In light of the 1956 research paper of George A. Miller of Harvard
University, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits
on our Capacity for Processing Information"
<http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Miller/>, I would like to suggest a
different organization of the Tale of Contents of "The Open Source
Way":
1. The Open Source Way: Creating and nurturing communities of
contributors -- Main wiki page
2. Introduction -- What this book is, what it is not, essential
terminology (definitions and pointers)
3. Communities of practice -- The science behind the open source way
3.1 What is a Community of Practice?
3.2 Elements of the Community of Practice
3.3 Principles for Cultivating Communities of Practice
3.4 How to loosely organize a community -- Structure of a
sustainable community
3.5 What your organization does:
3.5.1 Right when practicing the open source way -- Distilled
"Right Way"
3.5.2 Wrong when practicing the open source way -- Distilled
"Wrong Way"
3.6 Business the open source way -- Applying the open source way to business
3.7 Who else to watch -- People in the wider world who write,
talk, and lead community-oriented discussions and actions
4. Data and references -- Data and references that support the book
4.1 Books you should read -- Online and offline resources
4.2 Stuff everyone knows and forgets anyway -- Common knowledge,
common mistakes, common recoveries
4.3 Great stories to tell -- Stories that illustrate the open source way
4.4 How to tell if a FLOSS project is doomed to FAIL - A system
for evaluating the potential of an open source project
5. Appendix -- What fits not elsewhere but only here
6. Community Architecture dashboard -- Overview of this effort with pointers
And, perhaps the chapter titles could be more succinct:
1. The Open Source Way
2. Introduction
3. Communities of Practice
4. Data and references
5. Appendix
6. Dashboard
Hi Friends -
After posting an edit, we're to add a summary. The summary field comes up
with something like this:
[ /* About */ ]
Should the end result look like this?
[ /* About */ blah-blah-blah. Ready for XML conversion
]
In short, does my summary go in the comment block or right after it?
Thanks,
Tom
--
stories, with pictures: http://tommctighe.posterous.com/tag/shortstories