Please read the CTG Pattern Mining Initiative.

There will disagreement amoung those in the pattern community over the use of the term "Pattern Mining" vs. "Pattern Workshop". Strictly speaking mining is where a group of people look for patterns and the workshop is where individuals review pattern written by others.

The reason I am using the term "Mining" instead of "Workshop" is because of the nature of CTG with deverse locations and sources of patterns. The final solution will probably be a mix of both. With that said we proceed:

Writing good patterns is very difficult. Patterns should not only provide facts (like a reference manual or user's guide), but should also tell a story which captures the experience they are trying to convey. A pattern should help its users to: comprehend existing systems; customize systems to fit user needs; and construct new systems. The process of looking for patterns to document is called pattern mining (or sometimes reverse-architecting). Within the pattern mining, the following takes place:

* Focus on practicability: Patterns should describe proven solutions to recurring problems rather than the latest scientific results.

* Aggressive disregard of originality: Pattern writers do not need to be the original inventor or discoverer of the solutions that they document.

* Non-anonymous review: Pattern submissions are shepherded rather than reviewed. The shepherd contacts the pattern author(s) and discusses with them how the patterns might be clarified or improved upon.

* Writer's workshops instead of presentations: Rather than being presented by the individual authors, the patterns are discussed in writer's workshops: an open forum where all attending seek to improve the patterns presented by discussing what they like about the patterns as well as other areas in which they are lacking.

* Careful editing: The pattern authors have the opportunity to incorporate all the comments and insights during the shepherding and writer's workshops before presenting the patterns in their finished form.

At CTG, in many cases it will not be possible for face to face gathering of people into a workshop except in the case of projects where everyone is at the same location. Therefore, two procedures have been setup to do the pattern mining:

• Face-to-face Pattern Mining
• Tele-conference Pattern Mining

In both cases, the outcome is the same: approved patterns will become part of the CTG pattern catalog system.