Ways of Collaborating; old versus new

I agree conceptually Dimitri. But the terminology is about the permissions structure in the Geni application, with two levels only: collaborator and follower, same as for profiles.

Maybe a clear division should be considered then, between Profile and Project management in the permissions structure, wouldn't you agree?

When we talk about development efforts by Geni, i have my own list of priorities, including for projects, and also, as far as I know there is no development resource available at this time to address projects.

So it might be a more useful conversation to chat about what we, as Geni members, can do to encourage new ways of collaborating and making use of the tool at hand.

Right you are, Erica. Totally agree with you. Take this Plaza idea as an example of a new way of active collaboration.

I think it's working just fine. The tools are all the same, but the whole approach to it has changed though.

Very inspiring, I must say :)

One of the ways I try to encourage 'thinking differently' is to consider a "challenge" -- an "obstacle to overcome".

When considering different ways of collaborating on Geni, one of the 'challenges' may be in how to make it easier to 'collaborate' without discouraging or limiting individual independent actions.

Nothing 'pops' to mind immediately, but that's one 'challenge to collaboration' to consider...

What is collaboration?

http://www.aiim.org/What-is-Collaboration

http://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000035243940681

Dimitri,
Recently I have accepted a lot of invitations from yourself to "Collaborate" on Projects which i have simply added my name to. I have been happy to do so as i assume you wish to have as many "Collaborators" for your projects to increase their general visibility on Geni. On most of them you seem to be the main (only?) "Contributor" which again doesn't bother me but seems to contradict the sentiment that you are expressing in this discussion.

In the past i've found that the best way to get a truely collaborative project going is by engaging with other Geni users in the Discussions and via messaging and then creating a Project based on shared interests and goals... of course even this method is likely to fail after a month or two as "Contributors" get distracted by other interests, sometimes they return to the Project eventually (i'd say this is the best indication of a Projects value - the return).

Why this sudden (seemingly to me) flood of new Projects? What is your ambition behind them?

Hi Alex, I thought your comment at the 'Good project' discussion would fit here as well. Therefore I cut and pasted it below:

quote:
Alex Moes [Moeskoecker] PRO
Today at 4:51 AM

Hi Dimitri,

I commented very broadly in response to another discussion you started today before i read this one so now i have a more specific query.

At the moment i have a bit of a description about myself on my profile page, i haven't updated it recently and it could say a lot more but my general point is that my story is there and anyone can read it (i think it's public- anyone?)

Also on my profile page there is a list of 5 projects i am associated with ( i don't know what the display criteria is , i certainly have more than 5 projects!), unlike collatorators and Followers lists there is no VIEW ALL option. If VIEW ALL was made available wouldn't that serve the same purpose as this project in an automated manner?

-end of quote-

Hi Alex,

in a sense you are right that a VIEW ALL option would serve a good purpose. I wish I could visit someone's profile page and have immediately a complete list of projects associated / created by this person.

To show you what makes this Plaza idea different, you can read here when I announced the start of all this :

http://www.geni.com/discussions/148548

and here is a doc explaining what you have to do, to contribute to the Project Producers Plaza project.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PwubUxXk0sEzPHjO9SPTfOsPxDmfW5j...

It's another project with other criteria than this Forum Plaza. But it explains about what you can do/ the criteria to become an active part of the project.

I think in this discussion, I am not expressing a 'sentiment', Alex, but a translation of the meaning of the word 'collaboration' here on Geni.

On that matter, Erica has posted a clear visualisation of the process of collaboration. Very useful!

To Alex:
You say; ...'have as many "Collaborators" for your projects to increase their general visibility on Geni.

In a way you could describe it as such, that a big list of collaborators, suggests a big audience.

More likely it is a way to show the appreciation of your activity. What the project is all about is probably studied after a collaboration request is being accepted.

Though I am not sure weather people just simply accept and move on with their own genealogical quests here on Geni.
All is good of course, everybody is free to act/react to a project collaboration request in his own way.

But I just don't know, so I sent out as many requests that I can, to at least try to get there attention, which hopefully will result in an active collaboration.

Fair enough, personally i wasn't paying a lot of attention to the first few requests but when the (David) Banner project appeared i just had to check what on earth it was about :)

Hahaha!!! One of the first in a series op projects I started to create lately lol
Could you guess to I am diagnosed with ADHD? You wouldn't, would you?

Don't know what it is with me lately, but some things came all of a sudden together in my mind which resulted in a series of projects.

I will talk more about it later, but first coffees first, I say, on this wet Monday morning :)

To start off with the (David) BANNER project, I was simply getting a bit more involved in understanding how the WIKI text works in projects.

So this project I had to study first:

http://www.geni.com/projects/Geni-Wikitext-Unicode-and-images/8404

The reason I wanted to know, is that I have experience in using HTML based weblogs. Much more capabilities than what Wiki can provide you.

And looking at a Wikipedia page, it just looks sometimes messy and primitive to me, even though it has more capabilities, like scrolling and working with columns, and so on.

If you look at the beautiful graphical visual aspect of Geni, I was hoping there were easy tricks to pimp up your project page.

And there it was; Bjorn's project , presenting the solution to it already, all this time. The difference was really, that nobody really made use of it on Geni yet.

So I took this opportunity, hence the '(David) BANNER' project and the 'Pretty Project' (see related projects section on the main project page)

The Plaza idea started to evolve while working with Anne-Marie, just before she asked me if I was interested in becoming a curator.

We started of working closely together on the Dutch Resistance 1940-1945 project:

http://www.geni.com/projects/Het-Nederlands-Verzet-1940-1945-Dutch-...

During this process, I found out that my understanding of being responsible for a project on Geni, simply ends by creating it. From then on, it is free to be completely changed by contributors without any consultation, with anyone whatsoever.

That shocked me really. My understanding of projects is that it is managed and curated, protecting the quality of it, since it is a project instigated by the project maker.

I am not talking about owning a project, but leading it in the right direction and serving it's purpose, related to the subject it beholds.

So I introduced the 'project manager', suggestion there were two, working together on the Resistance project.

Now to come back to the subject of this discussion about collaboration, I developed the Plaza format in which people actively can participate, be part of the project, be partly responsible for this project.

And it looks to be working, this active collaboration/participation :)

By the way, in this Project Concept Plaza project I am introducing the 'table host'. Instead of managing a Personal Project Page, you can start a discussion here and actually hosting it.

I know exactly how you feel, Dimitri. When I started a discussion about the first date the South African Timeline should start with the whole thing turned turned into something quite nasty, although I was involved in that nastiness. But I didn't want it to turn out that way. And now the project starts with someone's opinion and diatribe about his and others people's beliefs rather than just a date with a brief, 2 or 3 line, description. Subsequently I have stopped collaborating on it and have a good mind to remove myself and my contributions. But then nobody else would do anything with it.

About retracting yourself from that specific project you mention, your past contributions included, is a free decision of your own of course.

If that's a moral justified choice, simply because you can leave a mutilated project like that, behind you, I am not sure.

If you support the new approach, then present yourself as the project manager when you start a new project.
Just see how that pans out for you?

My try out with an existing project wasn't that much of a change, though newcomers could pick up on it.
We just decided to add the following sentence on the bottom of the project page:

'For questions or suggestions, please contact the project managers' and then our names as hyper links to our personal profiles.

My style of actually managing a project instead of creating it is completely different to the old school approach, create it and move on to the next project, leaving it all to the others to decide what to do with it.

I think both ways are fine, simply because there are no rules telling you what to do.

My approach though, means that the project will consume parts of your time from then on, managing it, hopefully with like-minded fellow active collaborators/contributers.

I know this discussion in quite old, but just in case it gets picked up as an IT change.

There are some projects that whilst I might not add a profile to, I might alter the Project Description or improve some of the profiles "About Me" or add source information or family to the profiles. To me that is just as important a collaboration as adding a profile to the project.

Do we have a discussion on collaboration in Geni?
It would be nice to get some standards in place.
How I do it, maybe not right....

I work all over the place, and "get on a roll" so I collaborate in a different way, nearly "delegate"

1. I love using my software to get records
2. If I find something I add notes to about section or add a profile
3. If I add a profile I ADD MANAGER who is working in that area (we have a project listing that). This is because I will lose track of them, and I am not qualified in that area. SO I am also being checked at the same time.
4. I start a discussion if I do a merge that I think needs to be either checked or at least so persons know what has happened.

Otherwise I am a lone ranger :)

Leanne,
If you are editing a project then you must be a collaborator on that project, there is no other way to edit a project, whether or not you add profiles to the project doesn't change you status in regard to that project.

Life may be shades of grey but Collaboration status is binary :)

Important is to be added to a project immediately, so that job of collaborators is essential and the more the better.

I had to wait a day for one and lost all the additions I wanted to make by then. Maybe ADS :(

SO, when the red light goes on, check it, I love being the "hero" to get to click it LOL

Adding profiles is another thing again, I have the life long job of getting everyone in South Australia on a ship voyage, there are probably 1,000 of them x 200 passengers each.

No one adds any, doing a profile is not all there is to it, every one should eventually be in a project.

My husband sais I have the "face that launched a thousand ships" and then laughs because of the huge bags under my eyes. :)

At least he doesn't finish the joke "...all of them sailing away. "

He has more to lose lol, on that note, have you noticed how the more money people have in the tree, the more middle names they have? Some cant afford them I guess.

Regards
S

So here is my problem.

Main portal for ship links, each voyage with its own project.
Maybe 1,000 voyages at end of it, 1,000 projects someone has to join to be able to add if they work all over South Australia.

People who do not work all over the tree don't seem to know they exist, so I have to invite them.

1. I have to iether search to find anyone born elsewhere, died in SA.
2. Find how they got there.
3. create the project.
4. Invite them to add if I did not do the profile or collaborate.

What I am doing now is adding them to my AS Settlement projects (different countries of origin) and putting the ship on their profile, for later when I get to create that project.

How do we "advertise" out projects to users?

Shaz: One way could be to 'advertise' (e.g. on your profile?) an "overview" project. If you haven't created one yet, that's the first thing to do.

Then link the other projects into that overview project.

With that many potential projects, you may want to consider if "sub-portal" projects (overview by ship? overview by years?) would be helpful.

Lastly, I strongly recommend you name the projects with a consistent "leading string" so they all show up together in a project search listing.
(Try a project search for "Mormon Pioneers" for example of how that works.)

Here is another example of a Portal project https://www.geni.com/projects/New-Amsterdam-1609-1674/5346
but no one has thought to attempt what you have done. At least not that I am aware of, perhaps this concept is close -
https://www.geni.com/projects/New-Amsterdam-Marriages-1639-1674/23876

Other than that I would suggest to avoid if not too late using "SA", i know what you mean but internationally most people associate SA=South Africa

https://www.geni.com/project/search?q=Great+migration

If I had it to do over (these were very early projects), I'd make a portal page first, describing the term, a little background, list the resources used -- and then index the projects in the body of the "umbrella" project, maybe a tick mark as the ship sub projects are created

The Mormon Pioneer projects are the best organized on geni, should be a good model.

Thanks Dan Cornett and Alex

The portal page is here: https://www.geni.com/projects/Bound-for-South-Australia/18356

Of course I created that portal fro each State as well, all under the umbrella of Australian Settlement/Australia Portal

The ships are listed on that one, but may need to deivide again by from Germany/England

I also have projects for settlers who came overland, and, then projects for when they left one state and settled to another :(

Plus projects of internal travel when I find it, basically means they were alive and often I get a list of the produce they were selling, all historically interesting.

Not complaining,I think i would freak if someone wanted to start creating the projects as well, (closet perfectionist).

Anyhow, I am happy with it so far, but cannot do it all the time, need to do research and tree building as well.

Any suggestions would really help/

Thanks Shaz