Minority Threads
Topics that come up in the source OGM Wiki once or twice and never get picked up — but are substantive enough to be worth surfacing.
These aren't Orphan Gems (referenced often, written sparsely) or True Orphans (linked-to with no page at all). They're self-contained — they appear, they say something, and the wiki moves on.
In What Does OGM Care About (issue list)
OGM Culture/What Does OGM Care About.md lists issues OGM is interested in. Most have no further pages. The list itself:
- polarization by major media (loss of trusted sources)
- surveillance capitalism
- surveillance governments (both authoritarian regimes and the growing surveillance by the US government)
- alternative health
- plant medicine
- growing cold war between US and China
- systemic racism
- deep adaptation
- wise collapse
- IP collaboration
- interoperable / federated data (cf. wise data channel)
Of these, only IP collaboration has been picked up substantively (see The Generative Commons). The rest are minority threads — topics OGM's stated interest list flags but the corpus doesn't elaborate.
"Wise collapse" and "deep adaptation"
Mentioned once, in the issue list above. Both reference a body of thought (Jem Bendell's Deep Adaptation paper and adjacent work) that explicitly questions whether civilization will continue in its current form. That OGM lists these without elaborating is itself a minority thread: a serious topic flagged but not yet brought into the wiki's discussion.
"Steward ownership"
Appears once, in Brain/Decision Making Processes.md:
- "steward ownership" (what does that mean)
The parenthetical (what does that mean) is an explicit invitation to elaborate. The concept undergirds The Generative Commons and the OGM-Lionsberg MOU but is never defined.
"Membrane"
From OGM Structure/OGM Infrastructure (Evolving).md:
"Experiment with defining our membrane (what protections we need around 'open')"
A single, evocative metaphor — open-but-protected boundary, semi-permeable, biological rather than architectural. Used once, never elaborated. Could be a Theme; remains a thread.
"Federation" of Thursday calls
From OGM Stewardship/Documents/Stewardship Dashboard.md, in the Re-formatting Thursday Call section:
Issues (partial list)
- diversity
- time on the floor
- reputation as a "check-in" call
- how do we federate Thursday calls
The federation question is asked once and then left. Federating a recurring call (presumably running parallel sessions, or running by-region) is a structural move — and the corpus doesn't follow up on it.
"OGM has clients" → "team sorting out how to organize"
From OGM Stewardship/Documents/Stewardship Dashboard.md, recorded as Pete's note after the first Food Security & Regenerative Ag call:
"Pete: for OGM in general, do we need to reframe 'OGM has clients' to 'we are a team that is sorting out how to best organize itself'?"
Klaus Mager's response: "let's just say we are a team that is sorting out how to best organize itself. Does that work?"
A minor reframe, but consequential — it changes how OGM presents itself to outsiders. The reframe is recorded once and then absorbed without further discussion.
"OGMy organizations"
From OGM Structure/OGM Infrastructure (Evolving).md under Services:
"Identify worthy projects ('OGMy' organizations)"
The adjective form OGMy — meaning "organizations whose values and practices align with OGM's" — appears once. Distinctive, useful, never picked up.
Stewart Levine's "Essential Elements of Agreements"
Cited in Projects/Marley/Marley.md as the basis for Marley project agreements. The document itself is at root (ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF AGREEMENTS.md). Used by one project; could underwrite governance broadly. A minority application of a powerful framework.
Page maturity tree life-cycle
From Admin and Help/How We Wiki/Our Way of Writing Here.md:
"Pete has used tree life cycle names, with a page describing each: seed, sprout, seedling, sapling, adult, elderly, snag or rotting log."
Proposed once, not adopted. Pages don't carry maturity tags. Could be a real editorial convention; remains a thread.
"Five major crises facing humanity"
From People/Jerry Michalski.md:
A specific framing — Jerry has identified five crises and links to them in his Brain. The wiki invokes the frame but doesn't enumerate them within the wiki itself. A minority thread that points off-wiki for its substance.
What counts as a "minority thread"
The pattern across these examples:
- A single source page invokes a concept
- The concept could carry weight — it would change something about OGM's structure, vocabulary, or self-presentation
- No follow-up in the wiki's link graph
Whether each of these should be picked up is a community judgment. Some may have been settled in conversation off-wiki. Some may have been deliberately set aside. Some may simply have lost the thread.
Related
- True Orphans — the link-target version of "minority thread"
- Orphan Gems — pages where the thread is picked up but not written down
- Roads Not Taken — narrower: things that came up in meetings but didn't continue
- Themes Hub — what did get picked up
Methodology: Minority threads here were identified by reading every Tier A source page and noting concepts/phrases that appear once or twice with substantive weight. This is more interpretive than the structural Discovery pages (Orphan Gems, True Orphans, Hidden Substance) and the choice of what to include reflects judgment. Corrections welcome.