The Most Important Social Network: GitHub • Hacker News Board

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#71

Post by Argorak » Sun, Jul 15, 2012, 3:04 PM UTC

jordo37 wrote: post #58

Argorak wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his point is that Github is about actual work artifacts, while all other business networks are basically talk about a more or less specific topic - more flexible, but also less focused. Github is much closer to the topic at hand. There is almost no way around attaching comments to a piece of code.

But Github is about one specific kind of real work. The conversations that happen on Jive and Yammer are also real work, as are the documents made in corporate/public wikis (which are studied extensively) and the work assets made and stored in SharePoint and Google Docs. I don't disagree with the author's premise that GitHub is great and should be studied, but it only covers one small portion of one type of work.

You missed the tiny little word "artifact". The discussions on Yammer and Jive are work related and are part of the process, but are not rarely directly attached to an artifact. You would talk about the artifact, but its not "there". It is produced somewhere else, in the depths of IT. That doesn't mean that Yammer ain't interesting.

SharePoint and Google Docs are not social networks. They are sharing solutions like Dropbox is. Your corporate wiki might qualify, but thats hard to study.

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#72

Post by samstave » Sun, Jul 15, 2012, 7:10 PM UTC

mistercow wrote: post #65

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh that's just ridiculous. I mean there's a point of "jumping the shark" here even though I hate that phrase. I mean come on, it's not that great. It's arguable that this whole attitude about Github is massively pretentious and overblown. I don't think we can compare Github to the development of agriculture, pasteurization, classical mechanics, etc.

I didn't compare github to any of those things. I simply pointed out that "X doesn't even know about Y" is not equivalent to "Y isn't important to X".

I think your choice of wording was confusing some of us.

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#73

Post by mistercow » Mon, Jul 16, 2012, 2:04 AM UTC

samstave wrote: post #72

mistercow wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't compare github to any of those things. I simply pointed out that "X doesn't even know about Y" is not equivalent to "Y isn't important to X".

I think your choice of wording was confusing some of us.

It's frustrating that one cannot make an analogy these days on the internet without some people assuming that you're making a comparison of the analogues. If a comparison seems unreasonable, it seems to me like the obvious thing to do is reread it and see if it makes sense as an analogy instead.

The problem is that an analogy's illustrative power is increased by using an extreme analogue, so if you interpret a good analogy as a comparison, it will always look like hyperbole. On the other hand, intentionally misconstruing analogies as comparisons is a great dark-side rhetorical technique, if you're into that sort of thing.

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#74

Post by samstave » Mon, Jul 16, 2012, 3:46 AM UTC

mistercow wrote: post #73

samstave wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your choice of wording was confusing some of us.

It's frustrating that one cannot make an analogy these days on the internet without some people assuming that you're making a comparison of the analogues. If a comparison seems unreasonable, it seems to me like the obvious thing to do is reread it and see if it makes sense as an analogy instead. The problem is that an analogy's illustrative power is increased by using an extreme analogue, so if you interpret a good a…

I think this issue is compounded by the "skim this and spend .02 seconds on critically think about it before moving on to the next data-byte online" syndrome.

Re: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub

#75

Post by jordo37 » Mon, Jul 16, 2012, 5:52 AM UTC

Argorak wrote: post #71

jordo37 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Github is about one specific kind of real work. The conversations that happen on Jive and Yammer are also real work, as are the documents made in corporate/public wikis (which are studied extensively) and the work assets made and stored in SharePoint and Google Docs. I don't disagree with the author's premise that GitHub is great and should be studied, but it only covers one small portion of one type of work.

You missed the tiny little word "artifact". The discussions on Yammer and Jive are work related and are part of the process, but are not rarely directly attached to an artifact. You would talk about the artifact, but its not "there". It is produced somewhere else, in the depths of IT. That doesn't mean that Yammer ain't interesting. SharePoint and Google Docs are not social networks. They are sharing solutions like D…

I did not miss the word, just disagreed with his premise that assets are an important distinction.

That being said, wikis are not hard to study, its incredibly common and they are high on the list of the favorite things to discuss among collaboration researchers and have been for years - I've experienced this working with several, but you can also look at research such as http://www.citeulike.org/group/1136/article/114322 to see more.