Hi, welcome to Modern Swing Forum, here are some of the reasons I've made it:
I want there to be a place where someone can go and excitedly tell everyone about a dance concept they just learned (deepening their understanding of it in the process)
I want there to be a place where people brag about a new drill they came up with that finally made them internalize stretch
I want there to be a place where people share on how they used a VR headset to create delayed replay mirror to give themselves better visual feedback loop (post incoming)
I also want to easily find the best WCS content people have created
Finally, I want there to be wiki page where someone would tell me where to find a microwave for the event hotel I'm in 👀
What are some core principles for MSF (Modern Swing Forum)
Focus on evergreen content
There are several active online WCS communities out there (WDoD, r/WestCoastSwing). By the most part the interactions in those spaces take a form of Q&A. It's valuable to have that, and the community derives a lot of interesting insight that way. But it also tends to be ephemeral:
Questions tend to repeat
There is only that much time and effort people are willing to put into a comment
I'd love for there to be a space where focus is more on evergreen content - where people come to share their models and their best understanding of how this dance works. Building a durable set of shared concepts and ideas over time.
So an interaction mode I'd like to encourage here is more like "I think Lead Projection is cool - let me research a bunch and write and article about it" vs asking "What is a lead projection?". Though the latter can serve as an inspiration and a source material for the former
The key difference here is depth of engagement and internal motivation on the part of the content creator. You're writing about a concept because you find it interesting and were motivated to go deep on it vs responding to a question generated by another person.
Beyond encouraging this on a cultural level - the forum is supporting this goal by providing better affordances for and orienting itself around longer form content.
Learning in public
Teaching things to other people and writing to explain them is one of the best ways to understand something deeper (or discover that your understanding is shallow, and you need to improve it)
When you write online about things you're in a process of understanding - sometimes you'll be wrong
ideally then someone will come and tell you about that
that may feel scary, but that's actually great
you get to realize that you were wrong faster
other people who are thinking about the thing get to see a discussion and improve their understanding
Learning in public has been a fantastic way for other intellectual communities to develop: link
Good discussions norms is a key component of thriving intellectual communities. You need to feel safe to express you true opinions
Rigor to create trust in community output
Rigor implies challenging each other ideas
Balance/tension between
I have a certain picture of what this means in my mind, but it's something that is hard/would take too long to communicate fully. So I'll gesture at what I mean and expand as-needed.
this is under-defined
to some degree site mechanics with karma/etc help highlight good content and reduce the prominence of bad content, I'll also aspire to moderate things to encourage good discussion norms
Use multimedia to communicate technical dance knowledge
Communicating technical dance knowledge in pure text form is hard
Using both is better! Text provides scaffolding, in-depth conceptual explanations and enables better discoverability. Video provides visual and intuition aid (Illustrations, simulation and other cognitive aids are cool too).
What can you do on the forum
You can write posts like this (in-depth exploration of concepts and ideas, or sharing your experience and learning approaches)
“Thinking in public” for West Coast Swing - Introducing Modern Swing Forum - so I actually made the forum more than a year ago, and then I mostly didn't tell anyone about it 😛. This is v1 of the introduction post, which I think is too large and unfocused. But it goes deeper on learning in public, provides deeper look at motivations and addresses some questions people had for me.
There are a few existing blogs that embody the "Thinking in Public". I'm happy they exist, and I learned a lot by reading through them! Two best examples covering a wide variety of WCS related topics:
I think a big contributing factor [for what makes someone more intellectually active] is having some kind of intellectual community / receptive audience. Having a social context in which new ideas are expected, appreciated, and refined creates the affordance to really think about things.
Hi, welcome to Modern Swing Forum, here are some of the reasons I've made it:
What are some core principles for MSF (Modern Swing Forum)
Focus on evergreen content
There are several active online WCS communities out there (WDoD, r/WestCoastSwing). By the most part the interactions in those spaces take a form of Q&A. It's valuable to have that, and the community derives a lot of interesting insight that way. But it also tends to be ephemeral:
I'd love for there to be a space where focus is more on evergreen content - where people come to share their models and their best understanding of how this dance works. Building a durable set of shared concepts and ideas over time.
So an interaction mode I'd like to encourage here is more like "I think Lead Projection is cool - let me research a bunch and write and article about it" vs asking "What is a lead projection?". Though the latter can serve as an inspiration and a source material for the former
The key difference here is depth of engagement and internal motivation on the part of the content creator. You're writing about a concept because you find it interesting and were motivated to go deep on it vs responding to a question generated by another person.
Beyond encouraging this on a cultural level - the forum is supporting this goal by providing better affordances for and orienting itself around longer form content.
Learning in public
Teaching things to other people and writing to explain them is one of the best ways to understand something deeper (or discover that your understanding is shallow, and you need to improve it)
When you write online about things you're in a process of understanding - sometimes you'll be wrong
Good discussion norms are helpful to enable this.
High quality discussion norms
Safety, courage, rigor
Good discussions norms is a key component of thriving intellectual communities. You need to feel safe to express you true opinions
Rigor to create trust in community output
Rigor implies challenging each other ideas
Balance/tension between
I have a certain picture of what this means in my mind, but it's something that is hard/would take too long to communicate fully. So I'll gesture at what I mean and expand as-needed.
Use multimedia to communicate technical dance knowledge
Communicating technical dance knowledge in pure text form is hard
But video is not well suited for creating a searchable/discoverable/connected learning materials
Using both is better! Text provides scaffolding, in-depth conceptual explanations and enables better discoverability. Video provides visual and intuition aid (Illustrations, simulation and other cognitive aids are cool too).
What can you do on the forum
call to action
Related content
There are a few existing blogs that embody the "Thinking in Public". I'm happy they exist, and I learned a lot by reading through them! Two best examples covering a wide variety of WCS related topics: