Wiklossary: WiklossaryTalk

This is where we isolate talk about the Wiklossary that doesn't really fit anywhere else. It may be a temporary place.

Issues

ScratchWiki, CommunalWiki?, ModeratedWiki?, - is there a better (shorter) name than CommunityWiki:DegreesOfEditorialControl ?
2 wiki?
- Comments module.
Decision making process.
"Fishbowl"

On 05 June 04, IRC convo logged, WiklossaryTalkIRCLog... will be distilled. A very many of these discussions below have been sorted.

ScratchWiki, CommunalWiki, ModeratedWiki...

ModeratedWiki? works for me! So we'll write:

ScratchWiki
CommunalWiki?
ModeratedWiki?

What should we call the collection of concepts? "TypesOfWiki?" is too generic. It's CommunityWiki:DegreesOfEditorialControl, but that's too long...

Maybe: EditPolicy? or..?

-- LionKimbro

2 wiki?

Lion has proposed another wiki for coordinating what happens here.

Clarification

We need a place to discuss terms, out of view of our audience. (Wiki-newcomers.)

Our process would be:

Users would post suggested terms on ScratchWiki. The ScratchWiki is not Wiklossary, which the audience sees. Suggested terms would be OK'd or debated.
Everything in RecentChanges on Wiklossary would be what was approved by the members in the ScratchWiki. The "Wiklossary team," so to speak.
Wiklossary is a ModeratedWiki?.

: One problem is that we want to isolate talk about a page from the page itself.

: Another problem is that we need a process for the introduction of terms. If this is meant to be a training guide for new wiki people, and we intend for this wiki to be used as a sort of "standard," then this is necessarily a political thing. Because people have different ideas about what should or should not be taught to new wiki people, and what new people should or should not be led to see (by linking.)

Comments Module?

For the first problem, what do you think about the comments function in OddMuse? A link appears on each page at the bottom, and it keeps the ThreadMode off the main page. It is very very handy. The comments pages can also be excluded from the RecentChanges if needs be. http://www.oddmuse.org/cgi-bin/wiki/Comments_on_Modules

This might be a handy option, since it would make it easier to moderate new entries. Then we don't have to move from wiki-to-wiki. I don't like the dispersed wikis until is is really neccessary.

-- HeatherJames

I don't know enough about the comments module yet; I'll have to hold on this one.

One nice thing about a ScratchWiki is that it's easy to hold multiple versions of a page. You just make a new page name. :)

Rather than the comments module, I would prefer to install the namespaces module. Basically, you get lots of wiki for the price of one.

Taking comments off of RecentChanges sort of scares me- how would you know when someone replied to something you said?

-- LionKimbro

If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to explore the idea of using the comments module in OddMuse, if you could check it out. It was developed to hide ThreadMode and discussions, and it might prove well-suited here. What do you think?

Technical details: http://www.oddmuse.org/cgi-bin/wiki/Comment_Pages
See an example comments page: http://www.oddmuse.org/cgi-bin/wiki/Comments_on_Maintenance
And see the original document http://www.oddmuse.org/cgi-bin/wiki/Maintenance, at the bottom there is a link 'Comment on this page'

-- HeatherJames

I love it! :)

I looked at the example, and it's great. It even has a prompt box at the bottom!

Let's do it.

-- LionKimbro

Decision Making Process

My belief is that we should work towards consensus. When people want to help us build, I believe we should approve by rough consensus as well, with a trial period while we come to a decision.

I think that you, Heather, should have "ultimate power," just basically never used. (Just to acknowledge that this is stuff hanging out on your server, and there's not a whole lot anyone of us, including yourself, can do about it.) Setting expectations otherwise, when the reality is that you hold this power, is, I think, dangerous.

When we're just starting, we probably know everyone, so it's easy to say, "yep, you're a member."

But when this becomes an established standard, and people start dropping by and changing stuff (not knowing that this is a ManagedWiki,) we need to justify our reverts, and point them to our process, and say why we have this process. (In Chomsky's lingo, we need to "justify the authority of our process.") If someone ultimately disagrees, we can let them fork the contents, and set up an alternative somewhere, perhaps politely requesting a different name.

I really think that this is really going to work. I don't believe it's premature to think about how we want to make decisions, since we immediately have some decision making to do.

-- LionKimbro

This is excellent stuff, Lion, thank you. Especially about what might happen if or when others may want to contribute. These are all pretty important things to lay down. Do you know if anyone else would possibly participate in this BarnRaising??

Next I would like to work on:

The MissionStatement - I simply roughed out your ideas, since they touched on the two main points. What do you think of the tone, it seems a bit cold to me.
ManagedWiki - What does this mean for contributers?
WiklossaryPractices? - How will this site be managed? This would link to the DecisionMakingProcess? or EditPolicy?. I suggested the idea of having the comments on each page... and that keeps it kind of 'behind' a document, and easy to locate- rather than creating a seperate wiki.

Btw, the derned InterMap is still not working, I am still trying to get it to work.
And I think you should go ahead and change the UtilityWiki post... It is confusing. I didn't really understand it till you posted that comment above.

-- HeatherJames

As for the MissionStatement- I wrote directly onto the page. (Same as UtilityWiki.)

As for WiklossaryPractices?, I think the following might be a good starting point.

Greet newcomers with open arms, and pointing them towards WiklossaryPractices?.
Discuss what we're going to do, before we do it, unless we've been granted some sort of authority, or something like that. If nobody says anything within a week, commit the change. Unless it's something small, like a grammar error, or a spelling mistake. But if it's the addition of a new link, it should be part of discussion first. Ideally, our technology would have some sort of support for this: WikiFeatures:DelayedCommits. But we don't have that yet.
Let's be open to changing some words. "FishbowlWiki?" - what does the term itself tell you? How about "ShieldedWiki??" I'd rather we didn't make new pages, just willy nilly, because some small group of people made up a word. "ThreadMode"- probably nothing we can do about it, at this point.
We should determine a membership. These are the people we work for consensus between. We also need a way to introduce new members- I would think consensus there would be good as well.
We should have a page, "PageProposals?," where people append pages and their definitions that they want added.
We should have a page, "PageDeliberations?," for pages that we need to talk about for a while; That we can't simply collect "OK" stamps on, before posting.
We should have a page, "PagesToWrite?," where we keep a list of pages we're considering writing up. If we've already decided (before) that we don't want a particular name, or we have the same concept by another name, we can just put an "X" mark next to it, and attach a note, "We've already made a page named Foo." As we make pages for the names, we put a "CHECK" mark next to the name. I already have a list of pages to write: WikiOnWiki, CamelCase, ScratchWiki, CommunalWiki?, WikiSyntax?, ...!

-- LionKimbro

Lion, thank you! I love the idea of a WiklosaryPractices? page to link newcomers to, it would include the link to the StyleGuide, among you other suggestions.

Regarding PageProposals?, PageDeliberations?, PagesToWrite?... and somehow governing a process of which terms or methods-pages are introduced... I picture a more just-in-time kind of resource. Imagine this scenario:

: A moderator wants to introduce a complex subject to their WikiNewbie?s... for example Wiki:SocialNorms. A moderator may decide to create a SocialNorms? page for their group, to make the processes explicit. When the create the page, they may want to refer to a 'what is this social norms thing' glossary item. When they create such a page, for example: Social Norms on Composer Planet they could create a wiklossary definition here, and link back to it. This is a page on SocialNorms?, linking back to the wiklossary.

The contributer would assume that through a collaborative process with other wiki moderators who might link to this term, that this would be polished. But if they had to wait for a process of negotiation, it might delay their wiki needs...

I imagine letting people add in terms on an as-needed-basis. And through deliberation, these terms would be clarified within the wiklossary context.

: I've moved the comments module discussion above, to the part on comments. -- LionKimbro

In terms of membership, and the issues of people adding in non-stadard terms... hmm... I'm still unsure of the implications of this. I don't imagine this resource as a browsing tool, but as a reference tool. This is getting into the realm of library science. We need to talk about this.

-- HeatherJames

I see these as arguments for having 2 wiki:

ScratchWiki - which is "just-in-time"
ManagedWiki - for CommunityWiki:TrustedLinkLanguage, what we've deliberated over.

The tension is between "I just want to write," and "I want something solid."

The problems of dedicating Wiklossary to just-in-time editing- essentially a ScratchWiki:

Our CommunityWiki:LinkLanguage will not be CommunityWiki:TrustedLinkLanguage.
Wiki language will diffuse, not unify.
We will be rightfully accused of having no MeatballWiki:FairProcess.
We will suffer wars over the names of things.

Imagine this scenario:

One person comes and writes an entry for "FishBowl." Another person comes and writes an entry for "ShieldsUp." Another person writes an entry for "TemporarilyShielded." Now another person comes and says, "Oh! These are all the same thing!" And then proceeds to redirect every entry to FishBowl.

We are already on the way to seeing this happening.

By having a standard MeatballWiki:FairProcess for incorporating names and shaping the space, we won't have these problems.

Really, we can serve both needs. The need to write and use immediately, and the need to follow MeatballWiki:FairProcess and build CommunityWiki:TrustedLinkLanguage.

Specificly, we'd have a ScratchWiki for people who want to write immediately, and then a ManagedWiki for things that have gone through the CommunityWiki:PublicRefineryProcess.

Once pages are reworked a few times and agreed upon, we can promote the page to the ManagedWiki, and redirect the ScratchWiki version of the page to the ManagedWiki version of the page.

If people want to rework the page, they can construct the new version of the page, again, in the ScratchWiki, for another round.

It's important to note that this isn't just "bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake." This isn't "complexity just because we like interesting problems." These are real problems. The scenario that I just outlined is already happening. And I believe it will get worse, much worse, if we continue like we are.

Already, there are a ton of pages here that I disagree with, and want to see reworked. The way it generally works is "whoever gets to the page first gets it." Everything afterwards is just so much conversation and suggestion attached to the page. We've seen this at Wikipedia. It's terrible.

We are necessarily in the domain of standards here. If we make Wiklossary into just another ScratchWiki on wiki terminology, then there will arise, yet again, another wiki, for the establishment of standards.

It's true that not everybody will like the standards. It's true that people will make other standards, if they want to make another language. This is good. The likelihood of one standards group making everything perfect is very small. But we need standards, and conversation, and deliberation. We need them if we don't want to keep reinventing our languages over and over again, and we need them if we want to make things easy and consistent for wiki newcommers.

This chat is taking a loong time to have in here; I hope to see you in IRC some time, and we can talk about this..!

-- LionKimbro

I seem to remember hearing this idea somewhere before -- having one web site have the serious, polished, professional-quality stuff. And another web site that had the rough drafts that would eventually be promoted to the other site. Ah yes -- Nupedia/Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nupedia . I wonder -- will what happened there, repeat here ? -- DavidCary

"ReadOnlyWiki" is a better name than "FishBowl"

A FishBowl?ed wiki is one where you can see what is going on inside, but you can't participate. http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?FishBowl

You and I know a lot about wiki culture already, and for us, these meanings are already clear. But for newcomers, these are really weird, and they demand further reading. They make it cost more to use wiki.

How about "PrivateWiki?," and "TemporarilyShielded??"

-- LionKimbro

Or simply ReadOnlyWiki? -- MarkDilley

That's awesome! -- LionKimbro

Should we have 2 different names for (a) wiki where only "approved" editors are allowed to edit, and it appears to be a policy that will be in effect indefinitely, vs. (b) wiki where anonymous edits are turned off at the moment, but it appears to be temporary, and the general policy appears to allow anonymous edits ? I think I've already seen (c) wiki where *no edits at all* are allowed (temporary server glitch ? load throttling during heavy attempted-spam attack ? I'd like to ask why, but that is, of course, impossible.) Or are there no practical differences between fishbowls ? -- DavidCary

Wiki (a) is a ModeratedWiki?. The distinction between "moderated" and "unmoderated" is ancient.

Wiki (b) is TemporarilyShielded?, I guess.

We don't have or need words for every little possibility "SpamAttackedWikiThatsWhyItsDown?."

I just think: We should try to use phrases that uninitiated people can understand, rather than something like "fishbowled," which are just puzzling.

~~~

What WikiEngine is used here at wiklossary ?

If I knew that, I could copy-and-paste a little TextFormattingTips? page here ...

Does the four-tilde thing work here ? ~~~~

WiklossaryTalk

Issues

ScratchWiki, CommunalWiki, ModeratedWiki...

2 wiki?

Clarification

Comments Module?

Decision Making Process

"ReadOnlyWiki" is a better name than "FishBowl"

What WikiEngine is used here at wiklossary ?

categories