Ok bad pun, but really the big idea that I really took away from this past Wiki Wednesday was that the wiki as it stands now is alot of editable content, but the chunks are too big. Thanks to the coaxing of sam the code poet I’ve been thinking of how to best go about creating a system that significantly reduces the chunks of content that you are dealing with at edit time but still maintain the rich ability for a wiki to span entire groups of knowledge. So this is what I’m thinking so far, (twitter + hash tags || rss) + postgresql + code layer to remove duplication + content promotion by community = wiki with distributed editing.
So how will this work…? Your jumping the gun there kids. So I do not have this all worked out. I’m guessing that this will be an idea that I kick around for a few days and start to code out something and then see how it goes. It seems rather easy, sure collecting content that is tagged and then spitting it back is a problem that has been solved already. But it’s the ‘find the duplication’ part that bothers me, its the ‘how to tell a computer what part of the Venn diagram of this content are we in’ problem. For example:
#wikime notbenh is thinking about wikis
#wikime wikis are communal content that is up for editing
#wikime notbenh is part of a community in portland
So by following this logic:
notbenh => wiki => community => portland
But portland is not directly editable, the community of portland has different properties then the community of say wikipedia. So how to tell the computer this? One answer would be to force the smart human to do the thinking and pepper there post with lots of meta data (microformats, hashtags, ect) but this eats in to the 140 char limit for twitter…. so how else can you get the computer to do that kind of thinking for you, and still stay twitter accessible? I have yet to really work that out, but thats what I’ve been up to thinking about all day long.
Very likely that more news will follow.
One of the tests that I have in my default perl test template is a can_ok that I just push a list to all the methods of this object to so that I know when something changes. It’s simple, it’s easy and it’s super effective. If this breaks then that is a huge redflag that this test is out of date. But my old method of just using ack to get me just the lines that start with sub was still a pain (ack "^sub "). So here we go… two more steps later we have exactly what I want.
ack "^sub" | ack -v new | perl -e 'while (<>) {m/sub\s+(.*?)\s+/;printf(qq{%s\n}, $1)}'
I hope you kids out there in internet-land have a happy friday eve.
CPAN App::Ack
So I’m not convinced that this will have the best picture, but it sure will beat the running around to find a projector at FreeGeek. It makes me really wish that I had a few bucks to throw at this thing for research reasons.
product page
Ok I guess I’ve been inspired by the wiki, I had every intent to really just take these notes and really translate them in to a useful post…. alas it’s 10 and I’m nappy… so I guess harass me in the comments and I’ll comply.
[wiki where to go from here]
- what is the goal of a wiki
- shared open and welcoming space on the web for interaction with no limitations
- trust that people are good by nature
- a system that grows organicly
- “do not use the if statement for bad” paraphrase from ward
- topics
- whats not to like about a wiki?
- revision of exisitng entrinched process
- allow for some finer granularity to completeness
-
- new application of wiki
- how / new ways to structure data
- barriers to adoption
- identity & repopulation
- what keeps a wiki alive
- social?
- does any one care… why should I?
- encuragement
- how to aggrigate social knoladge from social network
- how do you manage the people aspect of a wiki
- wiki focus on content by people
- twitter focus on people generating content
- what makes something stale
- expand the existing wiki model
- templates
- statis truth vs dynamic truth
- any other blue sky
- UI modifications
- modeless edits
- watching updates in real-time (gobby?)
- semantic meta data
- simple “programibality”
- ‘non-text’ stuff
- wild visions
- a translation layer to a standard (ie I type in a way that is converstaion and it writes in novel)
- describe a vision for a ‘movie’ and then the robot can make the ‘vision’
- wiki by comments/twitter and promote to wiki
- some magic ability to consolidate and record the essence of a conversation in a static stored format that can be refferenced
- why are there seperate wikis?
- ie distributed version control… have one single world wide wiki
- robot translation
- machinenima
- ‘movies’ via game-engines
[ideas about work]
- do not put your meeting notes in the wiki straight up
- instead start to creat pages at the ideas presented at the meeting
- have a comments section to a wiki page.
- really interesting way that ward just brought people in to the conversation based on the people that have not been involved by asking to help him pick a topic
Tags: wikiward PWI “web innovators”
So I have a very temperamental blogging habit, I know that I should share some of these crazy ideas in my head, I know that I should be better… and then I go to bed and it’s a new day all over again and some things just just didn’t make it past the nap. So today I strike out on a bold quest… remembering to share my thoughts more.
for all of the 2 people that ever end up here, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that things went boom. I really should be keeping this whole site thing up to date better… So lets kick start version 3 of this here site off… wait for it.
*kick*
Ok so is whats left after breakfast yesterday. I do not really know why I feel the need to even share with you but I do so there you go. Enjoy some breakfast sounds.
Cute robots with function… sure I’ll take one. Too bad there only avail in Japan (lucky). So I have a facination with toys, and this one looks like it’s going to be another one of those toys that is useful enough to just get under my skin enough that I can think of thousands of uses… but not so useful that I will really rember why in 3 hours. So yet another glimpse in to my head.
via: PC World - 10 Cool Gadgets You Can’t Get Here–Yet
There are just days at work where slamming my face in to my desk repeatedly sounds like a better idea then getting any real work done. Today is another of these days. I am dealing with a case of bad DB layout completely inhibiting my ability to do what I’ve been asked to do.
Goal:
- Given the input of some words that ~might~ be words in a persons name, find any content that they have created if there is such a person. So if there was an interview with ‘bob’ and I type in ‘bob’ then I get a link for that interview.
Problem:
- The content that I am to be finding is haphazardly strewn across 2 databases, many tables that are identical to each other, and important feilds are completely blank, or randomly duplicated with out reason.
Obvious solution:
- Ask the person that manages said content to change there DB layout and fix this problem.
Reality:
- The content person is going to tell you that they can not work on it until may at the earliest, and this is your problem so just deal.
The effect of reality:
- I have to force some one who gets paied more then me to make a decision, though I know that they will not unless I press them, but it’s not my job. Thus we start another cycle of complete and utter apathy, discouragement and general disappointment with my job.
Welcome to my day at work.
