Earlier this week I was on a phone call with Nathaniel James and the Media Democracy Coalition. Also on the line was David Stern from MixedInk who I met last year at the Networked Journalism Summit (which will have its 2nd annual, more details to come).
Unfortunately it was a conference call so David and I didn’t get a chance to chat. But afterwards we did a little emailing where David asked for an update on my thoughts. I appreciate David’s effort to be innovative, so I thought I’d take him up on that via a blog post which allows me to give more critical and constructive thoughts.
I recall being somewhat skeptical of Mixed Ink when I first came across it. Actually, David reminded me of the language I used which was “sounds amazing – if it works.”
That skepticism was on two fronts.
1. The technology itself sounded out of this world. Mixed Ink is not a wiki but it still says it can allow any group to collectively write reviews, op-eds,
letters to the editor, petitions, mission statements, questions &
comments for public personalities, news articles, blog posts, and lots
more.”
So if it’s not a wiki then it sounds like 30 people can just hack-away and the end result is a collective hive mind of what they were thinking. I still can’t picture it – partly because the sausage making is behind a wall right now, but again, if it works like they say it does…. sounds amazing.
I think there might be an issue about whether this is utilitarianism versus majority rules or what, but that’s a side question, more like “what type of sausage is this anyways?”
Update: David Stern writes: “There is one major point that you’re wrong about – our platform is no longer behind a wall! It’s open to the world here: netrootsplatform.org
The
main page is just basically an outline we created for this project, but
if you click on “join this plank” after selecting one of the plank
categories, you get full access to the platform’s innards. You have to
log in to see all the features.”
2. Critical mass.
Everyone faces this problem. Even myself. If you have a web tool that relies on the participation of lots of people – get ready for a struggle. I have to find people who will donate money to journalism (we accept MasterCard), MixedInk needs to find people that will donate time and energy to writing. That’s an uphill battle. But – if they can get critical mass AND the technology becomes more transparent/understandable (instead of “magic”), then I’ll again lift my eyebrows and say “AMAZING.”
Without critical mass, however, a wiki makes much more sense. Two people don’t need a hive-mind tool, they just need a wiki so they can easily collaborate. With 30 people or more, however, a wiki could become a mess(as Mixed Ink points out), so I can imagine the value in what MixedInk is proposing – Or perhaps David can explain the difference between a wiki and MixedInk better, as it has always been a little vague for me.
I think above all that has always been my biggest (struggling for words) “issue” with MixedInk – If it isn’t a wiki then it needs a better explanation of how it works. From what I can tell the best explanation right now is “magic.”
I think David is a freak’n smart dude too (we wouldn’t have invited him to the Summit last year if he wasn’t), and I wouldn’t be suprised if MixedInk has tapped into something that is both carnal (the desire to work in groups) and still untapped on the web (or at least, hasn’t reached its full potential). Unfortuantly, I still can’t tell what that something might be.
Update: David Stern writes: MixedInk is a combination of a wiki and Digg (actually, Salesforce
Ideas is closer, since Digg is mostly just links). Wikis treat the
most recent editor as king, whereas MixedInk makes the highest rated
stuff most prominent so that the top version will reflect the
community’s point of view.
David, thanks for the write-up!
We hadn’t publicized the project on our website because we were initially only extending invitations via traditional netroots channels – but it’ll be up there soon.
Just want to clarify a bit.
In brief, MixedInk works as follows:
– An organizer sets up a topic to address or a text to create and invites a community to contribute.
– People submit their ideas, edit each others’ ideas, and mix and match different versions to create new ones.
– People rate versions on a scale of 1 to 10, leading the best ideas rise to the top and get fused together.
– The top rated version in the end captures the community’s point of view.
Unlike a wiki, this process enables large numbers of people to write at once. The text that’s created is guaranteed to represent the entire group rather than simply the most recent editor. Even with controversial material, MixedInk can be totally open without devolving into back-and-forth edit wars. Lastly, since very few people see the bad stuff, there’s less incentive for spam and abuse of the sort that ruined the LA Times wikitorial project.
I very much agree with you about our need for critical mass – a wiki is indeed OK for small, like-minded groups. We’ll be spending our time in the near future developing our own community and finding partners to work with who already have large communities.
Any additional thoughts from you or your readers, are welcome at david [at] mixedink [dot] com!