GetMeta:Water Cooler/Bottle2

this is an archive, or bottle, of prior water cooler talk...

policy talk

NOTE: To all Wikinfo Editors and Sysops: If you would like to import your personal work, user pages, limited encyclopedic entries, from Wikinfo to GetWiki (instead of the now default importing from Pseudopedia), please do so via the easy-to-use parallel display of this Wiki! Please note that the way the links back are handled at the bottom of the page is slightly different (for WP as well as WI), so follow the code given while editing. This parallel display will keep you logged in here, by the way, and eventually, will be fully integrated for multiple wiki imports :) Please note any problems you encounter here. -User:Proteus 16:13, 23 Mar 2007 (EDT)

use the link below matching your login:

• getwiki.net
• www.getwiki.net

promotions to sysop

I’d like to extend sysop status (and eventually admin status) to any Wikinfo sysop interested in also contributing here and building GetWiki. As it was my idea to promote everyone over on Wikinfo, I noticed it really helped with morale and a certain level of excitement about wiki-ing. Four or five such sysops (that I can recognize via usernames) have already made accounts here, and among them, Jon Awbrey has become an admin here for his work (of course, any contributor can be promoted here just as quickly for valuable contributions!) Any objections?? -User:Proteus 00:20, 4 Apr 2007 (EDT)

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talk of expansion

I’ve expanded GetMeta to include a wider range of possible topics than just wiki-stuff and interactive software, etc. I hope folks find this a welcoming place to chat and collaborate on things from detailed philosophical arguments to comparisons of screen technologies. What do you think? -User:Proteus

On this note, recurring with Wikinfo beg the question: Is there room for a wiki which is truly independent from Wikimedia’s Borg-like influences?? -User:Proteus 13:30, 8 Mar 2007 (EST)

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JA: There is one main thing that I tried to get across on Pseudopedia generally, and said more directly to Larry Sanger on three successive projects of his, Digital Universe, Text Outline Project, and Citizendium. (All that came of the experience was that it inspired me to invent the “in one ear and out the other” emoticon ->C|Z|?->, but never mind that now.)

JA: The thing is this: If you want to build a resource that will attract experienced, knowledgeable, mature, professional contributors and that people like that will actually care about improving, then you need to make it a resource that they will actually use themselves in their own work. It’s really that simple, in essence. There are few corollaries, however. One is that the common resource must accommodate itself to the working standards and styles that such people already have, and not try to impose a uniform code that reflects the designers’ particular preferences. We are talking about adults, people who already have their own standards, and reasons for them, not the sort of petulant adolescents with no knowledge of workaday scholarship that one finds at Pseudopedia. User:Jon_Awbrey 12:38, 19 Mar 2007 (EDT)

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further talk

didn’t think this was a general encyclopedia


people could misread PPOV


JA: If I never have another policy or style sheet discussion it’ll be too soon. That was the worst of what they did at Pseudopedia, writing policies and style sheets and templates and infoboxes and robots and ... instead of writing content.

JA: If I’m forced to say what I think about POV Policy, I think we should have something called APOV, for Adult Point Of View, or maybe RPOV for Responsible Point Of View. It would go a bit like this:

APOV. If you have achieved the age of responsibility, then you know the values of Accuracy, Balance, Civility in your writing, and you don’t need anybody telling you the desirability of working toward those ideals, as befits your abilities and the purpose at hand. If you do not understand the importance of these virtues, then where will you learn them? Not a question for us to answer.

JA: If I’m forced to say what I think is best in a style sheet, then it would go a bit like this:

Style Sheet. Style is best learned by example. You will find a variety of examples here. Try them, you may like them.

JA: I was gonna call it Adult Style Sheet, but that would have yielded a Really Bad ASS acronym. User:Jon_Awbrey 00:10, 13 Mar 2007 (EDT)

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software talk

titles of articles/headings

Since we’re doing things differently than Pseudopedia, I’d like to make sure every page is properly titled and capitalized (or uncapitalized), before the wiki becomes too big to do it (like on Wikinfo). Then, as new pages are imported or created, we can keep them organized as we go by monitoring the recent changes. So, let’s “just say no” and ban titles like “Wiki theory” in favour of “Wiki Theory”, and headings like “See also” in favour of “See Also” or “see also”. Bad Wiki habits do not have to spread across the entire WikiSphere! Resistance is NOT futile! ;) (also, we don’t want a bunch of redirects, either - let’s just build a wiki the right way from the start) -User:Proteus 23:00, 12 Mar 2007 (EDT)

licensing

I’ve changed the licensing blurb (at the bottom of every page) to be much more simple, and to add the Creative Commons License to our content/webpages. -User:Proteus 12:33, 30 Mar 2007 (EDT)

xml/atom news feed

I’ve been experimenting and researching providing an XML feed, using the Atom format. Instead of doing it the way WP and other wikis do it (by feeding recent changes/diffs and new articles, and thus creating boring, verbose feeds nobody cares about), I figure why not use the wiki to feed featured articles from the wiki (like our “running daemons” and “wreads”) with a blog-style page (say at GetWiki:Feed), on which we can select articles, write summaries, etc? This might be a slow-changing feed, but is that really an issue? The idea here is to provide useful info about the wiki, rather than wasting bandwidth with yet another celebration of “recent changes”. Once again, the way WP does it is usually the wrong way... -User:Proteus 12:04, 31 Mar 2007 (EDT)

new parser

I’ve updated the parser code in the guts of the software, which fixed some nagging problems, especially with the display of multi-line preformatted text, like for ASCII Art. Let me know if any pages or portions are broken. -User:Proteus 21:52, 4 Apr 2007 (EDT)

• Also, there was a small images problem, where some image links were broken when you clicked on them - should be fixed now. -User:Proteus 18:37, 5 Apr 2007 (EDT)
• (Wiki:Pages) now shows which pages are redirects... -User:Proteus 13:15, 6 Apr 2007 (EDT) ...and is broken into smaller “groups” of pages, putting fewer (75, rather than 300) pages on each group page. -User:Proteus 13:30, 13 Apr 2007 (EDT)
• I fixed a small problem I’d created, which was double posting article edits, thus messing up the page histories and contributions. -User:Proteus 12:56, 16 May 2007 (EDT)

other languages

Despite my love of other languages, I’m thinking of disabling the “other languages” links for this wiki (option in the software itself). Do we actually need them? Are they, in the context here, anything more than Google-mirror links for WP? -User:Proteus 00:26, 12 Apr 2007 (EDT)

edit box style

I finally got sick of the tiny edit box (on Safari), and set it to 100% of the default font size in someone’s browser (it must have defaulted to 50%). Let me know of any problems (tested on Mac OS X, Safari, Firefox, Camino, and only Safari had the smallest box/font). Note, later in the Spring, I’ll be set up again to test on multiple platforms. -User:Proteus 12:50, 14 Apr 2007 (EDT)

now, to classify pages

Unlike any other Wiki in the “Sphere”, we now have Categorical and Faceted Classifications at the same time. The heirarchical Categories and flexible Facets are user defined, dynamic, and handled completely separate from article edits. There are many reasons for this, from distributing database load, to following the principle of separating structure from content, to just keeping things simple (see GetWiki:InterWiki for more...).

On Main, GetMeta, and GetWiki namespace pages, you’ll see a “classify this page” link under the edit link (which has been removed from the top, alas). Go to that interface and update as needed. All pages are by default “uncategorized” (a default Category) and pages have no Facets. Facets will allow “winnowing” searches of the database by similarly tagged articles. Pages need to be updated individually, then (guess I’ll do it :) ). Everything about the “Wiki:Classify” function page has been designed to encourage simple classification. Instead of thousands of Categories which become impossible to use (especially when used incorrectly, as on Pseudopedia), we should have a small number of Categories, like “Philosophy”, “Science” or “Mathematics”, and Child Categories, say “History of Philosophy”, really should be no more than 3 levels deep. Why? Simplicity, Usability, New User Welcomability, and so on... Enjoy :) -User:Proteus 17:49, 25 Apr 2007 (EDT)

not just skin deep: GUI changes

Okay, many changes. Here’s a list, in no particular order:

1. “Breadcrumb” links are across the top of every page. These display up to 3 Categories in which the current page is contained, and all link to the “(Wiki:Index)”, or “browse”, feature to show relevant articles.
2. Facet links are just below the breadcrumbs, which also link to the (Wiki:Index) function. After looking at many options, this seemed to be the best place to put these terms/links.
3. Common links appearing on every page, such as your userpage, recent changes, and so forth, are “greyed out” when you’re on them - even the logo stops being a link to the Main Page when you’re on the Main Page.
4. The way the skins work has been simplified, and “Nostalgia” has been removed. Previously, the software loaded each skin as a separate parsing, which meant that some code changes to one skin would not show up in the others. Now there is only one “skin” function, and the only thing that changes is the actual CSS file of styles linked up. “Cologne Blue” has been changed slightly and is now “Minimal”. “Classic” is the previous default style of GetWiki, while “Moderna” is the new default, and while it looks the same now, it will be changed a lot to be much more interesting-looking. User-uploaded skins are now easier to consider, but probably not necessary.
5. The outdated “printable version” has been updated to a greyed out “prints friendly”, as any page will now print directly using the print styles, rather than having to click on the link first. That link is now a small up-arrow, and just for fun, that extra click still works as before. The print styles have been vastly improved.
6. The last Author of a page is now added to the stub at the bottom, as well as in the Facet list at top.
7. Lots of license, edit warnings and other bits of language have been updated or made “prettier”.
8. “User_talk:” pages are now “UserTalk:”, which is only a problem for hardcoded links in articles, but as they are mainly only found on our own user pages, it seems a minor problem to update them. Other Talk pages follow this format, too, such as GetWikiTalk, GetMetaTalk, etc.
9. All “Special Pages” have been renamed as well, either to reflect their newer meanings (like “Backlinks” instead of “Whatlinkshere”), or just to get away from senseless WP styles, and they’re now “(Wiki:Functions)” (I’ve put a couple of redirects in place for temporary help).

-User:Proteus 17:26, 25 Apr 2007 (EDT)