from MA

2. As to "lead": "ability, knowledge and character"
Not sure I completely got your point.

3. As to everything: "work together" (gung ho).

Definitively but if we do not want to end up in a crazy trotskyist no one take decision stuff (Just try to work with Medecins Du Monde one day…) we need a board and some decision making process.
These points tie together. "Lead" references "leadership" and who takes the "lead". Unless you want to assign formal grades (I want a super-grade ) and create a formal pecking order, the "lead" process has to revolve around the "ability, knowledge and character" of those contributing to the process. The corollary of that is that individual egos have to be put aside (honest, I'll try); and we all have to really listen and try to understand what others are saying (gung ho).

As to a board and some decision making process, I think that would develop as those interested keep with it, and areas of subject matter expertise will also develop. I'd also expect that many (hopefully) will feel called, but that fewer will end up feeling chosen. So, no surprise if there is a high attrition rate, which we see on a regular basis at SWC.

Would we then step off into total chaos ? I'll posit that we would not because most people here are not that chaotic. However, if we do, that itself would prove something - and there is always room for adjustments.

The model, as I see it, is more "stochastic" than "deterministic", as those terms are used by Steve's post here:

SWJ/SWC could be described as a digital community frequented by stakeholders in the nuts and bolts of America’s day-to-day efforts to make the world a better place. The demographics include experts and students of the myriad facets of security, economics, and governance from various lands. Pacing daily changes, ‘best of breed’ ideas, concepts, and Tactics Techniques and Procedures (TTP) are examined and debated in a non-hierarchal, open, Socratean manner. The community is an example of the results of democratization and globalization of information and knowledge, in that transactional costs associated with gathering and analyzing information are very low and flash mobs of stakeholders can form, as time and resources permit, for 24-hour analysis of interesting/vexing problems. The quality of output from the SWJ/SWC knowledge model varies (trending towards stochastic) as a factor of the educational, experiential, and motivational levels of the participants.

The USG could be described as a physical and digital community comprised, primarily, of paid stakeholders in the nuts and bolts of America’s day-to-day efforts to make the world a better place. It uses a more common, closed model of vertical and hierarchical integration (with high transaction costs) in which information gathering and analysis is, more often than not, primarily limited to in house personnel specialized in the myriad facets of security, economics, and governance (among many other topics). Standardized training, and educational experiences are part of an attempt to provide a regulated and dependable (trending towards deterministic) output from stakeholders.
Thus, an experiment not based on the USG norm.

-----------------------------
Wilf, your questions are harder - but are core:

OK, but...

a.) What's the policy?

b.) Why and how will we use violence or threat of violence to make it happen?

c.) Do we understand how the use of threaten use of violence in support of policy may change the policy?
I thought about some of what you say last nite. It didn't keep me awake all nite, but quiet allows thinking.

I posited, not the situation we have here at SWC, but some real world reality where there are two components:

1. A stochastic-oriented virtual network (maybe a board of directors, maybe not) that looks at problems and solutions, etc., and connects with ...

2. A real-live field force on the ground that implements the solutions with feedback to the virtual network, etc.

Any resemblence to a certain unfriendly organization is purely coincidental .

Now, in the real world, we would have violence (basic security involves either violence or the threat of violence). And, here, a virtual community does have constraints, if it is actually linked to a live field force. Those (at the least) are the various "Neutrality Acts", which would not look kindly on a private group delving into the violence arena in reality (Max Weber and all that).

So, I guess MA's "do no harm" has to be a basic precept if there is any real linkage to the field - as to which in post #29 Steve put a "?":

from SB
Contact is established with a 'neutral' Afghan (Ashraf Ghani ? mentioned in an article from today's edition of Wired )...tricky, but doable.
very tricky and lots of legal to consider.

However, if the site is totally virtual, then violence, solutions to violence and the implications of Wilf's last 2 questions would be fully open to discussion - as they are every day at SWC.

As to the question of "policy" (Politik), I'd posit that that would depend on the location of the adopted village - and would require us to take on the role of the "decision-makers". I expect that would be an interesting discussion.

Regards

Mike