I would be so super hyped to get the WCS community engaged in true collective reflection and learning! I often sense a bullshit attitude like "everyone has their own way to enlightenment and it is rude to interfere" from my fellow westies.
About concepts and wiki. I feel like WCS is currently at the gymbro level of discourse. There are tons of popular, utterly wrong ideas, and many good, correct ideas get criticized and shot down because they don't align with the fashion or hurt somebody's ego or financial prospects.
A wiki is a good way to start making sense out of it. It might need to accomodate contradicting opinions, though. Certain teachers are even famous for contradicting a lot of "common wisdom" and yet their performances and workshops gather huge crowds. :)
About creating a hub. I saw a few attempts at creating some kind of a hub for WCS -- sometimes large-scale like a party registry, or smaller-scale like a blog, a scene website or a YT channel. Unfortunately, more often than not they did not "find traction" and faded away. Some stayed though! WDoD, the /r/westcoastswing subreddit and Nerdy WCS YT channel are good examples.
This got me thinking about how some activites manage to get a good, deep, "infosphere" going and some don't. Like, chess has always had a huge amount of content and deep discussion at all levels. Programming of course too. Boardgames are fragmented per-game, but have huge common hubs and conventions anyway. Tabletop roleplaying is probably too group-specific to have meaningful discussion beyond sharing adventure pieces? There are some minor game design hubs though. Video game design has a huge infosphere, but it qualifies as programming I guess :D Parenting, as I'm currently discovering, has a top-down (from bloggers/authors/researchers) information flow, but not that much lateral discussion, it is kinda similar to WCS I guess? What about sports? Is there a wiki for basketball where I can read how to do whatever ball tricks they do? How about skateboarding, is there a wiki that explains how to nollie?
IMO it can be useful to look at other domains that have or don't have the kind of wikis and hubs that we are trying to create and see what similarities we have with them. This can help us identify the issues we might face with traction and maybe even hint us how to solve them.
For example, I feel like in WCS we are suppressing the lateral (student-to-student) information flow and promoting the top-down (teachers to students) instead. This does not lend itself well to wiki-style hubs. This means that we need to promote contribution harder -- for example, create a list of "wanted articles" and publish specific "calls for content", emphasizing that we welcome article seeds even from beginners. Just as an idea :)
I would be so super hyped to get the WCS community engaged in true collective reflection and learning! I often sense a bullshit attitude like "everyone has their own way to enlightenment and it is rude to interfere" from my fellow westies.
About concepts and wiki. I feel like WCS is currently at the gymbro level of discourse. There are tons of popular, utterly wrong ideas, and many good, correct ideas get criticized and shot down because they don't align with the fashion or hurt somebody's ego or financial prospects.
A wiki is a good way to start making sense out of it. It might need to accomodate contradicting opinions, though. Certain teachers are even famous for contradicting a lot of "common wisdom" and yet their performances and workshops gather huge crowds. :)
About creating a hub. I saw a few attempts at creating some kind of a hub for WCS -- sometimes large-scale like a party registry, or smaller-scale like a blog, a scene website or a YT channel. Unfortunately, more often than not they did not "find traction" and faded away. Some stayed though! WDoD, the /r/westcoastswing subreddit and Nerdy WCS YT channel are good examples.
This got me thinking about how some activites manage to get a good, deep, "infosphere" going and some don't. Like, chess has always had a huge amount of content and deep discussion at all levels. Programming of course too. Boardgames are fragmented per-game, but have huge common hubs and conventions anyway. Tabletop roleplaying is probably too group-specific to have meaningful discussion beyond sharing adventure pieces? There are some minor game design hubs though. Video game design has a huge infosphere, but it qualifies as programming I guess :D Parenting, as I'm currently discovering, has a top-down (from bloggers/authors/researchers) information flow, but not that much lateral discussion, it is kinda similar to WCS I guess? What about sports? Is there a wiki for basketball where I can read how to do whatever ball tricks they do? How about skateboarding, is there a wiki that explains how to nollie?
IMO it can be useful to look at other domains that have or don't have the kind of wikis and hubs that we are trying to create and see what similarities we have with them. This can help us identify the issues we might face with traction and maybe even hint us how to solve them.
For example, I feel like in WCS we are suppressing the lateral (student-to-student) information flow and promoting the top-down (teachers to students) instead. This does not lend itself well to wiki-style hubs. This means that we need to promote contribution harder -- for example, create a list of "wanted articles" and publish specific "calls for content", emphasizing that we welcome article seeds even from beginners. Just as an idea :)