Quote:
Originally Posted by Seahawk
Their knowledge base has a hard time with new capabilities, very similar to the "Battleship Navy" in the 1930 that thought aircraft carriers would never work.
|
Excellent parallel. I may use that in my point paper.
Quote:
Originally Posted by oldE
The Pelican board is successful because the people reading are the people wrenching.
...
If you passed all that information on to a sorting and clearing house, whatever, some of the important bits get filtered out or forgotten.
...
You have to get the information directly into the hands of those who use/need it.
...
Sorry if I'm wasting band width.
|
No waste of bandwidth there -- you make a great point. The value is added when information gets from one decision-maker to another. I think that maintenance-level forums have a lot of value, in that a lot of the gear is common across boats. Every boat in the fleet has an elderly AN/WIC stack, most submarines still have the same atmosphere control equipment, virtually everyone has some kludged-together mess that we call "GPS." The ability to get on a forum and talk with other guys who have the same kinds of problems would be awesome. I think it's true at another level, too -- every submarine does the same kinds of tasks -- my boat wasn't the first one to do the Nuclear Regeneration exercise, and it doesn't change from year to year. The ability to talk to the Navigator who led his boat through that mess the year before, or the year before that, would have been invaluable. That's why I think that "raw" forums -- more like this one, and less like a consolidated central filtered repository -- have more value.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wayne at Pelican Parts
One problem is mis-information, a fact that is often not seen because it can be disemminated from someone who appears knowledgeable, but is not. That is one of the problems with the forums here, there are people who post incorrect information thinking they are right when they are not. Sure, they often get called out on it, but then it becomes a he said she said type of argument and accurate information is lost in the process.
|
There's a lot of truth in that, and that's the problem with fast information. Information can either be fast or accurate, but probably not both. My instinct is that information directly from the people on scene who just went through a situation is more valuable than information that's been filtered through a group of desk-driving "experts" for months before re-dissemination, but it's important to note that information is only as good as the source.
The solution I'm leaning towards right now looks like this:
1 - Forums, sort of like this, except on the classified network. Categories broken down into specific mission areas, maintenance areas, etc. Start small, then break conversations out into sub-topics (create new sub-topics) as topics get big enough to require it. Trying to establish the rules for the forums would be the hard part -- someone's going to give away some piece of knowledge that the Captain didn't want anyone off-hull to know about, and someone's going to fry. Or someone's going to post something in "Off Topic" that someone else gets offended by, and the forums will be shut down while we have a "politically correct stand-down." That'll kill it -- important to find the middle ground.
2 - Current database of knowledge experts. Track who posts useful stuff in the forums. Someone who posts a lot gets a higher "expert rating." That senior chief in the shore maintenance facility with 25 years of experience fixing AN/WIC stacks? He posts a lot, and gets positive ratings on his responses, so he gets a higher "expert rating." The Admiral could send him a nice letter (yellow sticky of appreciation) when he reaches a certain rating. It's cheesy, but people like the recognition. Additionally, the database would be semi-public -- if you're having a problem with your AN/WIC, you'd post in the AN/WIC forum, then start calling the most highly rated experts to search for an answer.
3 - Tech articles. As enough people rebuild 915's, a collection of expertise is slowly built on the topic. Someone with a few minutes to kill could consolidate the best information from the top dozen rebuild threads and create a single really good article on the topic. The same is true of piloting in foreign ports, responding to ship-board casualties, or fixing broken gear. I spent a few hours this week and consolidated half a dozen "lessons learned" messages on coordinated mooring into a single doctrinal element that boats will be able to use to keep from learning the same lessons that the previous 6 boats learned doing the same thing.
4 - Cultural fixes: These are the hard ones. I have to figure out how to keep people from getting roasted on a spit for posting a mistake in the forum. I have to figure out how to convince the admiral (subfor) that it's important not to burn anyone at a stake for admitting mistakes. I need to socialize the existence of this new resource with the people who will use it -- the department heads, the chiefs, the leadership on the boats -- in an effort to get people involved in actually sharing information.
That's where I am right now, anyway.
