Implementing pattern language in a Loomio group?

I'm a student of pattern language practices but can't see how they can compensate the for online conversation practices that lack skillful facilitation and knowledge gardening.

What I’m thinking of is developing a pattern language for our domain of deliberation (a field of social action), as an outcome of a facilitated process in a Loomio group.

Can you suggest good examples George, of pattern languages for social process (eg organising, commoning - or for that matter, facilitating) as distinct from development process for buildings or geography, as in Alexander’s original field, or in software or UX functionality?

Would you say more about knowledge gardening?

AFAIK a pattern (Alexander's at least) goes something like "In (this context) when (this problem occurs) use (this kind of solution)" - ref: http://c2.com/ppr/wiki/WikiPagesAboutWhatArePatterns/PatternLanguage.html

If you don't have examples of good practices or solutions for the problems you described, either you need to research more in the hope of finding solutions (although I doubt there are satisfying ones) or there are none... which means you can't build patterns, less a pattern language.

That's precisely concern too about Mike's post. The first step in this inquiry would be specifying successful solutions to the problems, or at least, to the parts of the problems that he is talking about.

I agree with you both. The work does have to be done first of course, the solutions do have to be learned before they can be codified. It’s a long haul.

But I was hoping to find a couple of examples of a pattern language angaging with ‘organiser' practice problems/solutions as distinct from architectural practice. Just to see what kind of form they have. I feel it would help in conceptualising the different nature of ‘problems’.

As a negative example . . . there’s a ‘pattern language’ for the development of Transition Towns activist communities, which doesn’t seem to be an Alexander pattern language at all (no linguistic network, no syntax), just superficially similar (a kind of structured to-do list?). It doesn’t seem to be clear whether it’s a pattern for constructing towns or movements to create towns. This may be an example of the just kind of issue that you both are commenting on.

The TT pattern language sounds interesting: do you have pointers you could share here?

Following links from the above @nicolasstampf comment, I found this collection of conservation patterns for building a sustainable economy in the Pacific NorthWest. Looks like these folks worked pretty hard on this, and I can see the Alexander form.

No date-stamps (typical internet fault!) but looks as if it may be about 20 years old? Nicholas, @georgepor - what's your view on this? Does it seem lacking in any formal way? In any empirical way?

I guess the thing that strikes me most is that, while this set of patterns may 'work' in the Pacific NorthWest, it does look pretty 'ideological' - local rather than universal. I don't mind that - I feel that all practices are in a sense local and a pretence at universality is a delusion. That's what was ideological about Alexander's Romantic vision of pattern?! (Not that I don't like it, but I suspect that it too is 'local'. And natural spoken languages are local too of course?)

Wow, the texts associated with each point are quite long. I've just had an overlook and it seems far from being a pattern (no context/problem/solution structure).
However, the context looks quite great on the side of example implementations of good practices.

Now, I recall having seen ebooks for the Transition Town movements about what should be done when wanting to launch a new initiative (or was it Incredible Edible?). Still not context/problem/solution, though.

Another issue I might see regarding P2P/Commons/Transition movement, is that, by trying to somehow mimic Nature's complexity, it might be hard to identify standard practices given there's so much different people being involved. Apart from a widely generic pattern like: when faced with an issue, gather has much different perspectives as possible and co-create an answer to it. ;)

I only looked at a few of the conservation/sustainable-region patterns but it did seem to me that there was a problem statement in there - perhaps not clearly demarcated, but present.The final paragraph, in a different typeface, seems to be a solution statement?

As you note, rather long. But some of Alexander’s problem statements were rather long. All depends on the problem?

The Transition Towns handbook (work in progress 2010) is here. I don’t know if the work exists in a later version.