A relevant chat log
<namespace> Congratulations.
<namespace> You have uncovered an assumption.
<namespace> Before I answer your question, it would probably be best to discuss the assumption.
<namespace> One of the important things to me is that the organization primarily functions over the Internet.
<namespace> I would like to help develop methods to let you take certain kinds of institution as far into the online realm as you can.
<namespace> So that you can draw geographically disparate members together to do things.
<namespace> That's *not* in the mission statement, but it absolutely should be in there somehow.
<Obormot> Definitely
<Obormot> This sounds pretty key
<namespace> Oh it's definitely key.
<namespace> So key, it didn't even occur to me to state it.
<Obormot> What I'd like to hear, maybe not right now but preferably soonish, is some sort of
<Obormot> Um
<Obormot> What's the opposite of a postmortem
<Obormot> Basically, I want to hear an account of what it looks like, exactly, when we've succeeded and done everything we planned to do
<namespace> With that in mind, the *point* is not to miraculously create this organization, as cool as that would be, it's to figure out a framework for creating organizations over the Internet that can accomplish things.
<namespace> Okay.
<namespace> Great idea.
<namespace> Heck, I could start a wiki page on it.
<Obormot> Do it
<namespace> Does that make more sense now?
<Obormot> It does
<Obormot> That having been said, re: your last comment
<namespace> So, mission statement rewrite time.
<Obormot> I should think that we then *would* actually create the organization in question via the method in question
<Obormot> Else it looks bad: "I have constructed a wonderful method for building organizations!" "Have you built any organizations with it" "no"
<Obormot> (And, of course, the analogous epistemic problem)
<namespace> Yes, precisely.
<namespace> No no you get it.
<Obormot> Besides which, building the organization is part of discovering how to etc. etc.
<namespace> The point is to build the organization, but in so doing create a framework that can be applied in other contexts.
<Obormot> So yeah
<Obormot> It's clearer now
<Obormot> This is an exploratory project
<namespace> Right.
<namespace> Hence 'model organization' or whatever I wrote.
<Obormot> Where we're trying to make a thing that is a) a new thing, b) the first of a new class of thing
<namespace> Yes.
<namespace> Exactly.
<Obormot> But we don't know how to make things in that class, and by extension, we don't know how to make this specific thing
<Obormot> Once we are done making it, we'll have a thing, and a method for making things of that class
<Obormot> So yes, all of these concepts should definitely be in here, and as clearly as possible
<namespace> Right.