Re: Re: looking for Jugg--is this the right place?

Thanks, Alan.

I believe your metaphor might be the most apt fit so far: LiteStep as a 
sandbox.

Before I get all fired up and bleeding ink about this potential, let me 
reassure anyone who thinks this is perhaps even more crazed than some of 
my other "what ifs" and "maybes" that I have no delusions about forcing 
anything down anyone. The purpose here, I believe, needs to focus on 
looking around at what we have, taking into consideration some of the 
really bad mistakes others have made, and then trying one or more things 
that might just work.

That said, I will also fess up and point out that by the very act of 
fleshing this idea out, I'm making it a bit harder for someone to stand 
up and say "excuse me, but I think you're wrong on that. . ." I don't 
really know how to avoid that--I've never had much luck with the 
"everyone sitting around throwing out ideas until a really good idea 
implements itself" approach.

I will say that this community continues to show a good deal of promise. 
While it is true that there are a lot of detail-like things that don't 
ever seem to get fixed;

(e.g., the "tutorial" embedded within the one "start here" sort of theme 
I have found makes relentless pitches toward, and obviously heart-felt 
appeals to, the loose-screws website which is, of course, back in the 
land of industrial fasteners and, well, certain extra-curricular 
activities not usually having much to do with a computer desktop.)

      a surprising number of folks have responded to my long and careful 
questions, even though I just sort of "popped in" and began throwing out 
queries. That wouldn't happen within a group who didn't care. I might 
get flamed, perhaps even used as a pawn in some larger game (not hard if 
the game at hand doesn't matter) but if there wasn't sufficient interest 
within this community about the future of this community, no one would 
have said much of anything.

It takes some guts to venture some closely held opinions about where the 
group is and where it should go. It's not so hard when there is already 
a clearly delimited group with formal rules, scripts and officers with 
specific duties; someone speaking out in a community as loosely 
described as this takes considerable risk of being told "yeah, that's 
what you think, but you don't really belong here!"

So thank you, truly, all of you; for being willing to take those risks. 
(My role hasn't been exceptionally risky: If people said "get out of 
here, you poser!" I could leave with pretty much my entire self esteem 
intact! I care a lot about my computer desktop and have spent a year 
elsewhere seeing everything but what made sense to me. I'm here with a 
stake, to be sure, but not as a long-term participant).

So let me play with this model/metaphor, "the playground" for a bit. 
Know that nothing will happen if there isn't widespread agreement at 
least about the general direction, so you don't risk "giving up your 
veto" if you end up not liking how this unfolds. And if this doesn't 
really capture the attention and (enthusiastic?) support of the 
community, it will just mean that we need to continue doing what we have 
been doing. . . no great loss.

Shoot, I'm taking one line from Alan's well constructed email and 
driving it in ways its manufacturer never intended. It very well might 
end up looking like a really bad idea to Alan--so if you don't like it, 
it's my fault, not his (or yours, Alan).

LiteStep as a sandbox or playground.

This community is open for anyone who wants to come and play, but there 
are no bells to signal class starting, no structured learning objectives 
(and no playground monitor oversight. . .) This unstructured environment 
could work out just fine as a model because several other factors come 
into play that make what would otherwise and in other places collapse 
into mayhem work well within this community.

(Rant warning:)

One obvious factor is that even though we might be a bit short on formal 
guidelines and perhaps even on articulated organizing principles, we do 
know what behavior will not work and when something comes up (if it ever 
comes up) that would say about a newcomer "I am the most important voice 
here and you all have to follow my rules, because they are not really my 
rules--they are, in fact, entirely logical edicts which grow from 
universal principles. . ." that newcomer would probably first be met 
with a wall of, well, silence.

If this was not a freak occurrence or a one-time-captured-and- 
switched-by-aliens experience; that is, if the child who enters new 
communities and spouts such things does not grow bored with the silence 
and wander away in the stillness,

but instead tries to rally support around his (usually a "his") flag

(which is, of course, the only logical banner to which any thinking 
person would ever swear allegiance)and even more stridently state that 
if the community (that he has heard was here, but which obviously isn't 
because what worthwhile person would ever pass up an opportunity to 
publicly debate such an obviously learned player-not-poser) really wants 
to survive in this modern (aha! a clue) and vicious (sigh) age . . .

one of the kinder community members, or perhaps even two or three, would 
take the time from their own cool sandbox projects to say to him 
something like "I think the people you are looking for are over there. . 
. try googling 'desktop customize Vista popular thousands'" then wait 
for him to realize that everyone here really is too stupid or 
inconsequential to bother with and dash away to another "community that 
needs his insight", hopefully telling his friends that our sandbox isn't 
worth visiting.

So to a large extent, the shortage of potential cheerleaders to join 
each person's team just makes us not as attractive as many other places. 
This is, perhaps, an entirely useful thing.

Another factor that helps insulate (and to some degree, isolate) us from 
the outside is a lack of readily available 
push-one-button-and-it-fully-installs packages, properly displayed for 
our many fans, separately compiled for every conceivable version of 
every operating system at every screen resolution, and including 
step-by-step key press directions on how to go from "computer turned 
off" to "looking at installed new theme" and "changing colors of said 
theme".

[sorry. that whole rant was entirely too much fun. . .I'm better now. . 
.RANT OVER]

If we look at this sandbox model, it might just fit what this community 
wants to become. Or perhaps even more precisely, what our community 
believes is achievable given the amount of time, energy and all-nighters 
community members are willing to invest over and over again to maintain. 
Realistically, most people here are not going to get their giggles from 
putting together and constantly maintaining an award-winning site 
covering all of desktop customization.

We certainly have the people here who could, but that is not among our 
driving concerns, and not what draws people back here to check in time 
after time.

Again from the other responses that have been posted here over the last 
few months there just aren't many "we want to wow! the computer-using 
world" posts. The tenor has rather consistently been "we like what we 
do, it is useful for us to continue doing it, and it is wonderfully and 
amazingly cool to work with the quality of talent represented in this 
community.

This is different from the perception that perhaps we *need* that sort 
of WOW! factor in order to keep attracting enough folks to keep this a 
living and viable community.

I'm not suggesting this has been an intentional message, just what I 
have sensed through the various posts.

I suspect there is a bit of discomfort at the lack of "salable product" 
from this community, that the amount of truly finished product 
contributed by the considerable talent here is, well, underwhelming.

There are lots of "almost final finished" projects, and a whole lot of 
really cool pieces/parts that will work just fine if you remember to 
load this library beforehand or to manually set that variable, etc. Oh, 
and just ignore the on screen directions. . .sorts of projects, but not 
many "I'm confident and happy--this is done!" products.

Further, it seems that many--perhaps even most--in this community kinda 
like that ad hoc-ness, they like the ability to stick out something that 
isn't all polished up and have their friends and collaborators play 
around with it. AND they very much do NOT want to HAVE to finish 
absolutely everything by such-and-such a date and time in order to make 
some project deadline.

Even if they were to finish something, they really are not so interested 
in being "on call" 24/7 for the next year in case someone writes in a 
comment "Wow! this really rocks! You are the best--I mean it! Now could 
you make this into a 640 by 480 resolution, change the colors to blue 
and silver and clean it up to get it below 9k and then walk me through 
the process of porting it to my new cellphone. . .it says on the box it 
runs Windows!"

And again, this is *not* saying that folks don't want to be helpful to 
others, to talk about their creations or to answer questions--just that 
there is a world of difference between the person who sees potential in 
the project and wants to explore some aspect (or help figuring out how 
it was really done) and someone who doesn't really want to contribute 
anything to the discussion, who is not even really interested in a 
discussion, who really only wants someone to set up the nifty looking 
desktop onto their own system for them.

This is a community that welcomes the open participation of all comers, 
and will even tolerate a good deal of request for hand-holding, if the 
visitor shows some motivation to learn something from the experience. We 
don't want to see a bunch of projects dumped into our sandbox if the 
people working on those projects don't want to work on them. Someone 
else could use the sand for their own project.

We also, deep down, are a bit hesitant about getting too far into the 
"rating game". We do what we do because we want to, and we don't want to 
get pressured into having to do this or to not do that because it will 
or will not get the points needed for a higher score.

No, this sandbox is not set up to permanently display master works. Not 
that there aren't other places those works might reside. Just that the 
thing that holds this community together is the creation of the works, 
the exploration of the boundaries of these works, not in producing a 
"don't touch this or it might smudge" display piece.

Perhaps what we need most of, first, is permission to be what we want to 
be: A community of people who like to dabble with their computer 
desktops, who take seriously the need (eventually, at least) to be 
productive within that environment, and who really want to hang out with 
people who are not primarily jerks.

Then maybe we can take a look at just what sort of tools make sense to 
continue to grow a community that looks like this. I would imagine some 
sort of central repository would be necessary, and probably a somewhat 
slickified "here's who we are and this is what we do" so that our site 
will work for us in attracting the sort of people we want.

I don't know. . .what sort of tools would help this community grow in 
that direction?

And more fundamentally, does this characterization fit? Is this the 
community--not necessarily that we always have been, or even are now, 
but what we want to become. How am I hopelessly missing it here? (I 
really am a big boy, I really won't take explorations or even wholesale 
rejections of this description as personal attacks; especially if you 
leave my mom, my wife and my kids out of it!)

I am coming back to this fundamental step in the belief that we can be 
intentional in the molding of our online community. We don't have to 
just wait and see what happens, we can derive some guidelines or 
principals that will to some degree protect us from being hijacked by 
people who have entirely different desires and goals, and we can create 
some tools or practices that will make it much easier to participate in 
a way that is in line with this vision than to do something inconsistent 
with that collective aim.

So what do y'all think?


Alan Polacek wrote:
> Roy,
> While I rarely (ever?) have anything to contribute to the list, I really
> appreciate the effort that you're putting into trying to make the LS
> community a coherent entity, and focusing some of the activities of the
> various contributors to the community and list. I think that your efforts to
> construct a conceptual framework that all the active members of the LS
> community can work within is worthwhile and needed. So thank you.
> 
> On a more personal note, I think that the lack of polished, install and run
> themes is a reflection of the attitude I think many of us have that LS is
> for creating and personalizing; the LS community, to me, feels like a kind
> of endless sandbox where people throw around ideas and sketches and pieces,
> and leave tend to leave it to each user to implement what they need or want
> for their own desktop. I know that I tend to get a lot of grand planning for
> themes done, but once I've gotten to the point where they're usable, by me,
> they pretty much stop developing, and never get polished. In my case, that's
> from a lack of scripting knowledge and sheer apathy. Once I can get around
> the theme, the need to continually fix it seems to dissipate, and all my
> lovely interface ideas end up in my sketch folder.
> 
> I guess if someone wants to collaborate on a theme, I have conceptual ideas
> and can make it look decent, but am just really bad at execution.
> 
> -Alan Polacek
> -pfx
> 
> On 10/24/07, rog <[email protected]> wrote:
>> I am around, but a bit roughed up right now (today, pull the wisdom
>> tooth. Next week, more eye injections)
>>
>> -snip-
>>
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>>
> 


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