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WikiObjective

This wiki has an objective:

To facilitate the creation and use of online problem-solving environments

The world has some complex and urgent problems to address, and we believe there are better ways of solving them together. There needs to be shared resources, methods, discussions, theories, and examples to learn from in order to best design and use these environments. Our goal is to gather and discuss those here.

In this new social Internet, we are witnessing the lure of participation technologies, the power of network effects, and the encouragement of openness. By discussing and capturing what we are learning from all this, we might help others best apply a combination of technology, design, and literacy towards more effective problem-solving.

An Example

Imagine you’re charged with building a system that will help your organization solve a particularly ellusive problem, like say, “how do we make our product safer?” You’ve heard of this wisdom of crowds thing and seen this web 2.0 thing and you are thinking to yourself:

“How should I go about getting input from people on solving this safety problem? How should I incent or reward them? How might they contribute? Are they submitting ideas or engaging in a discussion? What technolgies should I use? What social conventions might be important in steering my design decisions? What can I learn from blogs, wikis, and user-generated media? Has anyone tried this before? (etc. ad infinitum).”

This WikiObjective is to anticipate the quesions someone may have and provide knowledge and discussions that might answer these questions.

Discussion

Original question:

 How can we best apply a combination of technology, design, 
 and literacy to help individuals solve problems together?

Another proposed, alternative question is:

 What are some technologies, designs, and literacies, that online people with 
 some free time can develop and propagate in order to help people collaborate?

Need to address: “What will the prospective participants get from the community?” (see: 2006-11-02)