User:Statprof/BlogEntry: 2007 April 12 22:28:11 EDT

From sasCommunity

[edit] Gardening in the Spring

Despite some setbacks, I think Spring is finally upon us. While I am not a gardener, my wife[1] lives to go out and play in the dirt and make things just right.

We have been using the metaphor of a gardener for the sasCommunity.org website. The first time that we heard the term was when we were talking to the SocialText[2] folk about the possibility of hosting sasCommunity.org there. Tom Gruber has also used the metaphor, but when we queried him, he took it back to a social scientist Bonnie Nardi in 1992[3] and a journalist Jon Udell who talked about Collaborative Knowledge Gardening in an article in 2004.[4]

Just as in the yard outside of my house, sasCommunity.org is in need of some spring gardening. We need users to visit the articles already created and help to make them more attractive. We have already seen instances of users who corrected spelling or grammar for previously posted articles. Others who have begun to understand how a Wiki works have gone in and fixed the wiki markup language or the application of categories in order to make the article more accessible.

We have even posted a job description (Gardener for sasCommunity.org) for users to take on this responsibility.

Without someone spending time in our yard to weed, water, and help the plants out, our yard would not be near the wonderful environment which it is. sasCommunity.org will only blossom if enough of the users actually spend some time doing some gardening. You are emPOWERed to do the editing - go do it so the experience is more enjoyable for all.