If you’ve ever written anything from scratch, you’re probably familiar with the “tyranny of the blank page” — it’s whenever you know what you’re going to write about, but you just can’t figure out how to get started. It’s a particular subset of writer’s block — the writer’s equivalent of stage fright, or performance anxiety. And it’s related to analysis paralysis (exemplified by overthinking or “swirl”) and the paradox of choice (where the more choices you have, the harder it is to decide).
One way to fight this tyranny is to work backwards: Start in the middle (or even the end) — by the time you’re ready to do the “beginning,” the body of the work points back to a logical start.
Another way is to bring in backup: Most people find that it’s a lot easier to edit something that already exists (especially if it’s someone else’s), than to create something from scratch. Having something to work with, even if it’s total crap, can suggest different angles, highlight flaws, and provide a frame of reference to help solidify and position your own thoughts.
Death to the Blank Page!
This is why mass collaboration online is such a powerful thing — beginnings are hard, but if you put enough people together, you’ll find that there aren’t many blank pages left (especially if you subscribe to the theory that “there’s nothing new under the sun”): Someone just has to start, which can be enough to lower the barriers to participation and lead to mass participation through comments, edits, revisions, mashups, responses, tangents, etc.
No Panacea
Of course, mass collaboration isn’t a magic bullet — it’s subject to all the usual problems we see in communities: grievers and other troublemakers, gaming and manipulation by motivated groups, flamewars, factioning, free riders, disproportional focus on arcane or trivial concerns, descent to the lowest common denominator, etc.
And mass collaboration doesn’t negate participation inequality (where a tiny minority of users produce the vast majority of content, exemplified by the 90-9-1 rule: 90% lurk, 9% participate occasionally, and 1% produce most of the content) — in fact, it’s still bound by it. But once the creation threshold has been crossed, you’re activating a bigger pool of people who may not be willing to create themselves, but are willing to edit or modify content.
How to Use This
If you’re trying to leverage mass collaboration (say, for an internal company wiki), there are a few things you can do to help encourage more particpation:
* Set structure and norms: You don’t have to start out with a rigid content hierarchy, and in fact a little anarchy in the beginning can be good to see how the community uses the tools. However, you do want to make sure there’s enough structure in place so people can find relevant information and related material. Search and tagging takes care of this to some extent, but eventually, structures develop around any information of sufficient complexity, so putting some stakes in the ground early can prevent the need for a lot of cleanup and retrofitting afterwards.
Similarly, make sure that the group’s norms are clearly communicated, and that the culture encourages openness coupled with accountability.
* Avoid blank pages: Be a content creator, from which other participants can bounce off of. Create seed content. Ask leading questions. Provide something for people to react to.
* Value original thought: In an environment where editing is a desired behavior, original thought becomes even more valued — especially when you keep it accessible, findable and shareable. Provide examples that people can use as models, or even templates for information that people can modify as needed.
I hadn’t meant to make this entry so wiki-centric (call it the tyranny of the conclusion), though I think this has relevance to other collaborative tools. So please let me know if any of this makes sense by leaving a comment.
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