
Jonathan's Card: a Q&A Sam Odio's blog - antr
http://sam.odio.com/2011/08/13/jonathans-card-q/
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molbioguy
_You ruined the experiment! Not a question, but I do feel genuinely bad for
any distress that I've caused._

Neither Sam nor anyone else that participated "ruined" the experiment. They
added to the data on what happens when you run the experiment. The key point
here is that Jonathan ran, in his own words, an experiment. Not a service with
a mission or a protected outcome, but an experiment. If anything, it exposes
weaknesses in the plan that future implementors can correct.

~~~
_delirium
Some of the misunderstanding might be which kind of experiment it was. In the
scientific usage of experiment, you're right. But there's also an informal
usage of the word, where, for example, you might call the Hacker Dojo an
"experiment in building community spaces". There's a strong implication there
that you're not supposed to actively try to screw up the Hacker Dojo, because
it's not _really_ an experiment in that sense, but only in the sense that a
lot of tinkering with ("experimenting with") different ways of doing things is
encouraged--- _if_ you're doing it in good faith and in line with the
endeavor's shared goals.

In this case I can see how people could interpret it either way. Unlike in the
Hacker Dojo case, it doesn't seem as inherently clear to me that there was a
strong expectation of good faith; buying coffee is a sort of unimportant
enough thing that many people might've assumed Jonathan's motivation really
was more of a "let's see what happens" type experiment, rather than a genuine
attempt to make social-coffee-buying work.

