Latest From the Kinfonet Notebook
New Feature: Places
We have just loaded a new feature called "Places". In this section of Kinfonet Krishnamurti centers, organizations or any group that has a permanent physical venue for their activities can publicize their existence to the wider community.
Each "place" will be listed with a description, address and contact information. Additionally a photo gallery and an announcement board will be made available.
Forums Evolution
Why does everything look different?
Since we launched the new version of Kinfonet, the number one complaint, er... feedback concerned usability issues with the forums: “Too confusing”, “I’m lost”, “Where am I?” Well, we heard you.
One reason for the issues with the forums is the sheer number of them. But going back to a single, monolithic forum that one unfortunate individual is tasked to moderate was out of the question. So we have attempted to improve navigation through the maze of forums, as well as managing multiple forum memberships of power users. We made the following changes to address these concerns:
Design changes:
The overall design of the forums has been unified, frills have been removed and the tabular layout will look more familiar to those who participate in similar discussion venues on other websites. (We will slowly be porting the other parts of the website to the new layout.)
The before and after shot demonstrates the compactness of the new design:
New content
There are several ways to stay apprised of new posts and quickly find new content rather than wading through pages of posts that one has already seen. One of them is that you can now subscribe to individual topics in order to receive email updates when new posts are added.
Forum participation by member
The “Your Account” page lists the topics you have been recently involved in for quick access. Moreover, Kinfonet members have a page that lists all their posts over all forums. This page is accessible from the public profile as well as from the member lists of individual forums (another new addition).
Quality Control
Navigation and usability being but one problem, we were mostly concerned about the overall quality of the forums and the content that is being produced. Forum moderation is a difficult task, making high demands on the moderator, who not only needs to keep the conversation invigorated and on target, but also smooth over constantly brewing conflicts between participants. Not to mention that it only takes one vocal member who is bent on provocation (or preaching) to degrade the forum quality. If the moderator does not step in, the atmosphere in the forum will drive away more timid users. If he or she does step in, however, well, .... we know the story.
To address this common problem in all discussion forums, we are now introducing ratings. Posts can be evaluated for their quality, thoughtfulness, relevancy or whatever other criterion the rater chooses. Just as it is the case with book ratings on Amazon, there is no accounting for taste. The rating will reflect the emotional response that a particular posts elicits in a particular reader. Cumulatively, however, ratings should flag offensive, inappropriate or irrelevant posts.
Ratings can be used by readers to ignore certain posts and by moderators to have an independent criterion by which they can decide whether or not to prevent a poster from further participation in their forum. Note that post ratings do not only reflect on the writer but also on aggregate they indicate the overall response to a topic and even to a forum (Since things are seldom simple, it could even be that the one and the same poster contributes differently rated posts in the context of different forums).
For now we consider ratings to be an experiment that might be built out or retracted altogether depending on how it pans out.
Moderating the Moderators
One issue that we cannot tackle with tweaks to the design or the implementation are problems with the moderation as it is being currently exercised. It is no secret that several forums have been abandoned by their moderators, many of whom don’t even bother to show up any more. Those forums are slated for removal and we will soon take the necessary steps towards a big spring cleaning. As a new rule, though, we expect moderators to be at the very least present in their forums and contribute on a regular basis.
Monster Mash!?
On a lighter side, in case you are wondering why Kinfonet seems to have been overrun by monsters, we have changed the default avatars to more resemble our default state...;-)
Questions/Comments?
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Krishnamurti Quote of the Day
We have just recently re-instated the Kinfonet quote of day which features a different hand-picked excerpt from Krishnamurti's writings for each day of the week. You can access the quote by clicking on the link "Kinfonet Quote of the day" located on the top of each page just below the main navigation menu.
As soon as we can get to it, we will add the capability to allow you to subscribe to the quote of the day, so that you can get it automatically by email without having to actually visit the site.
New Article: Bringing Confusion into the Laboratory
A new article with the title “Bringing Confusion into the Laboratory” has been published under the category “A Dialogue With Oneself”. The author, Rasmus Tinning from Denmark, compellingly clarifies the somewhat unintuitive point that our efforts to dispel confusion only result in sustaining and strengthening it.
The following excerpt from his article struck us as being especially poignant:
"It is not that you want to be happy,
and Krishnamurti tells you how. He is
concerned with a much bigger and more
complex issue. According to him there
is a crisis in the human
consciousness. You are a
representative of humanity and what
appear to be your personal problems is
just a local variation of the
consciousness we all share."
The honesty and the spirit of questioning manifested in this article is commendable and we hope that many more of a similar nature will be submitted to us at admin[AT]kinfonet[DOT] org
New Questions for the Kinfonet Interview
As some of you may be aware, Kinfonet member profiles contain a section called the "Interview". It is made up of a series of questions - any or all of which you may choose to answer - designed to provide for points of contact between people.
We have recently added some more questions, some of which have been suggested by you. Here they are:
Krishnamurti once said you must begin with doubt, but that doubt must be kept on a leash. How do you find the proper balance between doubt and a "positive disposition" in investigating his proposals, so as to neither tie yourself up in knots, nor to blindly believe?
Can dialogue - in the sense of sincere inquiry - be organized or can it only come about spontaneously, unprompted?
Does the phrase "living the teachings" have any meaning to you?
Has coming into contact with Krishnamurti and his teachings had any perceptible effect on your life and/or relationships?
What future do you foresee for Krishnamurti's works? Do you think they will grow in importance or will they just gradually die away?
Do you ever feel that you have been conditioned by Krishnamurti's teachings?
We are looking forward to reading your answers. And feel free to suggest a question yourself, if you can think of one.
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