Inquiry

I find the nested comments within nested comments kind of awkward, although it makes for a tidy page. I have missed comments and you don't get the whole picture of the dialog/ debate by scanning the page. Maybe I just need to get used to it.

UPDATE: 09/26/08

can we put a 'see all nested comments' on all pages? I'm getting really fatigued clicking through nested comments to find replies to my posts. This is just standardized usability on all 2.0 social networking sites, why mess with it? It does not change the "tidyness" to add that link that is already on some pages- indiscriminately. Please consider putting it on all pages that contain comments.

Also how about email notification of a comment having been responded to?

Love the site!

Seriously, I'd like to take Cook-Greuter's integral test.  You know, the one you have to pay a lot of bucks to take?  I'm sure a free and simpler version could be developed here.  The results could be kept confidential if one wishes, but that would reveal a lot about where I need to work on.

Also, I'd like to be able to post my resume here and have a space to strike up partnerships in starting integral businesses.  I have ideas and am looking for other like-minded folks to start up with.

Overall I'd like Integral Life to integrate with the rest of my life online. I understand that there were many conscious decisions made to make it a closed community, and as such I wonder if someone could direct me or provide me with the reasons for making Integral Life a site I have to go to in order to participate and know what's going on? Currently this is very much a walled garden, precisely the reason I dislike Facebook so much. I get it that this is kind of a playground for integrally aware people, and I like that it is offering an integrally aware level of interaction and discourse. However, I long ago learned that the tools and services I use must integrate with my online activities if they are to be useful.

What Integral Life offers is compelling enough to get me to come here to the actual site. But, that is a far cry from it being an integrated part of my online life, community, and identity. I'd like for it to interact with the tools I use in daily life to engage community and information: rss, IM, microblogs ala twitter, friendfeed, blogs, an api, etc. I would like to be able to post to my personal blog and have it cross-post to my Integral Life blog. I'd like to be able to follow mine and other's activity via rss in my personal portal (netvibes). I'd like to be able to easily show people in my profile where else they can find me online (what services I'm using). Overall, I'd like to be able to find people in Integral Life and have conversations both inside and outside of Integral Life. I am not versed in the business side of all this, but I don't think the value of Integral Life as a service lessons if these things are offered.

Anyway, I'm sure most of this is old news and stuff you all have discussed/made conscious decisions about, so I suppose I'm just hoping to learn more about the reasons.

Hello there:

To have authentic interactions I need first to be authentic, which I find is no easy task in the face of the needs and concerns of others, and more than anything, my own "lower" fears and desires...One thing I just did was ask myself 100 questions (idea from Brian Johnson's website), and the 55th one came up as an answer not a question, as follows:

"Unconditional trust in life...is based on an unconditional relationship to life...if I have conditions set upon my relationship to life, then I will not be able to trust that life...therefore, to have unconditional trust in life, I must have an unconditional relationship to that same life...I cannot be saying, "I will trust you, if..."  I must remove the "if", and then see what happens...receive what comes..."

What would unconditional trust in life look like in terms of how we communicate on this site? 

Yours,

--

Durwin Foster

durwinfoster@gmail.com

I am wondering if there might be a way to make new comments easier to find. On a blogpost with a lot of comments I can see that there is a new comment if I keep track of the total number of comments, but the new ones can be very difficult to find, unless I am missing something.

I don't see a show-all-subcomment feature on blogposts. That would probably help a lot, if we could simply unravel the whole thing. Perhaps there is another way as well. If there were sorting options, with one according to date posted, that would of course help a lot as well.

Thanks for a great site. It's obvious that a lot of care and heart has gone into it.

David

One idea that just comes to mind is to have set times for meetings in a conference call. people that wanted to discuss openly a prechosen topic with room to flow from there. It doesn't have to have a Integral teacher moderating it, just making a place for some in the community to post a topic that they want to talk about with the access to the free conference call line (freeconference.com for instance) and then linking folks here the info about it. So folks that don't live in Boulder per se can have more experience with others in person via the phone.

Integral and Sustainability Monday Nov. 2nd 5-7pm EST Call 1-800...

Integral Parenting

Etc.

Make sense?

Then people could call that number later to listen to it replayed or have a podcast of the call afterwards if you couldn't make it.

It would take the flow and dialogue to a new level beyond the comment system, or the teacher conference call format.

Eric

While I see some benefits to the way the blogs are presented and rotated on the opening community page I also see a particular disadvantage.

If there is a lot of blog activity then the rotation is so fast there are number of post that are never seen if I do not check back at least daily, or even a couple of times a day. Then, when you have a post such asRob's asking for input it is gone far to quickly to elicit a decent response. (imo)

While the featured blog can cure this somewhat, it is up to the editors discretion as to which blog merits this treatment. Maybe he/she picks right for me, maybe not.

I do not know the answer here but it seems worthwhile to kick around a bit.

Thanks

Jerry

--

It is in the clarity of Conscious Awareness that Truth is revealed.

Sometimes I think there's value in re-pointing out the obvious, metaphorically making us fish better aware of the water.  To cultivate more authentic interactions between each other on this website, IMO, we must aspire to be more authentic with ourselves, within our self.  Getting honest about our shadow material, getting better with our fear of conflict (and our fear of fear), better addressing and engaging it all, at least learning to simply be with what's there in us.  Otherwise how can we be with each other, if we can't be with ourselves authentically?

Perhaps more than what we focus on in Integral, it's about where we focus from.

--Friends!!! I have trouble/inconvenience when trying to contact certain people. There may be a friends tab i haven't discovered but if there isn't then it need be created. This is a social-networking site isn't it!?

Categorical/Specialty search for other members. My friend Brendan LaChance is thinking about how the development of prisoners could be fostered through Integral Theory. In what manner could he find someone with experience in this field? A feature that would  foster  better connection of specialists or the search for certain specialists would be an invaluable resource to this site.

Shane-o

The level of complexity is too high. The headlines on the tabs are quite vague, the nested comments are a drag, and a general sense of accessibility is low. I didn't even realize you could join until I saw some post about it. It's in many ways a very neat looking site but it does appear closed. While I agree that it's good to keep out the ones who are not serious about this particular worldview, exclusiveness/elitism can also make projects dry up.

More overviews, please! I'm not so crazy about the idea of collecting friends as you can end up with countless people you know nothing about on a list , but I do think that the members' profiles could be a bit more elaborate. I live in a remote part of the world and wish to have access to people in other parts of the world. Something visually appealing such as a map sounds like a nice idea because it gives you a sense that the world is small. I find too many people out there limiting themselves because of what they perceive as great physical distances... after all the internet is supposed to counteract those feelings! I am a bit resentful that all dating sites want you to check out people in your area, and I find the same here. While it may serve some purposes, it is also limiting if other options are not available. After all, making friends based on interests is of a greater priority. While we are all "integral" we also have individual fields of expertise or interest and it might be nice to connect with people who think/conduct their lives similarly in an easy way.  

A sense of greater warmth and welcome would surely support authentic interaction between people? And I do want to stress the INTERACTION! I am wary of sites were people only post their opinions and that's it... Surely this could be different? :-)

Let's start by actually responding to questions as they have been asked. I've observed that sometimes there's a knee-jerk reaction that being authentic is enough. Some responses to posts read like the projections they are. For example, "I'm authentically self absorbed and didn't read anything you wrote! P.S. I  love tacos..." So, here are my responses to the questions asked:

1.) For the members of the community (values/behaviors/intention): Really just practice what you're learning. Pay attention, take risks, put yourself out there, try to make connection, ask questions instead of positing ideas. You may be god's gift to integral theory but I'd much rather struggle with you over a problem than hear how you've solved one. Realize when you've gone wrong and own that too! I waited a long time to start posting. I was a member for months before I ever wrote a response. This is a culture in and of itself and I wanted to make sure I knew what was going on before I typed out some bumbling post. In other community sites I'm a part of  people will "bump" posts they find aren't getting enough attention. While the practice is annoying when the only response they give is literally the word "bump". Using affirmations or some type of encouraging response just to let people know they were heard and you valued what they had to say would be helpful.

2.)  For the Integral Life site staff etc.

Technological improvements: Ventrilo servers for the community to use. Groups and communities for the MMPORG, World of Warcraft use Ventrilo to communicate in a cost effective and efficient manner. 30 people with headsets can use it to share a common experience verbally. Communication is hard enough when you have the person right across from you. Every step of abstraction away from that one on one encounter becomes more and more difficult. Typing and writing is great because you get to edit and rework what you're saying. However, it takes far longer to write a response than say it and you miss the body language, tone, inflection, of the other person. Ventrillo would allow us to at least hear the passion or confusion in another persons voice rather than just having to guess or explicitly include emoticons that not everyone understands or uses. Here's a link to the service: http://www.ventrilo.com/ I'd love to get feedback on this.

Another good idea from WoW, is that there a guild leaders and community managers that help facilitate processes like Ventrilo, message boards, scheduling events, etc. Maybe putting some folks in place to help better facilitate processes on the site? Usually these aren't employees but volunteers from the community. Just a thought.

Great Inquiry! Thanks for facilitating this process...

Sincerely,

Brian