How to participate
From eoswiki.co.uk
Using the Electronic Journal/Forum/Wiki Component of the eyeonsociety Website
Contents |
Ways to interact with the site
There are two ways in which you can use this Forum.
- As an Unregistered User. You will be able to read both the articles and any discussions associated with them, but you will not be able to participate in those discussions yourself or create new pages.
- As a Registered User. You will be able to review the articles and any associated discussions and also to edit, and insert comments into, the "discussion" pages. You will also be able to create new pages, but will not be able to edit any of the main article pages except those you have created yourself. To protect any main article pages you may yourself create from modification by other Eyeonsociety Forum (Eoswiki) users, the Forum/Eoswiki Administrator will lock your pages so only you may edit them. This will not affect the discussion pages associated with them.
As an Unregistered User, please browse the site and the articles available. Also view any discussions that have arisen in connection with any of the articles or chapters that interest you by clicking on the "Discussion" tab at the top of the pages. If you feel there are other topics that should be included or articles, links, etc that would be of interest to others, please first join us as a Registered User by means of the User Registration page and then insert your comments into the "Discussion" pages.
To find out more about how to contribute to the discussions please read the How to comment section below.
Disclaimer
Please note that, as explained earlier, this component of our Website is still in the early stages of development. As a result, not all articles and chapters around which we would like to provoke discussion are available in a format that enables readers easily to insert comments within the body of the article or chapter text. The required format is known as "wiki", a special form of HTML. This makes it easy to copy specific pieces of text out of the main pages (or the whole text) into the discussion pages in order to comment on them. Unfortunately, many of the articles whose titles are listed in the Master List of Articles are only available in PDF format. These can be viewed by clicking on the appropriate link at the end of the title entry. Although it is possible to copy text from these pdfs into the discussion pages, the process is more than a little cumbersome and also drops the formatting of the text being copied. Nevertheless, it is still possible to comment on these articles either by copying some of the text you wish to comment on into the Discussion page or simply by referencing the section of the article you wish to comment upon and typing your comments into the "discussion" page. This is equivalent to inserting a " thread" comment at the end of a discussion page that is inwiki format. Please see the Entering Comments section below and the How to comment page to find out how to do this.
Contents
All the articles and chapters that will eventually become available are listed in the Master List of Articles. They are grouped into a number of Categories.
The entries grouped into the first two Categories:
- (a rather comprehensive one!): Understanding and influencing social processes; Creating a Learning Society; New Forms of Democracy and Bureaucracy; Sustainability; Sociocybernetics and
- Some Problematics
together with those in the later group headed Role of Psychologist: General, are those that deal with the topics in relation to which we are most anxious to promote research and discussion. The later groups are made up of articles dealing with better researched – although many of them still problematic – topics. The last group of articles deal with a very thoroughly researched topic area – Raven's Progressive Matrices. This is the second most widely used psychological test in the world. It has been around for more than 70 years, and its origins and basis go back to the turn of the last century. Ironically, its use contributes directly to the network of social processes that are, as we now see things, heading our species toward extinction at an exponentially increasing rate.
Entering comments
Our aim is to produce a site having much in common with the Wikipedia, with which many people have now become familiar.
As those familiar with the Wikipedia will already know, the Search facility normally takes readers to a main article dealing with the topic they want to find out about. In the case of the Wikipedia and the Psychological Wikipedia … the PsychWiki … these original articles are editable by all registered users. This is not the case, and is not intended to be the case, here.
However, what we do have in common with these two Wikis is that each article is accompanied by a linked “Discussion” page into which all registered users can type comments on the main article itself and on other people’s comments on that article. This is the process we are most anxious to progress … and it is why we have created this website.
We have tried to devise a system which will enable users to either type their comments into the version of the article which appears in the Discussion page at the point at which they wish to comment or to start a particular line of discussion, or “thread”, at the end of the article. In both cases, they will be able to read and comment upon other people's observations.
Details of how to do this are set out in the How to comment page.
As this wiki uses the same software as is used in the Wikipedia, many readers will already know how to edit and format text that is in a wiki format. However, if you are new to wikis and would like to find out how to format text as eg bold or italic or how to insert links, please go to the How to edit page or the Help section which you will find in the Navigation side bar on the left hand side of the webpage.
Links to related websites and blogs.
In the Navigation panel to the left, we have added an entry for Related Links. This will take you to a web page listing related websites, blogs, and conference reports etc. It would be useful if visitors to this site would advise us of any additional related blogs, websites, etc they feel would be of interest to other users of this site. We will then add the necessary links to the site as appropriate.
Please note, however, that none of the sites listed deal centrally with the issues that are of most direct concern to us on this site.
Submitting original articles for consideration for inclusion in the site.
Unfortunately, owing the dangers of attracting SPAM and abusive comment, it will be necessary for you to submit any whole articles you would like to have included in the site to the Administrator. They should therefore be sent to: The Editor at TheEditor@eyeonsociety.co.uk Please do not submit copyright material, your own or anyone else’s, unless copyright permission has been obtained and a copy of the permission included with the article.
Just to be clear: this procedure is neither the equivalent of peer review in published journals nor the “No personal opinions; no original research” criteria of the previously mentioned Wikipedia. We have exactly the opposite aim: like the virtual lab meetings of the PsychWiki, we specifically wish to get away from traditional academic criteria and promote open discussion. On the other hand, we do wish to limit submissions to those that relate to the objectives of this website and maintain civility and good manners in the process!
Having said that, it might be useful to reiterate some of the things that have been said about the objectives of this site ... and say something about what it is not.
Our objectives are to advance understanding of ... ways of thinking about, mapping, measuring and harnessing ... the social forces that control our destiny and seem to form a socio-cybernetic network constituting an autopoietic process currently heading us toward extinction as a species. Envisaging ways of harnessing these forces takes us into a discussion of possible alternative public management arrangements (socio-cybernetic - guidance - systems).
However we do not want to become just another Forum for publicising, one at a time, the endless failings of current forms of public - and world - management ... such as their failure to stem global warming, the usurious international money creation and "lending" system, the population explosion, the extermination of millions of people each year as a result of international trade, transport, and "defence" activities, the antics of the Transnational Corporations, The Federal Reserve Bank or the Bilderburg group, or the horrendous international infringements of human rights and civil liberties ... vitally important though each of these are in their own right.
While, therefore, the Site offers everyone, without restriction, an opportunity to familiarise him- or her-self with the author's previous research in the area, to download papers, and to keep up to date with developments, it is our intent to, to some extent, limit papers admitted to the site to those that contribute to our basic objectives.
