4 social classes

The very basis of social structures is very easily understood by learning it from the Vedic culture. There are naturally 4 social orders in every society, and of course, in any social networking environment.

  • Highly Intelligent or Brahminical class
  • Administrators or governmental rules setting class
  • Self interested or Business makers
  • Low intelligence and/or uneducated

For example, in the case of this site, Cash/Dave are the Highly intelligent, making the best high quality contributions. Then persons who handle groups, and discussions, general rules, form part of the governmental class. Then people hanging around Elgg programming for a living Dhrup/Vazco self interested/business oriented, and then the end users with their very basic install problems, and who rarely contribute useful content.

With this concept in mind, it easier to see that Elgg has a huge blind spot, since it considers that everyone should be treated the same. We know by experience, that a post by Cash, is worth 10 times more than a post by johndoe. And we know that if you give administrator access to Cash, there is no problem, while if you give it to John Doe, even if you trust him, it will be full of mistakes, so you would want to limit his range of action.

In terms of percentage, about 1% of users are in the Highly intelligent, 5% admin, 15% business, and 80% low intelligence.

Regards,
Uddhava dasa

  • One thing i think that should be known in this is that there are those who are going to start in the %80 bracket and move into a role much more potent over time. I am not saying its a big portion, but there is an element of those who start there and climb

  • Zakary,

    Yes, this is very rare, the potential is there in everyone. Most people are very lazy, and are satisfied with having a boring and average life.

    Regards,
    Uddhava dasa

  • im down. but i also know you speak the truth.

  • @Zak

    It's called "Evolution" ;-)

    We were **ALL born as Low Intelligence, Uneducated Cockroaches.. no exeptions ;-) and we are ALL Evolving towards elgglightenment !!!

     

  • @Dhrup

    yeah, but what dasa is saying is true... lots of people like being the cockroach and eatting the crumbs, but i want to make dang sandwhiche.

     

  • what should be thought about is if this is the case, then why not figure out a way to create mentors

  • Yes, anyone who is really advanced in a field of knowledge, being highly intelligent, he understands the importance of helping others who are not yet there. Thus the highly intelligent share by teaching others. They are the head of society. Just like Dave, is the head of Elgg in this little example.

    They would be the "Super Administrator", can perform any action within a social group, because of wisdom, they are qualified, and every single action is beneficial to everyone.

    With Love,
    Uddhava dāsa

  • We have been kicking around the idea, or actually the requirement, of different roles or categories of users with site privileges according to their demonstrated competence. Most (the 80%) can only read and respond to posts, and update their profiles. The higher levels get additional privileges, especially content generation, as they learn how to be responsible community members.

    What we don't want is to make everyone artificially equal, or have the same privileges. We have very clear standards and specific directions that we want to encourage our users to grow toward. So we are implementing roles and a karma point system that grants more privileges to active users, and can also penalize them for spefific breaches of community policy. Also we are considering how to emulate the instructional functions of Moodle within Elgg, so our courses will be on the same platform as our social network.

    Fortunately Elgg's architecture is flexible enough that this is possible without extensive customization. Doing the reverse (implementing social networking functionality in Moodle) would be a nightmare.