MakingTheWiki

The MediumIsTheMessage. To best reflect the open model we aspire to uphold we must use open communications. To best reflect our desire to be inclusive, particularly towards the amateur, we should not use cluttered and complex communication tools.

The MediaWikiWiki has functioned only as a document repository. Our forums never got used. There's pushback to use [[Yammer?]] or OpenAtrium?. The EmailList? only recently opened up. The WordPress blog requires login and approval from folks who are too busy to JustSayYes to people who want to post. And though the MediaWikiWiki is easy by my standards, if I encourage most people to use it I get two categories of complaints: I'm NotSmartEnough or WhatsThePoint.

The problems that we're facing right now are ones that being ActivelyOpen may solve. There's a kludge buildup of TacitKnowledge. We haven't made a strong effort to give permission to TakeAuthority. A wiki with the right form shows (rather than tells, to use the old writing trope) that we are open, that we don't stockpile our knowledge, and that anyone who wants authority just needs to issue themselves the right permits off of their own stationary to do so.

Why I favor transitioning quickly: Having two wikis (even on the same domain) forks our efforts. If content is on one and discussion on the other than we're not centralizing where people go to get informed and to discuss. They are the same thing... in fact the discussion is the stickier of the two, but the documentation needs to be presented well so that we don't make rules in a book in a LockedCloset.

Answers to questions:

• "What's the pattern for linking to subsections of pages?"
  • That's due to a module, -- the permanent anchors module.
  • I ''highly'' recommend that we install it, for exactly the reason you specify.
  • Then you can noodle around with names all you like. "ActionBarriers?" is great.
• Page updates is done with #REDIRECT; See the coding for AtomsNeuronsandBits redirect for an example.
• Batching requests: Great. I have a huge list of modules to give him...
• Let's talk about the porting as its own item. I don't think we should do it -- but it's complicated about why. I need to go right now though. And yes, there are a few tools for making it easier, if that's what we decide is best.

With respect to tables (I remember you asking about them): Look to the page "JigsawRenaissance" for an example table.

And kudos:

• It's great that someone installed Portraits mode! I've portraitized our entries.

A request:

• Someone turned on comments. Can we turn that off?

Separate Comment Pages are great for blogs and encyclopedias because they are centrally outward looking. But for a wiki that is ''used'' by a community, it's best to include comments right on the page of text, because we want to encourage discussion, participation, and clarity that multiple voices are at work helps a lot.

Wow! This is really starting to take shape! I love the candyland color scheme. It's kind of trippy, though it's hard to read the white headers on the light background.

• archiving: Yes, I'd like to archive most prior content, and use "OldWiki?" as an InterWiki moniker for it.
  • Anything that is being kept current, though, I would place here.
  • But I'd be a little intelligent about how we did it: We want to establish a good naming convention. This is something we want to think about a little bit. (More later.)
• collating modules: I'm not sure what you mean by collating modules.
  • But if you mean "grouping the changes we need for Doug," then -- great: I've listed the modules that I think we need on my NamePage.
• portrait: It looks like your portrait has updated.
• lists around photos: Yes, this is something we can fix in CSS. AlexSchroeder has responded to you on CommunityWiki:CommunityMaintainedCss about how to make the CSS publicly editable -- it involves setting variables in the configuration. (Basically, you render the page raw, and use that as your CSS source document. Pages can be rendered raw with a special action.)

We need to do a bit of customization; I can do it myself, but I'll need permission from Doug to log into the system and twiddle variables.

And: We really need to turn off comment pages. It's going to mislead people: "Should I put a comment at the bottom of the page, or should I put it on the separate comment page?"

When we set up blogs here, we can enable comment pages on the pages of the blog entries. See OddMuse:Comment_Pages for details. But for now, $CommentsPrefix? should be deleted (or set to "").

• Please feel free to tweak the css... I like the layout of green.css, but I thought that a blue/grey/mint/lilac color scheme was more Jigsaw's style. the pallete needs some tweaking to make text higher contrast
• Also to InterWiki?, http://organic.bl00cyb.org and http://wiki.strabd.com
• I'll be behind the bar, but we can figure something out.
• Love the sidebar!

OK Strand. How are you feeling about this? What do you think?

Alex: I'm not sure that Lion or myself quite get your comment. I'll be back in Seattle on Tuesday and look over it again when I'm not recovering from BarCampMilwaukee?, and hopefully it will make sense then, but at the moment it's a bit terse.

Lion, I'm noticing some great little tweaks to the interface. Can we incorporate an edit link at the top as well the bottom. we should also tweak link colors, and maybe recruit someone with palette creation experience to tweak the color scheme so that it looks prettier. I like the colors, but I get the sense that they should be higher contrast to improve readability.

I will start porting content this week... Don't know how quickly we can do that and get a thumbs up to switch sites, but I'm not looking forward to having to maintain both wikis content simultaneously. Ideally this will be a quick process.

Thanks, Alex. :)

I think I understand about how to configure OddMuse from AlexSchroeder's comment; It's just the GoogleAnalytics? side of thing that I'm not so savvy about. But I think Strand understands that part.

As for the wiki, my #1 concern right now is that we have references to "Comments" still on pages. I really really really want to obliterate all references to separate comment pages on this wiki. It's one of those things that is great for a blog or an encyclopedia, but counterproductive in forums or a community-engagement wiki. To do this, we need to not set the definition of $CommentsPrefix?. OddMuse:Comment_Pages explains how.

I like the idea of having an edit link at both the bottom and the top of the page, and I know that that can be done; I just forget the how. I'm looking at OddMuse:Gotobar_Extension and OddMuse:Header_And_Footer, but it's not clear to me. "How do I make a link that always edits the page, whatever the page happens to be?" "Is Gotobar what I should be using for this?"

Palette: I actually ''like'' the candyland color scheme; It has character! But I'd make the section links dark, rather than light, rather than white..! Because they are hard to read. Otherwise, I like the color scheme and subtle contrasts.

As for porting content -- please lets talk about this before you "go." I have a lot of concerns about this -- and it mainly has to do with site ownership. Priority #1 is getting people to use the wiki. I think that if we dump a bunch of content in here, people will feel like "we can't own this wiki together." Like moving into a house that is already full of someone else's stuff?

That's the concern.

As for maintaining two sites -- I am under the impression that not much is being done on the other wiki anyways. So it's not a huge burden for the time being.

I think we talked something about moving the frequently edited pages over here? That makes a lot of sense to me.

We might even want to call the other wiki, "the Library," to function more as stacks. I hope we can talk about this.

OK, I fixed the portraits, it looks like you've fixed the CSS.

I dub the new color scheme you've made: "Neapolitan ice cream."

I've checked the items off the lists above.

Agreed, unless we have a true sister site (member or group sites, maybe) it doesn't make sense.

And today, I'd like to:

• consolidate the JigsawEvents, per our conversations offline
• perhaps work on the wiki StyleGuide, which will go a little bit broader than just guidelines, and perhaps go into JigsawInternetStrategy? as well.

Strand, I'll need to sit down with you to talk about how Analytics works. I think I understand enough about OddMuse to configure the wiki, but I'll need some more understanding of Analytics, and some coordinates, in order to make that work.

What do you think about the icons?

I made a set of four: One for Twitter, Posterous, for Wiki (using the green UniversalEditButton for model,) and one for Blogs in general. All are 8x8. I can make more, too.

I wonder if it clashes, though, in a way that text over there does not. What do you think?

Great! It just occured to me, too -- that, with the icons, we won't need parenthesis, which should make it look a bit more natural.

I'll upload the icons later; I don't seem to be able to SSH in from work.

I've enlarged the CSS text in the sidebar, let me know if you want the size changed again.

Boy, if that's possible (scaling images?), I don't know about it. The only thing I can think of is SVG, and that doesn't go beneath 32x32 looking good. (It's for scaling in the larger realms -- not the PixelArt? realms...)

The summary shows up in the tables interspersed on the pages. Just flip through the tables, and you have the summary. Yes? Put another way: I challenge you to find things discussed in the ThreadMode on this page that don't appear in one of the tables.

Also: Please, do not edit my ThreadMode. Please discuss concerns or desired edits with me, to my ThreadMode. Personally, I like for spaces between posts to be represented by new posts.

I would also consider it fair communicative technique: On the order of separating sentences into paragraphs, both for organization, and for non-verbal communication. (Consider the effect of frames 8, 9, 11, and 12 in the "What do you do" comic.) In the main case, though, it means, "Time has passed between then and now," or "This is sufficiently different that it requires readdress."

I think that if a person is going to go into a conversation, they go into the thick of it. Summaries are written for the outsiders; Conversation has it's own logic. I am reluctant to modify a conversation, even to delete a comment, because context is lost. People modifying my self-representation: No no no.

I appreciate that you say that you do not mind if I modify your own text? (Even if I am a bit skeptical...) But do not modify mine. There is a way to get me to modify my own words: Talk with me and persuade me.

Oh, okay.

But I don't understand what you mean by an expandable box?

(Are you wanting to clear out all this ThreadMode and consolidate it into DocumentMode? We could get rid of everything but the SummaryBlocks on this page. Much of the ThreadMode is now expired. Another alternative is to archive the text: MakingTheWikiArchive?)

Reminder: TakeAuthority, LockedCloset, TacitKnowledge, ActivelyOpen, WhatsThePoint, NotSmartEnough, JustSayYes, MediumIsTheMessage, MediaWikiWiki, -- let's figure out what to do with these.

ActionPrinciples?? PrinciplesOfAction??

As for the tables -- I think we can make it work.

It's Javascript + CSS, right?

I think you could figure out the relevant code. I think I could put it into the rendered pages.

You'd want to hide sections of a table, and you'd want to change the site css to match. The necessary JavaScript, I'm pretty sure OddMuse has a way of injecting it that's pretty simple.

Requests for features and summary of incomplete features

Topic		Status
ShortURLs?		http://www.oddmuse.org/cgi-bin/oddmuse/Apache_Redirection_and_URL_Rewriting
transitioning content		continued disagreement about wether to maintain archive of documentation on Mediawiki or port it to OddMuse. Significant time commitment needed.
google analytics		AlexSchroeder says to put analytics script into $FooterNote? or writing a PrintMyContent? "sub" in the config file (example)
edit link at top of page		AlexSchroeder has given guidance below on how to do it.
turn off SisterSites		We agree it's not contributing right now. Lion has access now, so now he needs to reconfigure it.
start work on StyleGuide		Lion's started the guide on his portable computer. Strand recommends itnot be a "style guide" but GoodStyle... an indication of best practices.
Expandable tables		May be possible with a combo of Javascript, CSS, and pixie dust.
Specifying PST for time		Undiscussed, likely easy.
Add UseMod markup		would be ''nice''

Would a search bar at the top be doable as well?

Thanks, Alex! That did it!

Awesome. I also need to remember to write the CommunicationsGuide? for JigsawRenaissance...