Talk:Community of practice/Archive 1

of key interest
This article is of key interest to WikiProject_Community.
 * Quinobi Talk 00:53, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

sfx--145.254.157.15 21:26, 15 July 2005 (UTC) why do you think it is necessary to split this term of COPs up into different ones? Following the criteria for communities of practice they - undertake a common enterprise out of a shared interest (or maybe just an interest in solving an issue for themselves) - share tools and develop them further - participate in a shared practice (thus they also become active for a cause)

Incoherence
I would suggest reverting to the pre-Stevenson_Perez edits, except that version of the article wasn't especially good, either. The topic does seem to have some notability, but I don't know where to begin to rewrite this thing. -- TedFrank 20:07, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm trying to rewrite the thing to make it clearer and connect the different sections a bit more coherently. Chapulin (talk) 16:17, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I am completing master's paper on this topic with regard to structural engineering. I have collected significant research regarding communities of practice in the context of knowledge management, which is how I perceive communities of practice is best described. I will incorporate what I know, with references, over the next several months. Voodooengineer (talk) 17:04, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

There is indeed a lot of work to make this a useful article according to Wikipedia standards (with references to peer-reviewed sources). Meanwhile, I deleted a couple sections: one on other types of communities and the other on multidisciplinary communities. --Kchorst (talk) 00:24, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Cleaning up External Links
I am removing the first item in the External Links section as this does not point to any CoP content. I am making my way throught the list and will be weeding and updating as I go. --Corza 01:35, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I removed both links and replaced them with the one to EW's site. --Kchorst (talk) 00:24, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Incorporating In-Text Citations and Citation format in general
I changed the first two citations (in References section) to correct APA style, and also added one in-text citation in Harvard Reference format as recommended by the Harvard Citation Template. Like Corza (above), I'm working my way through the citations. Ebonsign (talk) 01:31, 9 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed: (1) this article could use a good cleanup and simplification, also (2) you have might I suggest you use what you can from your "Further Reading" to also be inline references, and then toss the other Further Reading parts away to simply your article and to avoid folks trying to post their pet article here because they want to have it seen? Just a thought... Harvey the rabbit (talk) 01:57, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I know this material and have tried to tidy up the citations - is there anyway of simply putting ibid rather than repeating the whole reference? Compo (talk) 21:28, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * See Footnotes especially the Naming a ref tag so it can be used more than once section. -- SiobhanHansa 01:17, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I have also tried to make this flow more logically - to be honest, I don't think the last two sections belong here at all Compo (talk) 21:38, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Alphabetised references and added a few. --Kchorst (talk) 00:24, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Learning network
The term learning network should be defined somewhere. (a reference to 'learning network': http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/6655/Learning-Networks.html)

Proposed changes to Structure
I have been reviewing other well-defined articles, and I suggest we work the structure to make it flow more coherently. I am thinking sections could include:

- Overview (including history, etc)

- Research

- Examples of COPs

- ??

Anyone have any other ideas?

Clkmtl (talk) 01:43, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I think we could even add a section on the future of CoP's or possible new applications of CoP's in the "examples of CoP's" section. If no one has volunteered to take charge of the "examples" section, I'd like to do so now. I was interested in the application of CoP's in the health and medical community anyway, so this would give me the chance to expand the research into other fields as well.

I think if we have 4 main sections, 2 of us could focus on each section...what do you think?

Also, I think we should allocate a section to "tools used to facilitate CoP's"?

Annavhh (talk) 11:15, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Anna, I really like your idea that each of us take care of a certain section. also, i noticed that you delete the title "Benefits of CoP", but I still feel it is an important section in this page. I would like to hear others' opinions. Penguindo (talk) 09:06, 9 November 2009 (UTC) Some concepts I consider important: defination social constructivism and CoP Roles in CoP tacit knowledge & social capital best practice challenges faced by community of practice (regulation Vs freedom)

Maybe we can brainstorm about all the important theories and concepts of Cop, list them on this page and then classify them into different categories. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.49.236.159 (talk) 08:37, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Penguindo (talk) 08:40, 26 October 2009 (UTC)penguindo

A couple of things seem important to me, they are both addressed to some extent in the existing article but should not be lost.

(1) I think the article should maintain the split between the early view of communities of practice - essentially that of Lave and Wenger, 1991 - as a theory for learning and the more business oriented that Wenger and other developed after 1998. The first was based on Legitimate peripheral participation the second on the notion of Dualities. The two are quite distinct

(2) I think the argument about collocated vs virtual Communities of Practice could be bought out more clearly - possibly merging the article Virtual community of practice. However, this might just lead to arguments about all of the other Communities of ... Community of action, Community of circumstance, Community of inquiry, Community of interest, Community of position, Community of practice, Community of purpose, Community of place ...

Compo (talk) 13:02, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I have read through the page as it stands now and see that it is taking shape nicely. I agree that it would be good to make the distinction between the CoP's as a theory for learning and as a business approach.

I also think that the section discussing the 7 actions Wenger proposed for cultivating CoP's should be expanded to de-mystify the actions! I think that the actions are not self-evident as they are described and so need more explanation. I would like to add to this area as my first task. I have begun the process on my user page and will transfer over within the next week.

Chawt

If the notion of knowledge duality is going to stay then it has to be defined/explained and linked to a page that makes sense for what it is. Clicking on duality in the CoP page at the moment brings one to a page spirituality...

-M Ant —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mecha-ant (talk • contribs) 15:27, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I think we should remove the section on comparing project teams to CoPs. We need to condense and clarify the page. People who wish to know the differences can compare themselves if COP is well described. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mecha-ant (talk • contribs) 15:34, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree about the need to explain things, but I don't think that it is a good idea to simply delet something if it is not explained. The section on CoPs vs Teams for example helped to to show what a CoP was by contrasting it to other related ideas.  Similarly for the notion of a duality.  I don't think you can delete something that is central to Wengers post 1998 view of how a CoP functions simply because the link goes to something that is not related.
 * Compo (talk) 07:56, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I have provided a description of duality from Wenger 1998 and linked this to the section on KM, as the participation / rectification duality is the one which has received most of the attention.

That is a good ideas as KM keeps emerging as a recurrent theme when we are talking about the use and purpose of CoP's. I would like to expand this further. Chawt (talk) 11:33, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Compo (talk) 18:50, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I think we have many articles on the Internet about CoP, but what we should do is to give some general information about community of practice, then focus on the way we can use a community of practice in practical or real-life situations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zabialokolo (talk • contribs) 12:31, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

CoPs vs Teams
My opinion for this point is that the definition of CoPs should be stand alone. If you need to compare it to something to describe it, then it has not been described. Or by saying what it is not, we are not saying what it is. I think we should reference that they are different.

Also there is a project team page that could be added to. You could update that and refer people there. If wikipedia is to be searchable then the information on what you are looking for should be under the proper heading. Info on Project teams should be under project teams. Once we have both project team and CoP entries in wikipedia (of good quality) then mixing them may make more sense. I hope that does not come off as abrupt.

M Ant —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mecha-ant (talk • contribs) 23:26, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Added Contrast with : Project team to the see also section. 216.252.77.41 (talk) 23:52, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Re-arranged Article
Take a look at the latest outline of the article. I took CLK-MTL's suggestion and rearranged the entire article, keeping careful to maintain the sections that other users volunteered to expand.

As part of the edit, I eliminated the blockquotes about reification and participation simply because there is not enough structure to support that depth of analysis, and it was thus distracting.

I edited some of the text to make it read a bit smoother. --Kchorst (talk) 16:12, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

The section on Origin and Development is excellent - much, much clearer. After that, I suspect, there is still some room for disagreement. We shall see what others say.

Compo (talk) 07:28, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the new arrangement of the page works well. However, we still have the buzzword-flag on the page so in an effort to have that removed I think we should start clarifying any of the terminology that may be confusing to viewers of the page who do not know anything about CoP's. Does anyone know what exactly they mean by buzzwords? Is it a matter of explaining terminology or avoiding them all together? --Annavhh (talk) 11:32, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Sent a request to ask the editor concerning buzzwords.

I believe a good place to find the buzz words is in the Later Works section as the article notes that Wenger abandons the idea of LPP and moves toward all those (buzzwordy) dualities. I do not have his later book, so perhaps someone with that resource would succinctly define those concepts.--67.212.19.78 (talk) 14:31, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Mecha ant 16:58, 2 November 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mecha-ant (talk • contribs)

missing references
Wenger et al 2004 and Wenger 2004 no longer exist in the references. I don't know where they went or what they were, but they are in the text. Please help find them and add them to ref section... otherwise we have to find new references for those points.

Mecha ant 16:34, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I believe this should be Wenger 2002. As far as I know, he did not publish anything in 2004 5unless this was taken from a reprint of the 2002 book that was published in 2004)

Compo (talk) 15:59, 4 November 2009 (UTC)