In hashing out new ideas and proposals it would be a help to me and maybe others if we had a working document to discuss.  The 5bdxcc issue is fairly simple, but to get a sense of people's concerns, pro & con, you have to paw through lengthy email chains.

It might help if we used this forum's wiki feature to develop such proposals as draft documents with commentary.

My 2 cents.

73 Martin AA6E

Hello Martin,

This is a good idea. I do know that Dave AA6YQ monitors the group so I hope he picks up on that suggestion.

73

Ria, N2RJ

On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 1:31 PM Martin Ewing AA6E <ewing@...> wrote:

In hashing out new ideas and proposals it would be a help to me and maybe others if we had a working document to discuss.  The 5bdxcc issue is fairly simple, but to get a sense of people's concerns, pro & con, you have to paw through lengthy email chains.

It might help if we used this forum's wiki feature to develop such proposals as draft documents with commentary.

My 2 cents.

73 Martin AA6E

* more AA6YQ comments below

+ I have no experience with the Wiki provided by Groups, so some work would be required to understand how to deploy and use them effectively.

Dave, I'm a little late responding to this, but I do have this to offer:

I have some experience managing a MediaWiki type of wiki for a large radio-oriented site. A couple of years ago, I volunteered to AB4OJ to set up a wiki for the IC-7610 groups.io site. I quickly found that the groups.io wikis are nothing like MediaWiki in how they are structured and edited. That said, I quickly figured out the groups.io wiki tool and was able to provide an organized source of information for that group. I could do the same thing here.

* Thanks, Bob!

* Should each online ARRL Group maintain its own Wiki, or should there be one ARRL Wiki that serves as a knowledge base for all ARRL content?

* Today, we have 4 active Groups:

ARRL-Awards
ARRL-Contesting
ARRL-IARU
ARRL-LoTW

* Three more groups are deployed, staffed, and ready to announce. One of these will focus on new hams.

* There is occasional overlap between ARRL-Awards and ARRL-LoTW: a question about submitting a DXCC application might be posted to either Group, for example. The "new hams" Group will undoubtedly field questions that might be posted on any of the other Groups.

* Excellent answers to common questions should be added to a knowledge base so that when the question is later asked - in any of the groups - the answer can quickly be cited.

 * "One Wiki per Group" will result in duplication and fragmentation; "One Wiki to Serve Them All" would be better for everyone, assuming it is appropriately organized and maintained. It could even include a glossary of common amateur radio terminology.

        73,

              Dave, AA6YQ

“ * Should each online ARRL Group maintain its own Wiki, or should there be one ARRL Wiki that serves as a knowledge base for all ARRL content?”

Hi Dave,

I’ve brought this up as an idea recently. I think it is a good one. If you would like to help support and promote this idea, I would appreciate it. 

73

Ria, N2RJ 

On Mon, Jan 27, 2020 at 1:32 PM Dave AA6YQ <aa6yq@...> wrote:

* more AA6YQ comments below

+ I have no experience with the Wiki provided by Groups, so some work would be required to understand how to deploy and use them effectively.

Dave, I'm a little late responding to this, but I do have this to offer:

I have some experience managing a MediaWiki type of wiki for a large radio-oriented site. A couple of years ago, I volunteered to AB4OJ to set up a wiki for the IC-7610 groups.io site. I quickly found that the groups.io wikis are nothing like MediaWiki in how they are structured and edited. That said, I quickly figured out the groups.io wiki tool and was able to provide an organized source of information for that group. I could do the same thing here.

* Thanks, Bob!

* Should each online ARRL Group maintain its own Wiki, or should there be one ARRL Wiki that serves as a knowledge base for all ARRL content?

* Today, we have 4 active Groups:

ARRL-Awards
ARRL-Contesting
ARRL-IARU
ARRL-LoTW

* Three more groups are deployed, staffed, and ready to announce. One of these will focus on new hams.

* There is occasional overlap between ARRL-Awards and ARRL-LoTW: a question about submitting a DXCC application might be posted to either Group, for example. The "new hams" Group will undoubtedly field questions that might be posted on any of the other Groups.

* Excellent answers to common questions should be added to a knowledge base so that when the question is later asked - in any of the groups - the answer can quickly be cited.

 * "One Wiki per Group" will result in duplication and fragmentation; "One Wiki to Serve Them All" would be better for everyone, assuming it is appropriately organized and maintained. It could even include a glossary of common amateur radio terminology.

        73,

              Dave, AA6YQ

Seems to me experimentation (especially but not only around comms technology) is an inherent part of the hobby.

Personally, I'm happy to try out the wiki approach, and this reflector, plus QST, websites, blogs, FAQs, Tweets, FarceBook pages, club sessions, nets, newsheets, Google Docs ... whatever (collaborative working is an actively evolving field).  We all have our preferences and constraints.  Some will work well and flourish, others won't.  Some experiments may fail.  C'est la vie.

The 'knowledge base' includes and transcends all of them.  The more streams there are, the more the effort required to generate, maintain and coordinate the content gets dissipated.  There's a greater risk of missing out on something relevant simply because it happens to come up 'on a different channel' - including all the unofficial channels by the way.  ARRL's board and committees influence but don't entirely control the agenda, the messages or the discussions arising, and of course there's a whole world out there beyond ARRL, FCC, Congress ... and the USA.   Just sayin'

73
Gary  ZL2iFB

-----Original Message-----
From: ARRL-Awards@... <ARRL-Awards@...> On Behalf Of Dave AA6YQ
Sent: 30 January 2020 07:52
To: 'Fred Jensen' <k6dgw@...>; ARRL-Awards@...
Cc: 'Barry Shelley' <bjshelley@...>; 'Bart W9JJ' <w9jj@...>; 'Dave K1ZZ' <k1zz@...>; 'Dave N1RSN' <disgur@...>; 'Dennis W1UE' <egan.dennis88@...>; 'Greg K0GW' <gpwidin@...>; 'Hopengarten, Fred, K1VR, (Dir, NE)' <fred@...>; 'Mickey Baker N4MB' <n4mb@...>; 'Mike K1MK' <mkeane@...>; 'Steve Ford WB8IMY' <wb8imy@...>; rjairam@...; Dave AA6YQ <aa6yq@...>
Subject: Re: [ARRL-Awards] How to collaborate

+ AA6YQ comments below

I generally find Wiki's to be very useful to get answers to very specific questions about very specific technical things which nearly always have a small number of answers [often one] and opinions are irrelevant.  Their problem, shared with email lists, FB pages, etc., is that discussions on non-technical matters that likely have multiple answers never progress to the point of drafting potential real solutions and moving toward actions.  They're not really collaboration with the goal of establishing a direction and plan as they are open-ended discussions, most of which sort of peter out.  "My ARRL Voice" on FB has been effective in marshaling some major changes to the composition of the ARRL BoD, but not so much through collaboration to a solution as more through providing visibility into the "problem members" and as a platform for new candidates.

Legislative bodies [well ... excluding the US Congress [:=) ] do collaborate, discuss, and ultimately come to some form of action.  Discussion groups on the I'net, like this one, may raise issues which some committee or board may take to their deliberations ... or not.  Beyond that, the DXCC discussion here will continue as just that ... a discussion which will slowly peter out.

Now, if the CAC, DXAC, and even the BoD were to conduct their business with the "lights on," so to speak, using I'net tools, things might be a bit different.  I can't help but wonder what wouldn't have happened had the ad hoc committee that drafted the embarrassment titled "Regulation by Bandwidth" a decade or so ago conducted it's collaboration openly.  RM-11708, a well intentioned effort to plug a loophole in the rules, was a disaster conducted on the FCC's front lawn, primarily because there was no visibility during it's creation and no education prior to sending the petition to DC.

+ First, let's separate concept from implementation. The concept is to provide a Knowledge Base that is continuously populated and updated with information relevant to ARRL members and prospective ARRL members. A Wiki is one of several possible ways to implement such a Knowledge Base. There are other implementation options, such as a Content Management System.

+ Second, a Knowledge Base is not the solution to every challenge and problem that the ARRL faces.  It's objective is to provide value to members and prospective members by making relevant information easily and instantly accessible, with topics ranging from a selection of "first HF antennas" to how to apply for a WAS award on LoTW when you've made QSOs from multiple locations to a geographic listing of ARRL-affiliated clubs to guidelines for operation during an emergency. It will be populated with material from the ARRL's archives, submissions from members, posts from online ARRL Groups, and relevant external sources.

+ The proposed Knowledge Base is not a tool for governance, or realtime interaction and collaboration. Only "topic owners" will have the ability to create or modify content in their areas of responsibility; otherwise, the thing will fill with spam (and worse) in nanoseconds.

+ Online Groups are the proposed venue for realtime interaction and collaboration among all ARRL stakeholders - members, prospective members, staff, management, and directors. We have four such Online Groups now:

ARRL-Awards

ARRL-Contesting

ARRL- IARU

ARRL-LoTW

+ with three more ready to launch. None of those next three is ARRL-Governance, but I strongly recommend that be one of the next set.

         73,

                 Dave, AA6YQ  (ex-member of the "ARRL Member Communications" committee, which is sadly now SK)

I hypothesize the average ham spends more time thinking about how the information is collected and disseminated than the actual information. I'm definitely fit in that mold; I have 18 chat apps on my phone, I love talking about "Dev-Ops," and I always question "hmm why are we on groupme when we could be using Discord" or "can you post this to a wiki so more people can hear about this?"

As such, Amateur radio has a number of wikis already out there. Here's a short list of a few from the top of my head, although the number of wiki-like info repositories on individual's personal webpages must exceed the dozens but are impossibly hard to find.

* https://www.amateur-radio-wiki.net/index.php?title=Main_Page

* https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/wiki/index

* http://wiki.wx0mik.net/

* https://ham.stackexchange.com/ (although not technically a wiki, stackexchange is an incredible repository of information from answered questions)

My question here would be, why add another wiki to the list when you've got other's to contribute to? Is it a matter of control, of information quality, of where it happens to exist on the internet? Is an ARRL wiki/CMS truly novel? Also isn't it in the ARRL's best interest to sell information that could be in a wiki, via their publications (so will we be seeing members-only discussion group wiki's)?

I realize this is the ARRL-Awards channel and not the ARRL-DevOps channel (just kidding, that doesn't exist) so I hope this doesn't send the topic too far off the rails...which to mind brings another question like "If a discussion in one community turns into a discussion suited for another, what should be done?" I'm also curious if the committee that decided to start some Groups.io know about some of the tagging and categorizing power of the platform might help reduce fragmentation (although tagging doesn't lend itself well to discussions via your favorite email platform, which I presume will be how a majority of its members will communicate).

-Sterling N0SSC

On Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 1:30 PM Gary Hinson <Gary@...> wrote:

Seems to me experimentation (especially but not only around comms technology) is an inherent part of the hobby.

Personally, I'm happy to try out the wiki approach, and this reflector, plus QST, websites, blogs, FAQs, Tweets, FarceBook pages, club sessions, nets, newsheets, Google Docs ... whatever (collaborative working is an actively evolving field).  We all have our preferences and constraints.  Some will work well and flourish, others won't.  Some experiments may fail.  C'est la vie.

The 'knowledge base' includes and transcends all of them.  The more streams there are, the more the effort required to generate, maintain and coordinate the content gets dissipated.  There's a greater risk of missing out on something relevant simply because it happens to come up 'on a different channel' - including all the unofficial channels by the way.  ARRL's board and committees influence but don't entirely control the agenda, the messages or the discussions arising, and of course there's a whole world out there beyond ARRL, FCC, Congress ... and the USA.   Just sayin'

73
Gary  ZL2iFB

-----Original Message-----
From: ARRL-Awards@... <ARRL-Awards@...> On Behalf Of Dave AA6YQ
Sent: 30 January 2020 07:52
To: 'Fred Jensen' <k6dgw@...>; ARRL-Awards@...
Cc: 'Barry Shelley' <bjshelley@...>; 'Bart W9JJ' <w9jj@...>; 'Dave K1ZZ' <k1zz@...>; 'Dave N1RSN' <disgur@...>; 'Dennis W1UE' <egan.dennis88@...>; 'Greg K0GW' <gpwidin@...>; 'Hopengarten, Fred, K1VR, (Dir, NE)' <fred@...>; 'Mickey Baker N4MB' <n4mb@...>; 'Mike K1MK' <mkeane@...>; 'Steve Ford WB8IMY' <wb8imy@...>; rjairam@...; Dave AA6YQ <aa6yq@...>
Subject: Re: [ARRL-Awards] How to collaborate

+ AA6YQ comments below

I generally find Wiki's to be very useful to get answers to very specific questions about very specific technical things which nearly always have a small number of answers [often one] and opinions are irrelevant.  Their problem, shared with email lists, FB pages, etc., is that discussions on non-technical matters that likely have multiple answers never progress to the point of drafting potential real solutions and moving toward actions.  They're not really collaboration with the goal of establishing a direction and plan as they are open-ended discussions, most of which sort of peter out.  "My ARRL Voice" on FB has been effective in marshaling some major changes to the composition of the ARRL BoD, but not so much through collaboration to a solution as more through providing visibility into the "problem members" and as a platform for new candidates.

Legislative bodies [well ... excluding the US Congress [:=) ] do collaborate, discuss, and ultimately come to some form of action.  Discussion groups on the I'net, like this one, may raise issues which some committee or board may take to their deliberations ... or not.  Beyond that, the DXCC discussion here will continue as just that ... a discussion which will slowly peter out.

Now, if the CAC, DXAC, and even the BoD were to conduct their business with the "lights on," so to speak, using I'net tools, things might be a bit different.  I can't help but wonder what wouldn't have happened had the ad hoc committee that drafted the embarrassment titled "Regulation by Bandwidth" a decade or so ago conducted it's collaboration openly.  RM-11708, a well intentioned effort to plug a loophole in the rules, was a disaster conducted on the FCC's front lawn, primarily because there was no visibility during it's creation and no education prior to sending the petition to DC.

+ First, let's separate concept from implementation. The concept is to provide a Knowledge Base that is continuously populated and updated with information relevant to ARRL members and prospective ARRL members. A Wiki is one of several possible ways to implement such a Knowledge Base. There are other implementation options, such as a Content Management System.

+ Second, a Knowledge Base is not the solution to every challenge and problem that the ARRL faces.  It's objective is to provide value to members and prospective members by making relevant information easily and instantly accessible, with topics ranging from a selection of "first HF antennas" to how to apply for a WAS award on LoTW when you've made QSOs from multiple locations to a geographic listing of ARRL-affiliated clubs to guidelines for operation during an emergency. It will be populated with material from the ARRL's archives, submissions from members, posts from online ARRL Groups, and relevant external sources.

+ The proposed Knowledge Base is not a tool for governance, or realtime interaction and collaboration. Only "topic owners" will have the ability to create or modify content in their areas of responsibility; otherwise, the thing will fill with spam (and worse) in nanoseconds.

+ Online Groups are the proposed venue for realtime interaction and collaboration among all ARRL stakeholders - members, prospective members, staff, management, and directors. We have four such Online Groups now:

ARRL-Awards

ARRL-Contesting

ARRL- IARU

ARRL-LoTW

+ with three more ready to launch. None of those next three is ARRL-Governance, but I strongly recommend that be one of the next set.

         73,

                 Dave, AA6YQ  (ex-member of the "ARRL Member Communications" committee, which is sadly now SK)

** K6DGW comments below

On 1/29/2020 10:52 AM, Dave AA6YQ wrote:

+ AA6YQ comments below

I generally find Wiki's to be very useful to get answers to very specific questions about very specific technical things which nearly always have a small number of answers [often one] and opinions are irrelevant.  Their problem, shared with email lists, FB pages, etc., is that discussions on non-technical matters that likely have multiple answers never progress to the point of drafting potential real solutions and moving toward actions.  They're not really collaboration with the goal of establishing a direction and plan as they are open-ended discussions, most of which sort of peter out.  "My ARRL Voice" on FB has been effective in marshaling some major changes to the composition of the ARRL BoD, but not so much through collaboration to a solution as more through providing visibility into the "problem members" and as a platform for new candidates.

Legislative bodies [well ... excluding the US Congress [:=) ] do collaborate, discuss, and ultimately come to some form of action.  Discussion groups on the I'net, like this one, may raise issues which some committee or board may take to their deliberations ... or not.  Beyond that, the DXCC discussion here will continue as just that ... a discussion which will slowly peter out.

Now, if the CAC, DXAC, and even the BoD were to conduct their business with the "lights on," so to speak, using I'net tools, things might be a bit different.  I can't help but wonder what wouldn't have happened had the ad hoc committee that drafted the embarrassment titled "Regulation by Bandwidth" a decade or so ago conducted it's collaboration openly.  RM-11708, a well intentioned effort to plug a loophole in the rules, was a disaster conducted on the FCC's front lawn, primarily because there was no visibility during it's creation and no education prior to sending the petition to DC.

+ First, let's separate concept from implementation. The concept is to provide a Knowledge Base that is continuously populated and updated with information relevant to ARRL members and prospective ARRL members. A Wiki is one of several possible ways to implement such a Knowledge Base. There are other implementation options, such as a Content Management System.

**Agreed.  For collaboration between hams on various personal [possibly technical] projects, such a KB can be very valuable provided it remains well and correctly indexed and the info is updated.  Also agreed that wiki's do a good job in this arena.

+ Second, a Knowledge Base is not the solution to every challenge and problem that the ARRL faces.  It's objective is to provide value to members and prospective members by making relevant information easily and instantly accessible, with topics ranging from a selection of "first HF antennas" to how to apply for a WAS award on LoTW when you've made QSOs from multiple locations to a geographic listing of ARRL-affiliated clubs to guidelines for operation during an emergency. It will be populated with material from the ARRL's archives, submissions from members, posts from online ARRL Groups, and relevant external sources. 

**Agreed, for the kind of information you're naming.  However, if the "KB" effort is intended to address collaboration on issues such as "DXCC rules for Remote Operation," or "How should FT<mumble> be incorporated into existing contest rules," or "Should ARRL petition the FCC to change the sub-allocations on 80 meters," I remain unconvinced that the I'net tools currently extant and employed will help a whole lot, if at all.  ARRL is going to have to divest itself of the "Be quiet now, we know what's best for you" attitude and behavior and engaging the membership in that is not really a role of "providing value" to members and the ham community in general.

+ The proposed Knowledge Base is not a tool for governance, or realtime interaction and collaboration. Only "topic owners" will have the ability to create or modify content in their areas of responsibility; otherwise, the thing will fill with spam (and worse) in nanoseconds.

**The closest "group" I can think of right now that manages some semblance of collaborative behavior coupled with development and implementations of actions is the ADIF group.  It is a conglomerate of people with stakes in the ADIF specification, and problems are presented, discussed, and ultimately voted on for inclusion in the next version.  The membership stays on subject, more or less.  Thorny issues however, such as the MODE: and SUBMODE: tags and their enumerations don't progress very fast, if at all.

+ Online Groups are the proposed venue for realtime interaction and collaboration among all ARRL stakeholders - members, prospective members, staff, management, and directors. We have four such Online Groups now:

ARRL-Awards

ARRL-Contesting

ARRL- IARU

ARRL-LoTW

+ with three more ready to launch. None of those next three is ARRL-Governance, but I strongly recommend that be one of the next set.

**Matters of governance will be a tough one.  Boards of Directors are subject to a number of legal provisions which limit both what they can discuss publicly and what they can do.  However, the ARRL Board could do a hugely better job of communicating their actions and the reasons behind them and the groups you are describing could work to that end.  Much of the committee and staff work can easily be communicated to the members.

**While it is true that some matters before the Board [and being worked internally by the staff] must remain confidential, there is a huge array of matters that can and should be worked in sunshine.  A big one is development of petitions to the FCC what will affect all amateurs.  Admittedly, it is much easier to conjure these up in small committees with visibility to the membership and ham community only after the "sausage is smoked" and the petition is at the FCC.  There is a history of this behavior going back at least to the 60's that has resulted in very significant numbers of "Former Members of ARRL" who will never rejoin.

**We are 2 years into a 3-year grass roots effort to reclaim our organization.  The new Board is not going to succeed any better than the former board if they don't radically change the way they run ARRL.  If the goal is to regain membership, the obvious first actions are, "Why did we lose so many members in the first place over the years?"

73,
Fred ["Skip"] K6DGW
Sparks NV DM09dn
Washoe County