HypnoPedia: What's Up With it?

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Permalink Reply by Cheryl Westley on April 12, 2010 at 8:51am

My first "hunch" is that there are (too many) varying opinions about the meanings/uses of terms. If everyone were to buckle down and start working on it together, flame wars would likely ensue. Just a hunch.

Cool image, btw!

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Permalink Reply by Hugh Cole on April 12, 2010 at 9:19am

Ok,,, I think Cheryl has a very good point. I would sorta reframe the question and ask Why a hypnopedia?. In the old days mums and dad's would shell out hard earned money to door to door encycelodpia salepersons, so little johnny had a leg up in getting into college. That model never worked really well (except for the salesman) and with the advent of the internet .. it became obsolete. I have Hypnothoughts, I have Wiki's, I have youtube, I have Scott Sandland, Richard Nongard, Brian David Phillips and others. A hypnopedia would be redundant and perhaps more colored by personal opinions than one would suspect at first glance, Hypnosis is afterall one of those fields where you can read til your head falls off. It is only when you start doing it that you begin to understand it,

Hugh Cole
The Pretty Goodest Hypnotist on the Planet

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Permalink Reply by Kathleen Hanover on April 12, 2010 at 9:44am

My take...

1. I consider myself to be somewhat Internet-savvy. But even I am intimidated by the thought of writing and posting content in a wiki.

2. I know what a wiki is, but I suspect most users of Hypnothoughts do not. I'm still amazed by the numbers of people who think Wikipedia is authoritative and written by researchers at a big company somewhere.

3. And as a writer, I have trepidations about taking the time to write and post content that other people can edit willy-nilly. If I were going to take the time to do that (being a perfectionist myself) then I'd just write my own dang book and try to make some money off of my time investment.

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Permalink Reply by James Hazlerig on April 12, 2010 at 10:14am

I think Cheryl hit it on the head. An encyclopedia is meant to be an authoritative source. When you consider how little agreement there is in even defining hypnosis, the idea of a hypnopedia becomes problematic.

James

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Permalink Reply by Andy Canning on April 12, 2010 at 10:14am

Like the idea. As a relative newcomer I would probably use it quite a lot. Found it difficult to use as it is all crammed in to the left side of the screen - but that might be my PC (running XP) I'll try it on the laptop as well, in Vista.
Hypnosis is such a huge subject that this could - and probably should - become a lifetime's work!
Let's hope that we can all be adult about the different points of view and avoid the flame wars!

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Permalink Reply by Kenneth Bjærum on April 12, 2010 at 10:24am

I like the HypnoPedia idea.
My first thought is that it can be combined with problem solving ideas.
Lets say I need more information about a problem; anxiety.
If I through H.P. could find out what different researchers say about anaxiety. Find articles/abstracts, and find out what the medical world say about anxiety, and treatment? Find out what the alternative world says. In general; what have others done to succesfully help people with simular anaxiety symphtoms?
We do not nessesary need hypnotic solutions, but solutions that helps, from any field. Which we can translate into our own hypnosis work. And give feedback. (Maybe this it what you have done? I am not familiar with H.P.) Good luck,
I belive this will will bring us closer to making H.P. take of and fly :-)
Kenneth Bjærum

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Permalink Reply by Graham Old on April 12, 2010 at 12:22pm

I've just presumed that there's not really much interest in it. And I thought that's okay.

Hypnothoughts doesn't need to be all things to all people, does it?

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Permalink Reply by Scott Sandland on April 12, 2010 at 1:33pm

Thanks for the feedback so far.

The overwhelming theme I'm getting from this is that people really aren't that interested in the wiki format or don't/can't put in the effort to add the content for a few reasons.

I definitely understand the idea that their are so many differing viewpoints that a constant re-editing would be flame war inducing or frustrating to people.

Do people suggest I scrap the project, leave it up as is, or reinvent it somehow?

I may put together a poll to ask you all about it officially if I get the time.

Thanks again for your honest feedback, and as always, please keep it up.

-Scott

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Permalink Reply by Anthony Edgington Sr on April 12, 2010 at 1:41pm

Scott. to use the term "perfectionist" and "Wikipedia" in the same breath is heresy (G) I can't comment on the technical side of the question because I am quite definitely a techno phobe, but I do know that most of those who posted got the right idea instantly, since anybody is allowed to post OR change what is posted, so it would never be complete, something no self respecting perfectionist could stand. I suggest you let this one die a natural death for your own sake, and to protect the site from flame wars.

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Permalink Reply by Jan Krüger on April 12, 2010 at 2:07pm

I think the idea of having a sort of hypnosis reference site is great. I just think that the kinds of people who obsessively write encyclopaedia articles are simply not present on HypnoThoughts... and with the lack of definitions widely accepted among all hypnotists, creating good and unbiased articles takes a LOT of work.

For a truly great reference site, articles would have to cover many different perspectives and attempt to draw general conclusions from them. I have this feeling that that would mean quite an involved discussion between dozens of experts looking at the topic from different directions, and that would be necessary for every article.

A workable implementation would have to:
a) make spamming difficult (look at the current HypnoPedia; pretty much all articles have been mutilated)
b) be navigable... the current implementation has a very narrow page that scrolls inside the main HT page. That's pretty yucky. I know Ning doesn't really allow for anything less insane...
c) be based on more thinking about structure. The current implementation offers no way of getting an idea what's there and what's still missing, just to name one example. (On Wikipedia that would be rather pointless since its scope is much less closed down than that of a reference on hypnosis, but here it would be extremely useful...)
d) have a dedicated team of people running the show. To the best of my knowledge, no resource works without people who coordinate things and make plans and engage others. There is no such team for HypnoPedia. There exist approaches for collaborative editing (see the many social news communities, for example), but they inevitably produce popular rather than good content. A real reference site must have people who know what's good and what isn't, and these people must have comprehensive abilities to shape the site.

I think the really crucial part here is (d). You can't just provide the platform and hope for things to work out by themselves. You have to engage people. You have to have a sense of direction and perspective.

Apart from that, I think a publicly editable wiki is not a good fit for a specialised reference site about a controversial topic in a huge group of people, most of which hardly know each other.

If I had to propose an ideal (well...) system, it might look a bit like this:
- there is a group of editors. These editors absolutely have to be very open-minded and trustworthy people.
- people propose articles to be added.
- for each potential article or existing article, people can propose that specific details be added to articles.
- proposals (of either kind) can be commented and voted on by other people; editors can accept or reject proposals.
- when editors accept proposals, they create or edit the article in question and integrate the proposed details in whatever way they see fit.
- people who contribute things get plus points for really good proposals and minus points for really bad proposals.
- a history of accepted and rejected proposals with all their details is kept for each article.
- articles can be assigned a minimum score needed for people to be able to propose changes. Some articles are likely to be especially controversial; people who have a good track record would probably make good suggestions even for those.

Of course, actually implementing something like that, even if you decided not to do the horrible work of integrating it with Ning, would take several days of non-stop work... but a project like this would always involve a lot of work, I'd imagine.

PS. to answer the question you posted while I was writing this: I don't expect leaving HypnoPedia as it is now will somehow make it work anyway. Whether you decide to reinvent it or to scrap it altogether probably depends on whether you can find people who would be willing to work on it, and on whether you want to invest into getting it to a point that working on it is doesn't get too annoying.

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Permalink Reply by Hugh Cole on April 12, 2010 at 2:13pm

Kathleen,
There are of course challanges when you are setting up to become the leading authority on hypnosis definitions. and related information. It is particularly onerous when the names of the folks writing those articles will gain instant credibility as experts in the field and have thier names (and books and DVD's and Cd's and ebooks and seminars and workshops, etc, etc) bask in the glow of the noteriety that may bring, Consider for a moment some of the incidents that happened on the way to hypnothoughts being "noticed" as a place where hypnotists gathered to unselfishly share information. ,,,,, a) a well known and well thought of celebrity hypnotist threatened on the front page to sue hypnothoughts in a less than well thought out attempt to express his opinion that some ones book was less than adequate. ...... b) a well known instructor of all things hypnosis threatened to sue hypnothoughts if he was not allowed to present at the hypnosummit and share the podium and exposure with other would be competitors. c) a well known world wide purveyor of bulk hypnosis information has pushed the envelpe of spamming to the point where even the overly generous, good naturered, competent and sympathetic moderators of Hypnothoughts were forced to shut down his multiple paths into the forum. and that's only what I know about. I am betting there is more.
Given that environment,,, I can easily see where someone of your caliber would not want to see your sincere, thoughtful and dedicated efforts bent stapled folded and mutialated to sell someone else's ebook. Truth be known if anyone can find a way to accomplish this it will be Scott. But I think before that happens It would be a great idea to crystalize (as Adrian suggested) why we are doing it, then think about how we are doing it.

Hugh Cole
The Pretty Goodest Hypnotist on the Planet

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Permalink Reply by Dan Elliott on April 12, 2010 at 2:34pm

Scott, I actually think it's a brilliant concept, in the same as all other wiki style resources. The wiki process is by design a very clever way of teasing out truthful facts, especially with a subject like hypnosis which is still evolving, as it should.

I do think that some individuals have an aversion to sharing knowledge about Hypnotherapy, either because of modesty, shyness or a dislike of sharing that which they hold so dear. There are those who fear that anything they add may be changed and modified by someone else. This indicates that the original author assumes that they are totally correct in what they wrote in the first place; this is certainly not always the case, especially with something so fluid in nature as hypnosis.

Also, as I read your article I realised that I was one of the defaulters, and, like many others, looked on in disappointment at the empty pages while in truth I could have been adding to it!

Myself, I'd encourage a continuance of HypnoPedia, just as it is. I may even add some of my own thoughts!

Good luck,
Dan Elliott.

Scott Sandland, C.Ht. said:

Thanks for the feedback so far.

The overwhelming theme I'm getting from this is that people really aren't that interested in the wiki format or don't/can't put in the effort to add the content for a few reasons.

I definitely understand the idea that their are so many differing viewpoints that a constant re-editing would be flame war inducing or frustrating to people.

Do people suggest I scrap the project, leave it up as is, or reinvent it somehow?

I may put together a poll to ask you all about it officially if I get the time.

Thanks again for your honest feedback, and as always, please keep it up.

-Scott

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