coherent and accurate assessments of
problems. Those who despair of the ignorance of the lowest common
denominator see most Web2 projects as a waste of time. I sit somewhere
in the middle -- believing that with the right tools, a community of
people who care about a problem and have some form of agreed standards
of behavior and disputation can rapidly aggregate a well informed and
considered view of a problem and what it's solution might be.

Yesterday and today, I saw one of the most compelling examples of that
I've yet seen. Yesterday I posted a brain dump of what I had been
thinking about following discussions [in
Hawaii](http://psb09openscience.wordpress.com/) and [in North
Carolina](http://www.scienceonline09.com/index.php/wiki/), about the
possibilities of using OpenID to build a system for unique researcher
IDs. The [discussion on
Friendfeed](http://friendfeed.com/e/c1fd00ec-15f9-d894-4ea9-4ffeaac5ae28/A-specialist-OpenID-service-to-provide-unique/)
almost immediately aggregated a whole set of material, some of which I
had not previously seen, proceded through a coherent discussion of many
points, with a wide range of disparate views, towards some emerging
conclusions. I'm not going to pre-judge those conclusions except to note
there are some positions clearly developing that are contrary to my own
view (e.g. on [CrossRef](http://www.crossref.org/) being the preferred
organisation to run such a service). This to me suggests the power of
this approach for concensus building, even when that concensus is
opposite to the position of the person kicking off the discussion.

What struck me with this was the powerful way in which
[Friendfeed](http://friendfeed.com) rapidly enabled the conversation --
and also the potential negative effect it had on widening the
conversation beyond that community. Friendfeed is a very powerful tool
for very rapidly widening the reach of a discussion like this one. It
would be interesting to know how many people saw the item in their
feeds. I could calculate it I suppose but for now I will just guess it
was probably in the low to mid thousands. Many, many, more than
subscribe to the blog anyway. What will be interesting to see is whether
the slower process of blogospheric diffusion is informed by the
Friendfeed discussion or runs completely independent of it (incidentally
Friendfeed widget will hopefully be coming soon on the blog as well to
try to and tie things together). [Andy
Powell](http://efoundations.typepad.com/) of the [Eduserv
Foundation](http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation) comments in his [post
of
today](http://efoundations.typepad.com/efoundations/2009/01/openids-researchers-and-delegation.html)
that;

> There's a good deal of discussion about the post in [Cameron's
> FriendFeed](http://friendfeed.com/e/c1fd00ec-15f9-d894-4ea9-4ffeaac5ae28/A-specialist-OpenID-service-to-provide-unique/).
> (It's slightly annoying that the discussion is somewhat divorced from
> the original blog post but I guess that is one of the, err...,
> features of using FriendFeed?) \[Andy also goes on to make some good
> point about delegation -- CN\]

The speed with which Friendfeed works, and the way in which it helps you
build an interested community, andÂ  separated communities where
appropriate, is indeed a feature of Friendfeed. Equally that speed and
the fact that you need an account to comment, if not to watch, can be
exclusionary. It is also somewhat closed off from the rest of the world.
While I am greatly excited by what happened yesterday and today, indeed
possibly just as excited as I am about [yesterday's other important
news](http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/12267), it is important to
make sure that the watering and care of the community doesn't turn into
the building of a walled garden.


I love Stephen Sondheim musicals. In particular I love the way he can build an ensemble piece in which there can be 10-20 people onstage, apparently singing, shouting, and speaking complete disconnected lines, which nonetheless build into a coherent whole.

Messages de Rogue Scholar

A funny thing happened on the (way to the) forum