This is hard. Hard for what? Actually, for helping our potential audiences find the topics they are most interested in, or relate to most closely, in a knowledge commons. Also, one step removed, to find people, events, etc. (other things that could well be represented on our GtC knowledge base) that relate to them.
The challenge is that everyone classifies things differently. I came across this decades ago: first in my PhD thesis, looking at how people represent complex tasks; and then in conjunction with the student skills audit/ personal development system I helped to develop at Liverpool around 1998, looking at how people classified the kinds of skills that are valued in life beyond academia — typically, but not only, in the workplace. In short, people see things differently.
This bears directly on the question of categories for any Commons knowledge base. It's hard, and what I would dearly love to avoid is spending – wasting – hours in futile argument over which topics belong in which category. Because my experience, as well as my reflection, teaches me that in any system of any complexity, there simply isn't one right answer.
I come on to facets. What is a facet? The idea comes originally from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faceted_classification but I want to take it beyond that, to its obvious conclusion.
This is also related to "stages" of adult development, for those familiar with writers like Robert Kegan. In a "traditional" world, there is one, generally agreed, way of seeing and classifying the world. In "modernity", which goes along with self-authorship, there are several ways of seeing the world — largely, that's where we are. In (deconstructive) post-modernism, there are no grand narratives or for that matter grand classification schemes. No one person's classification has any more validity than any other's. Hence we sink into the featureless wasteland of folksonomy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy
I'll cut to the chase here. I'm looking for a way forward that some people call "metamodern". I propose that we look at facets, rather like questions that some segment of our audience might see as most relevant. Where can I do this? Can I do it alone? It is practical or theoretical? Does it need money, fiat or otherwise? Etc. etc. I see us as engaging with these questions until we find a set of questions, and possible answers, that make sense to all of us, even if they are not the questions that are most relevant to us. Along with this, we have different entry points for different audiences.
We need dialogue around this, and we need ways of documenting the answers when we come to agreement. Just that, let's not start on trying to agree on things which we won't be able to agree on. Let's start by finding the common terms that are easier to agree on … and that, I would say, will be by deliberately taking on diverse perspectives.
Looking forward to what emerges here!
