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Just looked (again) at that link. I recall this page and recalling myself not getting far through it. On my revisit I still couldn't read it through entirely. I

Just looked (again) at that link. I recall this page and recalling myself not getting far through it. On my revisit I still couldn't read it through entirely. It looks like one of those handouts that presents an unspecific problem, to which it throws a bunch of unspecific waypoints that lead to an unspecific solution. I suspect you see something that I didn't; how do you approach reading this? Also, between reading and coming back, you have been downvoted once. I have no idea what is downvote-worthy in your post... sometimes I just don't know what I am missing -- or if there is anything to miss in the first place.

ratsbane 19y ago
I've wondered about that too - what motivates people to vote something up or down? Is voting up more a measure of interest, agreement, surprise, appreciation...? Would you vote down because you don't agree with a comment or because you think it's irrelevant, self-serving, unoriginal, or poorly-stated? (I didn't see anything I thought worthy of downvote on the parent comment either; I vote it up as thought-provoking even though I didn't quite get the point of the thing he linked to.)
- BrandonM 19y ago
  Correct. :) No, seriously, all the reasons you present a perfectly legitimate reasons for up/downvoting and are reasons that I have considered at various times.
  - jdueck 19y ago
    Is it even possible to vote something down? I don't see any down arrows. Maybe I don't have enough karma?
    - BrandonM 19y ago
      You can't downvote until you have enough karma, and a comment cannot be downvoted after it's been around for more than 24 hours. This is to prevent someone from vindictively going through a person's "threads" and downvoting all of their comments in an effort to kill their karma. You can never downvote article submissions; they can only be upvoted. Downvoting sumbmissions has merit in some cases (removing spam), but in practice it has been used on other sites to kill everyone's submissions except your own, rapidly leading to a downmodding war where the winner is whoever is more committed to their karma score, instead of the one who is submitting the best articles.
      - jdueck 19y ago
        Interesting, thanks!
Alex3917 19y ago
"How do you approach reading this?" Normally people solve problems using some variant of the rational decision making problem. That is, define the problem, define assessment criteria, brainstorm solutions, choose solution, implement solution, measure solution against assessment criteria. A wicked problem, on the other hand, is a problem that can't be clearly defined and has no clear answer. For example, what is the best way to design a car? If you maximize mpg then the car isn't as safe. But if you maximize safety then the car is heavier so the mpg isn't as good. And both safety and mpg affect style. The idea of the idiagram thing is that while the rational decision making model may be the best way to solve well-bounded problems, it isn't a very good way to solve wicked problems. This is roughly where the idiagram page leaves off, but it footnotes the book Wicked Problems and Social Complexity, the first chapter of which is available online. This explains dialog mapping, which is a method of discussing wicked problems in group meetings using mindmaps. Why is this important? If you've been to a lot of discussion forums on the web, you probably realize that forums with nested comments tend to have more rational discussion than forums with flat comments. After all, it's just easier to reply to specific points of an argument with nested comments than it is to fisk one with flat comments. You can go back and forth on one point, and then go back up in the discussion later and talk about a completely different point raised earlier. Trying to solve wicked problems in real life meetings without dialog mapping is sort of the equivalent of an flat discussion on the web. You are sitting around and someone comes up with a complicated proposal. The next person responds to whatever they see in it. And then the other points in the original comment become more or less buried. However if you mindmap all of the points of a person's dialog, then people are able to use the visualization to jump back and forth during the discussion and gain perspective on what's important and what's less important. This ultimately means better solutions to wicked problems in less time, with more focus on the problem and less focus on the personalities involved. The idiagram then is a way of visualization the final output of the brainstorming via dialog mapping process so that all involved can be on the same page when in comes to understanding the solution and each person's responsibilities and how success will be measured. (The whole submission is kind of recursive, because it's a picture about the four steps of the WP solving process, and making a picture is step three of four.) Anyway, that's what I see in the submission. If you're the kind of person who sits are and thinks about how you can have brainstorming sessions in real life with the same abstract ideas and rational thinking that often arise online (because of the asynchronousness and nestedness of the internet), then this is kind of a cool thing.

ratsbane 19y ago

I've wondered about that too - what motivates people to vote something up or down? Is voting up more a measure of interest, agreement, surprise, appreciation...? Would you vote down because you don't agree with a comment or because you think it's irrelevant, self-serving, unoriginal, or poorly-stated? (I didn't see anything I thought worthy of downvote on the parent comment either; I vote it up as thought-provoking even though I didn't quite get the point of the thing he linked to.)

BrandonM 19y ago
Correct. :) No, seriously, all the reasons you present a perfectly legitimate reasons for up/downvoting and are reasons that I have considered at various times.
- jdueck 19y ago
  Is it even possible to vote something down? I don't see any down arrows. Maybe I don't have enough karma?
  - BrandonM 19y ago
    You can't downvote until you have enough karma, and a comment cannot be downvoted after it's been around for more than 24 hours. This is to prevent someone from vindictively going through a person's "threads" and downvoting all of their comments in an effort to kill their karma. You can never downvote article submissions; they can only be upvoted. Downvoting sumbmissions has merit in some cases (removing spam), but in practice it has been used on other sites to kill everyone's submissions except your own, rapidly leading to a downmodding war where the winner is whoever is more committed to their karma score, instead of the one who is submitting the best articles.
    - jdueck 19y ago
      Interesting, thanks!

Alex3917 19y ago

"How do you approach reading this?" Normally people solve problems using some variant of the rational decision making problem. That is, define the problem, define assessment criteria, brainstorm solutions, choose solution, implement solution, measure solution against assessment criteria. A wicked problem, on the other hand, is a problem that can't be clearly defined and has no clear answer. For example, what is the best way to design a car? If you maximize mpg then the car isn't as safe. But if you maximize safety then the car is heavier so the mpg isn't as good. And both safety and mpg affect style. The idea of the idiagram thing is that while the rational decision making model may be the best way to solve well-bounded problems, it isn't a very good way to solve wicked problems. This is roughly where the idiagram page leaves off, but it footnotes the book Wicked Problems and Social Complexity, the first chapter of which is available online. This explains dialog mapping, which is a method of discussing wicked problems in group meetings using mindmaps. Why is this important? If you've been to a lot of discussion forums on the web, you probably realize that forums with nested comments tend to have more rational discussion than forums with flat comments. After all, it's just easier to reply to specific points of an argument with nested comments than it is to fisk one with flat comments. You can go back and forth on one point, and then go back up in the discussion later and talk about a completely different point raised earlier. Trying to solve wicked problems in real life meetings without dialog mapping is sort of the equivalent of an flat discussion on the web. You are sitting around and someone comes up with a complicated proposal. The next person responds to whatever they see in it. And then the other points in the original comment become more or less buried. However if you mindmap all of the points of a person's dialog, then people are able to use the visualization to jump back and forth during the discussion and gain perspective on what's important and what's less important. This ultimately means better solutions to wicked problems in less time, with more focus on the problem and less focus on the personalities involved. The idiagram then is a way of visualization the final output of the brainstorming via dialog mapping process so that all involved can be on the same page when in comes to understanding the solution and each person's responsibilities and how success will be measured. (The whole submission is kind of recursive, because it's a picture about the four steps of the WP solving process, and making a picture is step three of four.) Anyway, that's what I see in the submission. If you're the kind of person who sits are and thinks about how you can have brainstorming sessions in real life with the same abstract ideas and rational thinking that often arise online (because of the asynchronousness and nestedness of the internet), then this is kind of a cool thing.