That night at 1 am I met Fael at the pavilion when I walked in.
Fael Illyar: Hi Pema
Pema Pera: Hi Fael, let’s see, good morning I guess, for you?
Fael Illyar: Well, sort of.
Fael Illyar: Looks like there is a need to create a small tutorial about putting the logs on the wiki
Faenik: could be
Pema Pera: yes, I was about to bring that up
Pema Pera: some people will immediately catch on, but if someone has never used it, going to the help facility may take a few hours :)
Fael Illyar: Yes :)
Fael Illyar: It’s not really more difficult than using word processor but …
Pema Pera: yes, but learning to use a word process for the first time also takes quite a while . . . . we tend to forget afterwords!
Fael Illyar: True
Fael Illyar: you have to use one for quite a while to remember it properly
Pema Pera: and when you don’t use it for a while, you forget again . . . .
Pema Pera: do you have a suggestion as for how to put together a tutorial?
Pema Pera: It could be one page with minimal hints
Pema Pera: or a few pages
Pema Pera: but perhaps just one page may be good to start
Fael Illyar: some screenshots with the important parts highlighted to make sure people know what to push :)
A great idea! Pictures are much more precise than most attempts at description are.
Pema Pera: yes, that would be ideal!
Pema Pera: Right now, I don’t have the time to put something like that together.
Pema Pera: Would you, possibly with help from others, have time to do that?
Fael Illyar: I have to leave for in 25 minutes.
Fael Illyar: maybe tonight
Pema Pera: that would be great!
Pema Pera: One approach would be to keep it relatively simple
Pema Pera: put it on the wiki
Pema Pera: and teach at the start how to edit it
Pema Pera: and then ask the user to add their questions there right on the page
Pema Pera: killing two birds with one stone
Pema Pera: You will see their questions
Pema Pera: and they learn how to edit :)
Faenik loves wells!
Pema Pera: and it can become a groups process
Pema Pera: if, say, Fred or Syl or anyone else sees the question before you do
Pema Pera: they can extend the tutorial
Fael Illyar: Yes, anyone can see them
Pema Pera: As always, the biggest step is to get something at all, to get the ball rolling
Pema Pera: if you could do that, that would be a great start!
Fael Illyar: I’ve been doing that for the weekend :P
Fael Illyar: It looks like it’s moving slowly already
Pema Pera: a tutorial?
Fael Illyar: no, the wiki itself
Pema Pera: ah, yes, and thank you very much indeed!
Pema Pera: that made a big difference
Pema Pera: as you said somewhere — forgot in which session — the best (probably the only) way to get something done is for someone just to start :)
And that is the strength of Second Life, in general, with many people just starting something and then others stepping in and helping.
Fael Illyar: no-one else has managed to make the logs properly formatted as of yet so tutorial is obviously needed :)
Pema Pera: ah, are there more besides Riddles’ and yours?
Fael Illyar: 6 added pages. Although one is missing the log
Pema Pera: oh wow!
Pema Pera: I’ll have a look soon — been too busy today, preparing our weekly astro meeting, for which I’m the secretary . . . . writing both minutes and agenda — we do things a bit more formally there
Faenik loves wells!
Pema Pera: btw, thanks for your email!
Pema Pera: I agree with all the points you wrote — makes it harder to reply almost :>)
Pema Pera: so instead, let me bring up something else, in the spirit of starting at the end of a reality exploration and working backwards.
Pema Pera: The other day I mentioned Being as a Resource, a wonderful topic to come back to if you or anyone else likes to.
Pema Pera: Today let me point to another topic, one that is perhaps most difficult, for me at least:
Pema Pera: it is this:
Pema Pera: there is no lack of knowing
Pema Pera: or seeing or realizing, whatever term you’d like to use
Pema Pera: ultimately.
Pema Pera: So, in other words: even when we think we don’t know/see/realize/understand
Faenik: indeed?
Pema Pera: we have never left Seeing . . . .
Fael Illyar: “everyone knows, we have just forgotten we do”
Pema Pera: we can never leave Being . . . .
Pema Pera: yes, and more radically: nothing has ever been forgotten even!
This I found one of the most difficult points to put in words, this “knowing is there, even in the middle of (seemingly) not-knowing.”
Pema Pera: It seems that anything that any tradition tells us can be sharpened, made more radical
Pema Pera: with the result that it either becomes unclear or more efficient
Pema Pera: Zen is an example
Pema Pera: very direct, so for most people very unclear . . . .
Fael Illyar: well, forgotten … I think you took that with a bit different meaning I did :P
Pema Pera: how did you mean it?
Fael Illyar: it’s not that you’ve forgotten something. It’s that you’ve forgotten you know it.
Pema Pera: yes, that is an interesting difference
Pema Pera: like a poor person sleeping on buried riches — a traditional image
Pema Pera: poor in one sense, rich in another, but not knowing it
Fael Illyar: that sounds familiar, I’ve probably heard that story somewhere.
Fael Illyar: are my wings in the way?
Pema Pera: oh no, not at all
Pema Pera: I was just taking a picture for the blog :)
Fael Illyar: ah :)
Pema Pera: and I had to click a few times to not let me look totally away :>)
Fael Illyar: ah :)
I tried to move my “never-not-knowing” idea into a more practical direction.
Pema Pera: So the application of “never a lack of knowledge”
Pema Pera: is that there is “never a reason to reach, grasp, search”
Pema Pera: or equivalently, reaching/grasping/searching is a waste of time
Pema Pera: Like the handpuppet holding a long discussion about what a hand can be
Pema Pera: and then moving around in search of the hand
Faenik: indeed?
Pema Pera: looking away in all directions
Pema Pera: Only when that kind of search stops, is there a chance to see.
Pema Pera: So I was delighted to see in your email, that you described that kind of not-searching but also not waiting attitude
Pema Pera: Waiting is too passive
Pema Pera: Searching too active
Pema Pera: stopping/dropping hints at a third way
Pema Pera: totally completely absolutely different from searching AND from waiting
Faenik: why not?
Pema Pera: You know, it would be great to have those discussions on the wiki
Pema Pera: of the type that you and I have had by email a few times now
Pema Pera: and Adams and me
Pema Pera: and Syl and me, on occasions
Pema Pera: whenever something was a bit too long to spell out in chat
Pema Pera: Question is what structure would be best
Pema Pera: Perhaps just start somewhere and see what grows out?
Once again we talked about how to get something new started.
Fael Illyar: Well, unless someone has an idea for the structure already, I guess there is nothing more that we can do?
Fael Illyar: although it should probably be a combined email so that all points are on one page if possible.
Pema Pera: well, still two ways: literally just start with page 1, or think a bit about designing a skeleton structure
Pema Pera: yes, indeed
Fael Illyar: For the emails we’ve responded to by breaking the originals up, that is possible
Pema Pera: Yes, or just make a digest, a kind of summary
This reminded me of another way to use the wiki.
Pema Pera: And that reminds me of a completely different project . . . .
Pema Pera: . . . . it would be really wonderful if, as a group, we would comb through the hundreds of sessions we have on file now
Pema Pera: and collect little gems
Pema Pera: nice remarks someone made
Pema Pera: or summaries of people’s first-week reactions to PaB
Pema Pera: or questions that keep coming up
Pema Pera: big project though
Fael Illyar: that questions that keep coming up would be a good thing to look for what to add to FAQ
Pema Pera: yes, exactly
Pema Pera: One option could be to make a few master categories:
Pema Pera: like FAQ, or “initial reactions”, or “what is Being”, or “what is Play” as major categories to group more indepth discussions into
Pema Pera: or “compassion”
Pema Pera: or “connections with Buddhism”
Fael Illyar: Yes, but, unfortunately, I need to start moving.
Pema Pera: Typically, we could bring the 3000 pages we have now down to 300 pages of more focused discussion, and 30 pages of highlights and perhaps 3 pages of gems :)
Pema Pera: okay, thanks for stopping by!
Fael Illyar: See you later :)
Pema Pera: see you, take care!
