(I feel that Paula’s penguins deserve a home of their own because they have to do with how discussions on this site are structured rather than with the general question of what a renewed theology looks like - Andrew.) |
What if the posts were just a bit more organized. For example:
Penguins can fly
Andrew says: Penguins can fly because:
1 (p) They have wings.
2 (p) something else very clever about flying penquins
Peter says: Penguins can’t fly because
1 (cp) Their wings are underdeveloped
1 (p) They’re fat
Mutant says: I agree with Andrew that penguins do have wings but Peter is also right their wings are too underdeveloped for flight and
2 (cp) something even more clever about flightless penguins that challenges Andrew’s statement 2.
Then somewhere linked to the thread you get this:
| Penguins can fly | Penguins are stuck on the ground |
| 1p They have wings | 1cp Underdeveloped wings |
| 2p. Clever statement | 2cp. Clever statement |
| 1p Overweight |
Re: organising discussions
A possible augmentation to Paula’s system would be to use De Bono’s 6 hat model. It is quite easy to use and encourages aspects of a discussion that do not fit into point / counter-point model.
Yellow hat: Logical positive, feasibility, and benefits. (Paula’s p)
Black hat: Logical negative, judgement, and caution. (Paula’s cp)
White hat: An objective look at data and information. (could this include source criticism?)
Red hat: Legitimizes feelings, hunches, and intuition. (would ethical intuitions also fit in here?)
Green hat: New ideas and creative thinking. (My favourite!)
Blue hat: Control of the thinking process. ("I think we have flogged that point to death, but we haven’t discussed this yet …" or "lets split this into two separate points/another post")
These categories are not customised for theological discussion, but with a few tweaks I’m sure it could enhance our discussions. It could also lead to a more atomised discussion, without the some of the mega-comments I have inflicted you with ( sorry guys :-) ), maybe encouraging some to the ghosts to comment. Also, its not a big issue to rename the hats to something else if you don’t like those colours.
The system does not directly support narratives or other sythesising discussions (which are a little more resistant to atomisation), but with conventions to label what part of a narrative is being discussed I’m sure the above methodology could enhance those discussions also.
I don’t know what software is being used on this site, but by adding some simple metadata to posts and comments, the system could support this natively to enhance searching and ordering threads and could automatically include icons to make it easier to follow discussions.
Of course, it might be that the sort of discussions here are not amenable to this sort of thing, what do you guys think?