When you see "Administrative User" that's probably Jim.

Let's get some discussion started, and add some feedback so that this shows up on the front page and people know where to start!

Helllloooo! all. I'm so excited that <ned> is up and running. I'd love to hang out here and mess around for the day but I just spoke to Patricia Burbank this morning. She is in Vancouver and her and her husband are coming over to visit me on SaltSpring for the day so I'm going to go play tour guide. Picking them up at the ferry terminal right after I do my container duty.

I <3 <ned>

Yay!!!! So glad to be here, ready to pitch in and build :)

Fantastic! Great to see everyone here, Meron, Jackie, Ray!

I have made one change to the feedback system. Where on omidyar.net, your banks would grow magically overnight, here you are only rewarded for time that you spend reading. When banks grew automatically, that was because you were getting credit for others reading discussions that you had started. This caused a lot of confusion on the old site, and gave some people more points than they could spend. Here, you will get about one point in your bank for every 80 pages that you read. I'd like to see how that goes for a while.

You also get karmic activity credit for posting comments, voting in polls, and other general activity... same as good ol' omidyar.net.

What's that old saying, "Everything old is new again."?

Thanks for your work here, Jim. Good to see everybody.

endings are beginnings :D will be back soon with user agreement thoughts.....

I think that we need to amend the user agreement to include a CC license from the begining.

Hey friends!

So great to see everyone here, and a big thank you again to Jim for getting this all put together.

Regarding the UA and PP we can use o/net's as a template and make changes when/where needed.

Meron, please tell Patricia I said hello...you guys are going to have a blast.

The visit with Patricia and her husband was quick but wonderful. Picked them up at 2pm from the Long Harbour ferry, took them to the container, visited the SOLID office, coffee at Roaster's, wandered the market that was packing up after a rainy day, lunch overlooking the harbour from OysterCatchers (where you went with Pam and the boys) then drove them to the south end, a quick walking tour of Fulford Habour Village then had them on the 5:50pm ferry. Talked non-stop the whole time in between :D

A talking/touring packed day...what a blast.

When I saw Nicholas Kristof in Portland recently one interesting thing he said about the media was (paraphrase)...

"We the media spend too much time focusing on news that is yesterday, and ignore news that is every day."

That made me think about what much of the focus that the o/net members have spent their time on: aids, poverty, water, hunger, malaria, cancer, genocide, human rights. trafficking, education, orphans, war, child soldiers.

In general we are trying our best to focus on the every day problems.

Thrilled to count you all as friends and collaborators.

Deja vu, that's for sure. But in the best sense of it -- not a feeling of dread deja vu, but feeling that something good's just around the bend.

But, of course, I'm sidetracked right now by needy children who have been far too busy this weekend.

I look forward to re-meeting everyone. (I'm Luke. And I'm a good-aholic.)

Welcome Luke!!!

Hi, I'm Meron and I'm a <ned>-aholic with a chocolate thing goin' on the side ; )

We need to have some continuing traditions!

okay, about the points dood(s) - i need more points to start a group - ack! threshold is 10, which is hard to do in one's first months - can it be lowered to 5 to help "seed" the place, then bumped up again or something...?

oh, and kudos to jim and mark and everyone who made it - i feel woozy, like i just went through a Munneckeian Rabbit Hole (not to be mistaken for a Manichean Syzygos ...

>>Munneckeian Rabbit Hole<<

Good one.

>>can it be lowered to 5 to help "seed" the place, then bumped up again or something...?<<

Or can we drag and drop some o/net groups here free of charge...Jim?

Think before you jump, Mark. Get it right at the beginning or you will pay for it in the end. (Grandma speaking...)

Hey, I'm just asking questions and look to the entire BOA for advice.

Should Peace Tiles, LiA, Emancipation Network, Better World Island, Stop Genocide Now and others be free (per the BoA invitation) to set up shop here instead of the bland groups that were set as default to start with?

Oh yeah. Facebook started as a per invitation only web site... at first. Very much helped guide the initial development of the site. Thoughts?

How to deal with signal/noise ratio? Just tossing that out there.

exciting to see everyone here! Congrats Mark and Jim.

I am hoping to get some direction/advice/assistance on migrating content and members from the old LiA group at Onet to ned.com

For those who don't yet know, Life in Africa's communities in Kampala and Gulu are in the process of changing their identity to Ned Uganda. How much of the old LiA content should migrate here? When can we start having active ned Uganda planning discussions online that involve more of the Ugandan members?

Given the point minimum for starting new groups, I feel handicapped to help the LiA / ned Uganda group get started. I've also got stuff on Opok Farm and the new US based Life in Africa to share, but it looks like it will be a while before I am able to populate this site with any of it.

Is it possible to change the point threshold temporarily for the ned board of advisors so we can help to get this show on the road?

Ok, it used to be 10 points to start a group, and you would also need 5 sponsors, each ready to spend 5 poits.

Instead of 10/5 it's now 2 for group creation / 1 for sponsoring.

As soon as traffic goes up on the site, I'll change it back to 10 and 5.

Hey - this looks familiar!

All aboard the board:

http://www.ned.com/group/board/

This group cannot be read by non-members, but any of us can join at the moment. As soon as others start showing up, I'll make it by-invitation-only.

A couple thoughts, take or leave them:

• I know that a lot of work has gone into creating groups on o.net. But how much is valuable rolling over? I'd say that content for content's sake isn't necessary, and past conversations and brainstorming don't add to the here and now. Workspaces are a different issues, I think. Anyway, all that to say that I'd rather see minimal engorging of this site, unless content is essential for the groups moving forward. How to determine what's essential -- that has to be an individual decision, but I think people should challenge themselves with the thought process. I'd personally rather see new work here than recapturing history.
• Invitation only? Well, I personally like that, for the time being. What kind of scares me is seeing the pink and green of o.net and thinking that it'll only be a matter of time before things here end up looking like things there. Am I being elitist? No. Just being focused. Do I want a community of happy and pleasant people? No. I just would like to see some focus on collaboration, social innovation, and doing things. The blah blah blah is definitely one thing that can't migrate to this new site.
• Now that we "own the code", is it worthwhile doing some additional tweaking? There have always been issues about points, etc. I'd rather the conversation not diverge into that territory, but maybe there are some simple "fixes" that people would like to see -- cap on points to conversations or fellow users, for instance?