To start this fourth session, which was attended by three people (two women and one man) with quite different experiences, I explained the two legs of this working group in terms of analysis: the collective documentation (relating to the world of wikis) and the collaborative editing and content creation (which is done in pads). Both parties generate difficulties and resistances that, as I saw in this meeting, are also related to affective elements and belonging to a community.
> Wikipedia, difficulties and user classes
For these people, the feeling that they can "break" what they edit on a wiki is very present. They also feel afraid to be «Using a space that does not correspond to you», which is related to the legitimacy to count or to contribute in the story of history and that it still seems that only certain people or groups can perform: I tend to inhibit myself...I think there are people who know more about what is written than I do.. Despite feeling this brake, there is also a desire to change it: You have to lose the fear of breaking it (to technology in general), knowing that you are not alone, that someone can come later and help you or fix it..
It is curious that this happens, in addition, with people who claim that they like to "translate" on the wiki but do not dare to take a step further. In part, they admit that they lack a friendly context in which they feel relaxed and can move forward with more people (even if unknown) in a learning process. And they point out differences between addressing a Wikipedia entry and creating content on a collaborative pad: I am comfortable with the collaborative methodology when I have confidence with the people with whom I am going to make the text since we have previously agreed on what we are going to do and we understand that the text will be enriched by others. However, in Wikipedia I do not know anyone who is there and that generates insecurity. In addition, someone deleted an article from me (by subjective criteria of relevance) and my experience about the collaborative world went to waste: It made me angry to realize that this space is not really collaborative..
Although Wikipedia is mostly perceived as a neutral space in which anyone can contribute (the bases of the project itself define it), the truth is that there is a group of "super users" who define certain rules of the game: We have built a new hierarchy in wikipedia. In these unwritten norms prevails the perception of those who have the power to decide what is and what is not relevant, and you may not be able to talk to them about what happened to your contribution: I wanted to establish a contact with the person who took the article from me, but he did not answer me. Of course, it helped me to correct what I had pointed out as incorrect or incomplete. I understood that there were things I had not done as they say in those rules. So, after knowing that there are different types of users with a varying degree of power, the perception about this theoretically participatory space changes radically: Yes, there is a master here, who can pull your contribution at the stroke of a pen..
The problem of the interface of wikis and the existence of tags that is not intuitive and produces rejection: In our system everything goes by interface as with Word and I discovered that (label language) shocked me. In addition, to this part of the need for certain knowledge, is added the "coldness" in the interaction through a screen that in other digital spaces has already been intervened to approach us: emoticons are good.
> Collaborative projects and group feeling
We comment that collaborating with the other seems to be something innate not only among humans but also in the animal field. However, in a society based on wild consumption it seems difficult to unlearn our specialized education and hierarchical functioning.
The marketinian concept of Melé o Scrum for horizontal, collaborative and self-organised working groups in the development of projects. The name refers to a rugby team put in a circle and in which it is pushed to all sides and arises from the world of developers of software. It starts from the basis that a group of people come together and establish on a consensual basis a series of rules to function. There is no distribution of tasks in the conventional way based on specialization, and in which once the parts are finished someone arrives and assembles them. In this system, an assembly of workers is formed and everyone knows the project completely, so that an individual begins on the one hand but, if it is blocked or if he wants, he can approach another part and help the whole project in a more dynamic way.
It seems that it It is more difficult and complicated to get to know each other and make decisions prior to collaborative work., in particular in "the renunciation of the self" or "of the ego". Not only of one's own, but of others. In a shared experience, participants were told how in a group where they had been given permission to play the collaboratively created text, participants started adding notes suggesting changes. Therefore, collaborative work was not carried out because, by not disturbing the other, you do not renounce the ‘I’ or eliminate the ‘I’ of the other. Of the advantages of this form of operation of "fusion with others" was valued the less time and effort that must be invested in the development of a project.
As observations of this way of working, the fear of hurting other people when you develop a text in a collaborative way was also crossed: what topics can be complicated to play, how to avoid hurting the other or create susceptibilities ... When everything is anonymous, it is less scary; Working as a team seems to me to be an art..
English (UK)