SPGB website upgrade project
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Comrades,
Work has resumed on the website update and upgrade. I attach a video to show how far the project is coming along.ThanksThanks for this. An exciting development. I am impressed by the way the pages adapt for mobile phone users also.
is there a critique of how the new website compares to the old website on the basis of encourging or discouraging socialistic interactions in the community. It still seems hierarchial in organization and has a class based structure with moderators existing as an elite class of people right? in terms of informing actual users about communism by using it, how does this website work compared to other websites. . . As a comparison here's a link to Holocracy, which is an Operating system for business that I judge more consistent with the practices of socialism. http://www.holacracy.org/constitutionIt's interesting to note that a lot of the phrases and ideas of communism are echoed in the holocracy constition. The Holocracy system is designed to encourage communistic thinking by the practice of using it. Is your website doing as well at encouraging communistic thinking and facilitating it as Holocarcy?
on the plus side, I can see a lot of improvements, and keeping with my meta analysis here's a review of the video vs the current site.1) free association: Does the new website offers more ways to associate with different topics and seems to offer more relevant associations first? yes In principle everything is freely associated on the website and a person can go from any page to any other page. But since the pages are hierarchial in organization and in the information architecture, the default and easiest mode of associating one article with another remains heirarchial. information at the top of the hierarchy (top level links) are most easily associated with. So there's some behavioral economics at work in both websites that enforce a "information class" based hierarchy of information. Information is classified as top level or second level etc. And the ideas of editors and contributors are likely ranked by the information class they're editing. Who controls the top level class and do they contribute equally to bottom level classes? The effort, or behavioral economics effort, of associating with all information is not equal.2) Each according to their needs:does the new website better serve each member of the community according to their needs? yesMost notibly it serves everyone better with more graphics and better information. But the distribution of better has probably changed too. this is kind of like that question about capitalism that might make everyone richer on average, but also increase income innequality. Does the new website serve the needs of party leaders first and NOOB's second? Or does it serve best the needs of established long term members best? I can't really tell from the video for sure, but the inclusion of social media icons is promising in the new website. the facebook link shown in the video is nice because it gives users an alternative way of accessing information and one that's been highly refined to serve the needs of different types of users as best as possible. the way information is accessed and used and contributed to on facebook seems communistic to me in a way that websites in general rarely achieve. 3) Each according to their ability:Does the new website better facilitate each person according to their ability? Probably. It seems to me, based on the video, that this will improve the ability to contribute of all people as any general upgrade should. It's not at all clear to me how it will affect the ballance between different types of users. It's using responsive design and seems to be an update to more modern web design and implementation practices which suggest it will be more egalitarian. the principles of modern web design have progressed from being exectutive driven where some CEO tells the chain of command how the site should work and towards crowdsourcing where website usage studies are done to decide how the site should work. There once was a time when a CEO chose the top level menu names, but today, it's usually done by user research. this has eliminated a lot of bad menu structures for the users that served the CEO's vested interest. I'd suggest that any website using the more modern design practices and principles for it's creation is on average much better at supporting communistic type interactions because that's been the trend in the industry. The question remains as to the balance between power user contributors who are a class of users that use the site frequent, and NOOB users who are a class of users that are new to the website. Also class distinctions between general computer savvy and social media savy users need to be considered for equity in a formal review and critique.in conclusion. . . This looks like a welcome upgrade. Consider implementing Holocarcy for the next generation revision in the future. Start making a list and discusing the new vs old. Maybe run them side by side for a while? Maybe run a test Holocracy site for evaluation? Consider creating a communism centric user experience review format and form for surveying your users (a google form would be quick and easy and open and communistic).Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:is there a critique of how the new website compares to the old website on the basis of encourging or discouraging socialistic interactions in the community. It still seems hierarchial in organization and has a class based structure with moderators existing as an elite class of people right? in terms of informing actual users about communism by using it, how does this website work compared to other websites. . . As a comparison here's a link to Holocracy, which is an Operating system for business that I judge more consistent with the practices of socialism. http://www.holacracy.org/constitutionIt's interesting to note that a lot of the phrases and ideas of communism are echoed in the holocracy constition. The Holocracy system is designed to encourage communistic thinking by the practice of using it. Is your website doing as well at encouraging communistic thinking and facilitating it as Holocarcy?
on the plus side, I can see a lot of improvements, and keeping with my meta analysis here's a review of the video vs the current site.1) free association: Does the new website offers more ways to associate with different topics and seems to offer more relevant associations first? yes In principle everything is freely associated on the website and a person can go from any page to any other page. But since the pages are hierarchial in organization and in the information architecture, the default and easiest mode of associating one article with another remains heirarchial. information at the top of the hierarchy (top level links) are most easily associated with. So there's some behavioral economics at work in both websites that enforce a "information class" based hierarchy of information. Information is classified as top level or second level etc. And the ideas of editors and contributors are likely ranked by the information class they're editing. Who controls the top level class and do they contribute equally to bottom level classes? The effort, or behavioral economics effort, of associating with all information is not equal.2) Each according to their needs:does the new website better serve each member of the community according to their needs? yesMost notibly it serves everyone better with more graphics and better information. But the distribution of better has probably changed too. this is kind of like that question about capitalism that might make everyone richer on average, but also increase income innequality. Does the new website serve the needs of party leaders first and NOOB's second? Or does it serve best the needs of established long term members best? I can't really tell from the video for sure, but the inclusion of social media icons is promising in the new website. the facebook link shown in the video is nice because it gives users an alternative way of accessing information and one that's been highly refined to serve the needs of different types of users as best as possible. the way information is accessed and used and contributed to on facebook seems communistic to me in a way that websites in general rarely achieve. 3) Each according to their ability:Does the new website better facilitate each person according to their ability? Probably. It seems to me, based on the video, that this will improve the ability to contribute of all people as any general upgrade should. It's not at all clear to me how it will affect the ballance between different types of users. It's using responsive design and seems to be an update to more modern web design and implementation practices which suggest it will be more egalitarian. the principles of modern web design have progressed from being exectutive driven where some CEO tells the chain of command how the site should work and towards crowdsourcing where website usage studies are done to decide how the site should work. There once was a time when a CEO chose the top level menu names, but today, it's usually done by user research. this has eliminated a lot of bad menu structures for the users that served the CEO's vested interest. I'd suggest that any website using the more modern design practices and principles for it's creation is on average much better at supporting communistic type interactions because that's been the trend in the industry. The question remains as to the balance between power user contributors who are a class of users that use the site frequent, and NOOB users who are a class of users that are new to the website. Also class distinctions between general computer savvy and social media savy users need to be considered for equity in a formal review and critique.in conclusion. . . This looks like a welcome upgrade. Consider implementing Holocarcy for the next generation revision in the future. Start making a list and discusing the new vs old. Maybe run them side by side for a while? Maybe run a test Holocracy site for evaluation? Consider creating a communism centric user experience review format and form for surveying your users (a google form would be quick and easy and open and communistic).The good news is the moderators have been aware for quite a long time of the concerns you have outlined here. Just a few points. There are no leaders on this web site. The moderators do not enforce the rules we apply them. Currently, a set of users guidelines are under consideration by the Internet Committee which will formalise the current interaction between the moderators and users and enable improvements via a process. The theory of Direct Participatory Democracy or Direct Delegated Democracy is in practice by the SPGB. Nevertheless, unlike a public meeting where democracy is face on and transparent to implement DPD on the internet is proving to be a bit more difficult. However, as you can tell from some of the postings some users here are on a learning curve in this respect. And we welcome your input on this.The moderators will be looking at Holacracy to see if they may have some solutions to making this site an example of democracy in practice on the internet.
I think that we have what we need. The Yahoo software used for forum discussion is pretty good, and it is very easy to follow a conversation, in some way, it is much better than this one that we are using at the present time
Many suggestions have been made over the past few years to improve openess and democracy on the forum and make it more 'communist'. None of the suggestions were taking seriously.
lindanesocialist wrote:Many suggestions have been made over the past few years to improve openess and democracy on the forum and make it more 'communist'. None of the suggestions were taking seriously.I strongly disagree. It may have passed your notice that due to measures I've taken the forum is much more open and democratic. I refer you to the 'Moderation suggestion' thread for an example of this. Curently the Internet Committee is discussing a 'Users guidelines' which if adopted will improve the democratic moderation of the forum.May I assure you that all suggestions to "improve the openess and democracy on the forum" is taken very seriously.
moderator1 wrote:lindanesocialist wrote:Many suggestions have been made over the past few years to improve openess and democracy on the forum and make it more 'communist'. None of the suggestions were taking seriously.I strongly disagree. It may have passed your notice that due to measures I've taken the forum is much more open and democratic. I refer you to the 'Moderation suggestion' thread for an example of this. Curently the Internet Committee is discussing a 'Users guidelines' which if adopted will improve the democratic moderation of the forum.May I assure you that all suggestions to "improve the openess and democracy on the forum" is taken very seriously.
Very good to see improvements in on-line openess and democracy of the Party .
Just a thought, but some forums have a section where new members can introduce themselves. This can sometimes lead on to interesting discussions.
I do not know how this party is going to be able to handle a workers revolution, when it can not even handle a couple of Micky mouse spammers and trolls
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