| | Dear All,
I was wondering if those of you who consider yourself on the high-achiever end of things, with strong practice, solid knowledge of meditation theory, texts, practice, etc. would be interested in joining together to help expand out MCTB with more perspectives, takes on things, etc.
MCTB is already here in the wiki, and I was thinking of making this wiki version have lots of people's comments and additions and notes and takes on the basic material, text references, individual experiences, critiques, enhancements, expansions, etc.
This will be moderated by me, obviously, as it is my book, and I want the level of quality to be high, but I want it to be broader, include a wider set of points of view, so as to make something better than it currently is and deeper than I alone could come up with, and if people have valid critiques or contradictory points of view, I am for that also, so long as there is depth, reason, sense and practical benefit in those.
As you have read the thing, you probably had things you would have liked to see added, changed, or later had things you might add. I want that if you are willing to add it and it is good.
What I imagine it looking like is the core text with a lot of links to people's additional wiki-page comments, so for example:
"blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. [Tommy's take on blah][Ian's take on blah][Steph's take on blah]" etc.
Just to give examples, and not that those people necessarily will be participating, but people know those names.
It can obviously go in other directions, actualism, Tibetan, Zen, energetic stuff, whatever, just so we are really enhancing each section with a diversity of useful stuff that will make people more able to get something practical and beneficial out of it.
Basically, this is group-sourcing the second edition, albeit an edition that will just exist here, I suspect, and will be done for the greater good.
We could even add other chapters that don't yet exist, or appendices, or whatever people think is useful that also makes some basic sense to me.
I will be adding some parts also, likely, and may want to negotiate with some of the parts regarding how they are done, and it will probably at least be a fun and useful conversation, and build some community as well, which is good also.
This will obviously be an experiment in group process, which can often get interesting, but this is what is inspiring me at the moment, so I thought I would take the risk and go with it.
This book and the writing in it will be done for free as the book will be available for free here online, just so everyone getting into this is aware of that from the beginning.
Basic format for entries, as each wiki page needs its own unique identifier:
Link should look like [[ Wiki Page | Displayed Wiki Page Name]]
With Wiki Page being the actual link name and Wiki Page Name being what is displayed as the link.
After putting in that link, you can click on the red link to go to the new page and edit the page with the information you want to add. Be sure to label each page with your name at the top so they know whose take on things it is. We should probably come up with bios for those involved so people have a sense of their perspective sources and backgrounds to help frame their comments.
Getting used to the Creole syntax that the wiki uses is relatively easy.
The Wiki Page Name should have your Name and a Unique Topic Name.
The Displayed Wiki Page Name should be the readable version of that, and may be the same.
For instance [[Tommy on 2nd Jhana | Tommy on 2nd Jhana]] where as in this case they are the same, and you could actually just do [[Tommy on 2nd Jhana]], which displays the same for both.
Or, you could do something like [[http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/rest of link | DhO Thread on the Topic]] if you thought there was a cool thread that really related to the topic well.
Or even [[http://someotherwebsite.com/coolarticle | Some Other Websites Cool Article on the Topic]]
Anyone interested in this will need to become a Wiki Author: let me know who wants to do this. If no one is interested, I can do it myself, but it would be more fun in a group, I think.
Thanks for considering this,
Daniel |