Noddle: A Common Memory

‘Noddle’ is an informal British expression for brain or head. The brain learns by making associations and by perceiving patterns and generating rules about them. The Noddle web application is envisioned as a networked, learning, collective memory. This document is a working 'white paper' last updated May 15, 2008.

The purpose of developing Noddle is to:

Use social networking, affinity groups, and third-party partners to engage the College community (students, alumni, staff, and friends) on an ongoing regular basis and foster fruitful connections between the community and the Advancement Office
Engage students with each other and with the College community and seek to keep them connected after they graduate
Create a vibrant, interactive, and personalized portal page for students, alumni, and staff
Learn what affinity groups exist within the community and how best to serve and take advantage of them
Fulfill the need for several website elements, such as online alumni notes, personalized portal page, new inside page, etc.
Find stories that illustrate the success of the College’s mission by encouraging community members to share their most memorable and life-changing Warren Wilson experiences
Create a digital repository of ‘institutional memory’ that illustrates the collective Warren Wilson ‘brand’
Provide a common architecture for digitizing archival materials such as yearbooks, facebooks, and college/student publications

Noddle will be an open-source application developed under the Nimble Framework using the namespace NMBF with the public, working title of ‘Nimble Folksonomy.’ It will be a tool hosted and developed by Warren Wilson College and for the use of the College community but not strictly limited to that community. The launch of Noddle will be controlled via a private beta with a set number of invitations being distributed from user to user. A public launch will happen sometime prior to the 2009-2010 academic year. Once the program is launched, it will be edited and moderated by the Web Director (and the Network Systems Administrator?). As the user-base and content-base grow, moderators with limited editorial control will be recruited from among active users. The Web Crew (and College Archives?) will act in a supporting role as time permits.

What is Noddle?

Noddle is a common memory. In its most basic sense, the application will rely on the sharing of individual ‘memories’ that serve to unite participants based on their common experience—thus a common memory refers to a singular instance of memory. This memory can be a photograph, a story, a video, a sound, or a piece of artwork. In its overall sense, Noddle will be a digital network of associations between every aspect of a community’s shared experience. It will rely both on folksonomy—the process of individual users identifying and ‘tagging’ associations—and a system that discovers points of interaction (‘nodes’) and maps them. In this sense, it will be an institutional, collective, or common memory.

Noddle is a social network. “A social network is a social structure made of nodes […] that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency” (Wikipedia). Noddle will fulfill many of the basic functions of a social network by providing a place where individuals can create biographical pages and network with others based on relationships, affinity groups, messaging, and interests.

Noddle is not a wiki. Where Noddle will differentiate itself from most online social networks is the breadth of nodes that it tracks as well as the level of content contribution that it will expect from users. In that sense, Noddle will be something like a wiki. A wiki “promotes meaningful topic associations between different [nodes]” and “seeks to involve the visitor in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration that constantly changes the Web site landscape” (Wikipedia). However, the defining characteristic of a wiki moves towards objectivism or at least consensus by inviting a community to edit content in a collaborative process. Noddle will not do this. Instead, Noddle seeks to preserve the subjectivity of the knowledge it collects (‘memories’). It will invite community participation in the form of responses or comments to each memory and node and the ability for users to associate their own—possibly very different—memories with each node.

Noddle is a next generation web application. Noddle will have a rich, AJAX-driven interface, which has come to be the standard for ‘Web 2.0’ applications. By using Google's OpenSocial API and Facebook's API, Noddle will be able to implant itself in the form of an 'application' (in Facebook terms) or 'gadget' (in OpenSocial terms) within several of the most popular social networking sites. This modular form of Noddle will allow the system to solicit user content and gain participation without the user ever actually having to leave the comfort of his/her chosen social network provider—all they will have to do is choose to install the Noddle application within their social network profile. In addition to encouraging participation in Noddle content sharing, these applications will fill a similar niche to our monthly e-newsletter and RSS feeds by bringing Warren Wilson to the social networks. (Sites that Noddle will be able to embed itself include: Engage.com, Facebook, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji (Chinese), Viadeo, and XING.) Noddle will be able to use APIs provided by Google Maps and Flickr to pull content into the site. Noddle will also be able to access data from sites that use RSS, such as LiveJournal, and it may eventually be integrated with Aptron via a Universe (U2) PHP API. Noddle will use a variety of formats and protocols to extend its reach outside the confines of the web browser. It will facilitate the interaction of users via SMS (cell phone) text messaging, email, and instant messaging clients. It will be syndicated via RSS and will take advantage of HTML microformats such as hCard.

Noddle is an old-fashioned website. Noddle will still use human editors and internal moderators to insure that the experience that the website creates is positive and consistent. Moderators will rate newly created material as part of an internal weighting system that measure the popularity and quality of nodes (including individual users, who are also nodes). This will help insure that the most interesting and quality content is displayed on portal pages. Moderators will include the Web Director (and Network Systems Administrator?) as well as community moderators who are recruited from a pool of active users and made responsible for moderating an affinity group or groups. Noddle will also be supported by the Web Crew, who will generate new content during any downtime they have by scanning archival material, such as yearbooks, and uploading them into the system. Many existing college publications, such as Owl & Spade articles, would make good additions to Noddle. (It would also be nice for the College Archivist to contribute materials from the archives, if possible.)

A Noddle Glossary

Node: A node is any word around which Noddle seeks to foster associations or relationships. In general a node has three parts. The node itself is a word, phrase, or name. The node is ‘represented’ by its associated data. The data that represents a node will always contain other nodes. The node has an association map that describes how it is related to other nodes.

Noddle tracks four primary types of nodes:

(General) Node: A node in its most general sense is a proper noun: the most common general nodes are the names of a physical objects, individuals, groups, locations, ideals, or events. It is represented by information about the given noun.

User-Node: A user-node is the node for an individual user. In most instances, this node will be the user’s name and will be represented by their biographical content. A node for a person outside the system would be treated as a general node.

Affinity Group: An affinity group is a subset of primarily user nodes that is itself a node, defined specifically for the purposes of creating meaningful associations among users and for management purposes (assigning community moderators, providing custom tools and features, and collecting data for marketing and fundraising purposes). For example, a sport such as soccer is an affinity group that is represented by teams (which are also affinity groups), players and fans (who are user-nodes), memories and other content (which are general nodes), and associated soccer words (which are meta-nodes). A soccer affinity group may be offered a widget that lists soccer scores on their portal page. A list of users in the group may be flagged to receive solicitations for funding sports scholarships or sports-related campaign items.

Meta-Node: A meta-node is a node that is an abstraction—such as a word, term, or phrase that is not a proper noun. The meta-node generally will be represented by a definition that has special value to the community or just by an association map.

Nodes are created in two ways. First, users supply new nodes in the form of tags or by their registration, and, second, Noddle harvests nodes by identifying common elements within data. Nodes are created when a node model is instantiated and the node is input into the Noddle database.

Association Map: An association map is similar in appearance and function to a set of search engine results. Every node has an association map that is composed of weighted associations with the best or most commonly accessed associations appearing first.

Tag: A tag is a user-supplied node. It is simply the term used instead of ‘node’ in the UI to make the user experience as easy and intuitive as possible.

Node Model: A node model defines how Noddle identifies and handles a node. The associated node object that provides methods for working with a given type of node. Node models can be pre-defined or can be created dynamically by Noddle from a generalized set of methods. Some examples of node models: a geographical location node will always be represented by at least latitude and longitude coordinates and may also contain the name of the closest building or room within a building. A location node model will contain methods for dealing with this data specifically, such as hooks for using the Google Maps API. A user-node will always be represented by at least a person’s name and email address and may also contain biographical data about them. A node model for a user-node will contain ways of displaying and manipulating user data.

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Reference

Former Crews

Noddle: A Common Memory

What is Noddle?

A Noddle Glossary