Frances Bell

Thanks for this response Marc - and I hope we can progress this discussion. You say that "our community should explore such issues in-community (without banning)". In any discussion, dialogue, i.e. participants are willing to change their minds, is communal but personal too. By that I mean that in a discussion thread, dialogue may only be taking place within a subset of participants who are open to changing their minds (and even then vulnerable to the noise associated with misunderstanding related to text communication, thread confusion, etc.) withing a context where those who are not open to changing their minds are creating a lot of assertive/aggressive noise. That is a lot of noise, and we can all remember those noisy, aggressive threads with diversions into nit-picking and point-scoring.

Freedom (e.g. from banning) comes with responsibilites, and the Kantian libertarian ethic so dear to many early inhabitants of the 'electronic frontier' is exclusive to those who don't subscribe to it. The early Internet was dominated by white middle class men and that had an impact on what was accepted as Internet mores. I think that it behoves any 'community' to examine how they manage to sustain participation outside that envelope.

I have no idea, apart from my subjective impressions, about gender and race demographics (let alone age/ sexual orientation) within Moodle.org. If Moodle.org collectively wishes to have an inclusive discussion about how the commons and commerce can work together the I think it (the collective) needs to encourage a diversity of responses and individuals need to exercise restraint and promote inclusivity in their responses. But then, that is just my opinion ;)

This has been an illuminating thread for me. I wondered where Steve H went and this thread has helped me 'find' him. I was fascinated to see he is using Wordpress (100s of us say 'me too') and began to wonder about the dialogue around free development/ free support/ earning a living through hosting/consultancy/training is playing out in Wordpress. Well I don't know the answer to that (no time to research it at present) but I was amused to see that Steve is clashing with the moderator at Wordpress.org http://educhalk.org/blog/?p=290
Steve was very helpful here on Moodle.org and apparently also at Wordpress.org but seems to run into problems with the 'authority' that is imposed by moderators, brand-holders, etc. What amused me about his (addictive- yes Mary!) blog (and I am going from memory as Google cache does not seem to 'have' this) is that he was draconian in his own protocols for whose comments he would post at moodleus.org (a domain that is now something else entirely). I am in the interesting (but probably not unique) position at Moodle.org in having attracted hostile IMHO responses from both Steve Hyndman and Bryan Williams. There is a genuine tension between OSS developers, 'ordinary' OSS community members and those who are trying to make a legitimate living (and sustaining the product development) from OSS services - training, consultancy, support, etc. So, taking a very big step backwards, here are some questions:

• How can the wonderful OSS development movement engage with commerce in such a way that the products are sustained and disseminated and 'free' development AND support is recognised rather than exploited?
• How can dialogue (within OSS communities or elsewhere) be conducted in such a way that it actually addresses the productive tensions between the 'free' development and support activities and the 'commercial' service provision activities in an atmosphere conducive to productive dialogue as opposed to invective and defence? (BTW a colleague of mine Frank Thissen describes this (referring to Buber ) as something where parties enter into it with the possibility that they ay change their minds.

I think that these are very pertinent questions - possibly not to be conducted Moodle.org - but that need a place to be discussed. If they are being discussed in a productive environment, please let us know.

What is it that you are planning to do with Moodle?

Hi Dashon and other students from Bethel. I think you might have strayed into the wrong place. Why don't you ask your teacher where you discussion should be?

Have you seen any of Maggi Savin Baden's work? As well as writing about online PBL< she has worked on medical education projects in Second Life http://archive.student.bmj.com/issues/07/12/news/431.php