Talk:Art practices/Single person association

Resource name
This page could alternatively be called free association or perhaps Free Association ... Dx (discuss • contribs) 16:42, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

There must be hundreds of thousands of "single person associations." The concept is perhaps fuzzy. I do not approve of this being in mainspace.

As to Free Association I have a patent and trademark on the term. :-)

Seriously, I've written a great deal about FA/DP organizations. That's "Free Association with Delegable Proxy." The model Free Association, that got me going down this path, is Alcoholics Anonymous, which has what I've identified as Free Association characteristics. It does not use Delegable Proxy, but something that is, as AA is actually "organized," similar, representation in the World Service Conference through area supermajority election, with a provision for election by lot if no candidate can get the required supermajority (2/3). Delegable proxy is much simpler, in fact, and will generate "full representation." Because the WSC seeks full consensus, actual numbers of representatives don't matter that much. (A 2/3 majority is considered minimal for a Conference advisory action, but minority reports are allowed, and it has happened that a minority of one or two turned the whole conference around.)

Free Associations are not controlled by any individual, control is distributed, individual "meetings" are autonomous, and the central organization exists only for coordination, protection of the name according to established traditions, and facilitating publications. Local groups may publish independently, and some still do, but ... most don't bother, because the central organization, in fact, respects genuine consensus, and they publish, effectively, non-profit. Publishing is designed to be self-supporting, not profitable. The central organization is supported entirely through small voluntary contributions, etc. No endowment, large donations not accepted. Carefully designed to avoid oligarchical control.

"AA as such ought never be organized, but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve."

Thus AA is actually an anarchist organization, fully implemented and highly successful. So I might develop a resource here on that, I'm considered an expert off-wiki. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:56, 7 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Perhaps Wahdat Association is better Dx (discuss • contribs) 17:51, 7 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Perhaps Wahdat Association is better Dx (discuss • contribs) 17:51, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Not in English! I find . Not a "single-person association" at all, and "wahdat" implies unity, which implies more than one. Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen likewise. In Arabic, wahdat is the quality of unity and, yes, singularity, but the singularity of God, who is Alone (al-Wahid). So ... before choosing a name, decide on the purpose of the page! What is this about? Many associations have been founded by a single person, running a flag up the pole. It isn't really an "association" until there are at least two, and if one looks at the history of movements, it's the second person who is often crucial. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 18:16, 7 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Basic missing here: Wikiversity resource organizational guidelines. The community never came to agreement about it. The result was a mess that led many to think of Wikiversity as a toxic waste dump. No, I'd prefer to think of it as a junkyard, where there are gems hidden. Where content can be recycled, organized, made accessible and useful, and where structure can encourage participation, in ways the flat Wikipedian structure does not. Yes, there are alternate forms of organization, and often they can all be used. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 18:16, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

I think "Single person associations" is fine. Leutha (discuss • contribs) 18:03, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Definition, and purpose of the page, please! --Abd (discuss • contribs) 18:16, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Definition
Discussion of the definition and purpose of the page has now been added to the resource
 * A single person association is an organisation which sets the maximum size of membership as one.

Thus disregarding the plain meaning of "association," "(often in names) a group of people organized for a joint purpose."


 * One example is a Corporation sole which has often been used as regards church property.

That is not an association. It is a corporation, a legal person. The confusion may arise because some -- most -- corporations are associations of some kind.


 * However, here we are focussing on Avant-garde uses of the concept. In many ways this complements the Multiple-use name.

And thus we see how highly related this is to the Avant-garde. Given that this is a misleading name, it should not be in mainspace. "Multiple-use name" organizations can be associations, because there is a "group of people," even if they all use the same name or are completely anonymous. So they are not "single-person" at all, except as multiple persons may pretend to be single or avoid individual identity.

I could write an essay on unity vs identity, or unity and identity. I would not pretend that it is consensus or neutral. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 18:32, 7 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes abdy your love of subpaging has not diminished. i know. the problem with subpaging at this stage is that i am making resources and their interrelation is not clear as yet. as your disruptions with the avant-garde subpaging show. but as we use these there may be some sub-paging later. the term single person association is obviously an oxymoron, the links to situationism and neoism should make it apparent that this is a conscious device. Dx (discuss • contribs) 19:02, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Dx, you seem to think that I have some personal relationship with subpaging. It is an extraordinarily powerful technique. For what? For, among other things, allowing unhindered, radically free development of resources. What you may not be aware of is how the use of subpaging and page moves to user space (another form of subpaging) reduced our rate of resource deletion to nearly zero, it used to be much higher, and you already got a taste of why, two page deletions from a custodian who was not like me. (And who was opposed to my probationary custodianship.) Subpaging has also reliably defused content conflict, reducing it, as well to "rare."
 * Those two pages were speedy deletions, easily undone. (But we have seen that some custodians don't accept that; it is, nevertheless, a strong tradition here.) WV:Request for Deletion, which used to be quite active, is not easily undone. WV:RFD is a disruptive process, distracting users. I will not go there unless it becomes necessary, and it is not necessary at this point, certainly not with your resources; this one gets about as close as you have managed so far.... and if I did go to RFD, it would not be for deletion of the page, but for a move decision followed by redirect deletion. That became a common outcome on RFD, partly my doing, but usually the resources were facing genuine requests for deletion from users offended by the resources themselves.)
 * Yes, what you are doing is deliberate, and I think I understand it, and your mention of "oxymoron" confirms it. Your motivation could be "disruptive," POV, non-neutral. Ah, "Neoist." "Performance Art." More than one has used Wikiversity for performance art. Generally, they've been blocked or even banned. (Nothing you have done, so far, would lead to that.)
 * But I'm not in charge here, I merely have some fairly strong sense, moderately reliable, of what the community will accept, when push comes to shove, and what it will not. I'm not eager to push it, nor to shove. My goal was to protect and preserve and facilitate your work. That goal remains. I will address how your work is framed at another time. Meanwhile, there are some much more serious issues to attend to, and, after all, resource development, yatta yatta.
 * Have fun! --Abd (discuss • contribs) 20:35, 7 September 2015 (UTC)