Urgent Evoke

A crash course in changing the world.

This post was a comment on MAK post: UEvoke? WHATS GOING ON??
In a fact it's a second part of my post Act, Reflect & Improve, so I decided I post it also on my blog.

As a psychologist, with another degree in sociology and social work I like to think that I know something about human nature and group dynamics.


So here is my interpretation what's happening on EVOKE.


You attract a group of people to play one game. They start to work on missions and very soon it
becomes clear that you have to be quite clever and creative to be successful. Top leaders (if we see the leader board or not we still know who they are) are indeed mostly very intelligent people and their influence on the network is huge.


The long tail (meaning all the 70% or even more other agents) don’t really have an impact on EVOKE climate. Top leaders with their influential posts determine which are the
important topics on EVOKE … they are in a way the real designers of EVOKE
SOCIAL REALITY
.


When having clever and creative people on board, it’s great when you want to produce social innovations, however dealing with intelligent people otherwise can be quite hard, because they are usually not the obedient ones. Few of them are also not very polite, in fact sometimes quite rude, but they are smart enough to make strong alliances on the network.


So when a sometimes (or often) rude, however informally very powerful agents is expelled from the game, this can result in a chain of events.


In a way it is very understandable that admins kicked off the game somebody who is rude. However, I don’t think something which is understandable is also necessarily a smart decision.


I believe and this is already showing that decisions like this can result in a rapid de-motivation of other brilliant agents whose contribution to EVOKE is very important. Agents are losing their SPARKS … I bet I’m not the only one who sees this.


So the real question is – what is a smaller sacrifice? Admis firmly decided that they are not changing their position – who is kicked off the EVOKE, should stay off. However how big
consequences can have this decision on EVOKE social reality ? How many good agents will loose their passion to contribute content after this? Will agents still trust the network? Can EVOKE easily affords to lose some of the best agents?


Well, some food for thought…







Views: 33

Comment by David Dewane on March 31, 2010 at 9:31am
There are six weeks left and I plan on making the most out of them. However much various agents were turned off by the rude comments of other agents or sour choices by the admins, they can be reengaged by other dedicated players. +1 COLLABORATION
Comment by Aaron Freeman on March 31, 2010 at 9:54am
I'm with you agent Dewane!
Comment by Shakwei Mbindyo on March 31, 2010 at 9:56am
+1 Courage. Conflicts / disputes / disagreements are a fact of life in the real world. How we deal with it depands on our frame of reference, agenda, etc. IMHO we cannot ignore or fear conflict. We need to face it and manage it continuously with the knowlege that what I see as "right" is not necessarily so for everyone. We work towards unity in a very diverse world.
Comment by Simon Brookes on March 31, 2010 at 10:14am
I agree Agent Mbindyo. Certainly I accept that dispute and disagreement are important elements of intelligent discourse and debate. We all need to have our opinions scrutinised and challenged - this is the only way that knowledge and "truth" can progress in a meaningful and useful manner. However, we also have to accept that there are occasions when reasoned argument extends into unreasonable, aggressive behaviour. I certainly try to be pragmatic and allow people space to extend themselves intellectually but I have zero tolerance for abusive and offensive behaviour. We are building an amazing community here. It is from the positive contributions, discussion and support from agents like yourself and Agent Elastika that this is happening. As Agent Dewane puts it, "There are six weeks left and I plan on making the most out of them." I applaud this attitude. Lets put the negativity of the last few days behind us and just push forward with our mission to make the world a better place. The world is watching - I am hopeful that we can show them a better way.

Agent Brookes (EVOKE Mentor)
Comment by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on March 31, 2010 at 10:14am
Elastika-- perhaps it's because I joined late, after the leadership board had already been taken down-- but I never supposed that points were important in this game. What I see, as a latecomer, is a few people obsessed with points attracting a huge amount of attention by posting a lot of controversial opinion-- and framing the game as being 'us little guys' against 'those big guys'. Then anyone who does not see it in quite such stark terms is likely to be attacked as being on the 'other side' or even being 'planted' in the ranks of the 'good guys' to spy on them.

The reality is that only one person has been banned-- and that was because-- despite having his account restored he chose to send two threatening e-mails to Jane McGonigal's private email address.

You've noted yourself that women are a small minority on Evoke (and many other on-line communities as well) this is one reason why. Anyone who is around communities sooner or later experiences having a wonderful group of inspiring companions turned into a group of angry, wrangling enemies by behavior described well by Cory Doctorow.

Since in many, if not most, cultures we women are socialized to smooth over disputes, reconcile arguing parties and generally 'make nice' this is often very disturbing to us. And finding ourselves, without warning, under verbal attack feels very threatening. In fact, often it does more than just FEEL threatening. The case of Cathy Siera that Doctorow refers to ended in her attackers publishing personal information- including, I believe, her home address and phone- and sending her death threats.

The wh*** thing reminds me of a schoolyard brawl, with the little attention-seeking boy who started it all having just what he wanted-- everyone clustered around him, his friends defending him and his mother trying patiently to explain to him why he's being punished. Meanwhile victims - little girls, mostly, are standing at the edge of the playground, white-faced, eyes downcast, forgotten. And they've decided that next time, it will be better to stay inside.

My question to you - and to everyone - is, what is the world going to be like if we are always willing to let the quiet ones, the frightened ones, be pushed from the field?
Comment by MoE on March 31, 2010 at 11:58am
Thanks for being that lucid minded, Elastika. I guess the network is in the need of people like you, right now.
Personally I feel sadly disappointed, but I won't address my efforts to criticize what happened. I'm just not feeling fond to this, anymore.
The only reason I'm writing this here, is to let you know that I'll keep on following you, now more as a PERSON, than an AGENT with whom I'm on a mission to save the world.
Silly of me, I was almost believing it.
Comment by Simon Brookes on March 31, 2010 at 12:05pm
Someone once said "Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending". Again I urge you Stefano to continue with us on this journey. You have been an amazing, dynamic presence in the network so far and with 6 weeks to go, I'd love to see you here with us at the end.

Simon
Comment by MoE on March 31, 2010 at 12:24pm
Thanks for your words Simon, and please do not take my response as unconditionally negative.
My problem at present is that, though I agree 100% with what you say, I would have expected that same effort to make a new ending from the EVOKE team.
I must confess I didn't perceive that positive tendency, and didn't appreciate too much that "these-are-the-rules-just-low-your-head-and-keep-on-playing-with-a-smile" approach.
Again, I don't want to criticize, not anymore. I'm just realizing that I share with EVOKE's philosohpy less than I thought at the beginning. But don't be afraid, I'm not like Pan: though not agreeing, I won't obstruct your game.
I do not fight culture.
Comment by Turil Cronburg on March 31, 2010 at 1:06pm
The fact is that if you don't love someone (including the community of EVOKE as a wh*** entity) you will not be able to help them grow and thrive and become a beautiful individual.

So I think it's important for those who don't love EVOKE, even with all it's conflict and mistakes, then you should break off the relationship, or at least take a time out to rea****s your goals and your tactics.

And for those of us who do love EVOKE, even with it's conflict and mistakes, then we're going to easily find our spark as we continue to work to make this a more beautiful and healthy place.
Comment by Shakwei Mbindyo on March 31, 2010 at 1:18pm
Agents, Although UE is "just a game" it is also a relection of many things that happen in the world today and how we act/react. I have posted a blog at http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/losing-spark - the end game is to save the world. Am I (are you) fit for the task?

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