WebSeitz/wiki

Intro Page

This is the publicly-readable Wiki Thinking Space of Bill Seitz. See Front Page for latest entries.

Meta: see My Recent Key Pages.

  • You should be able to add comments to any page using the form at the bottom of it. If you intend to do so, go to User Options and assign yourself a User Name in Wiki Name format, just for kicks. I may choose to wipe out your comments without comment, or integrate them into my own commentary (sometimes credited, but I may be sloppy).
    • update: I turned that off after getting tired of the SpamWars.
  • To move my WebLog archives to this space, I needed to do some software customizing (Zwiki Customizations). (Update: that was my first WikiLog instance, as of 2017 this is my 3rd engine, but have carried over all legacy pages, working at original URLs.)

Summary/meta-pointers (what the heck is going on in this space?)

  • Goals: see Thinking Space. Have felt like WebLog writing is too disposable, and doesn't encourage deeper (or bushier) thinking. Love Wiki, but want weblog entries to (a) refer to existing Wiki nodes and (b) stimulate the creation of new ones. Also would like to have all my past scribblings (Bill SeitzWritingToolHistory) in one place/format, for easier migration to future media, and for current cross-fertilization.
  • Status: how is this working (Zwiki Customizations)? I'm now writing both Wiki and WebLog stuff as wiki pages. The WebLog entries are distinguished by their Wiki Name, which uses an initial 'z' for various silly reasons, then yyyy-mm-dd, then a tie-breaker final letter. I did some Zope DTML hacking to make views which render the full body for weblog entries and just the title for wiki pages (with weblog entries I also render the Wiki Name for editing and PermaLink purposes). I've also done some minor modification just to better support a publicly-accessible wiki (e.g. "hiding" some functions behind buttons to avoid search spiders, explode Wiki Names in title tags, make acronyms into WikiWords).

Here (were) some Machines Hitting My Server back in ZWiki days.

Another summary: I answered Just One Question for Michael Sippey...

Q: Why have you abandoned the standard Weblog form for a Wiki?

While my WebLog started for me in 1998 as a pass-along activity ("this is cool", "this is insanely stupid"), it became more of a combination of "ActiveReading" (selecting Pull Quote-s is the equivalent of hiliting, which I do obsessively) and "MakingSense of the world", both of which are Brain Training. Jorn Barger's thoughts on a Personal Web Archive reinforced this for me.

I had always been interested in the "thought processor" software space (Bill SeitzWritingToolHistory), but most of the interesting Associative tools felt too "closed". So I was thrilled with I discovered Wiki in 1999, as it felt like a "safe" HyperText/PIM system. I quickly started thinking about the idea of using wiki for a WikiWeblog, so that chunks could be associated over time; but I didn't do anything about it.

During 2001 there were 2 events which significantly increased my frustration with the disposability of blogbits. The announcement of Microsoft's Passport and HailStorm initiatives seemed to warrant some actual design activity, as criticism without a viable alternative would not be likely to slow Passport adoption. But blogging seems a poor medium for directed activity. Likewise, September 11th led me to blog a lot about Dealing With Terrorism while protecting our liberty, but I had difficulty tracking all the threads of issues over time. So I finally got working on putting up a wiki.

But I knew that I couldn't continue writing in 2 tools at the same time without going nuts, so I put more time into figuring out how I'd like to put blog items into wiki, and how I'd like to present them, while creating "standard" wiki pages at the same time (Thinking Space).

Thanks to the excellent work Simon Michael had done on the Zope-base Zwiki I was using, I was able to come up with a model requiring minimal programming changes (e.g. a hack). So a few weeks ago I started doing my blogging in wiki, and am a much happier camper. Sometimes blog events refer to an ongoing interest in a wiki page, other times blog "events" trigger a brand new wiki node. In either case a wiki node can lead me back easily to all the blog bits that refer to it (via BackLinks). I'm not making much more sense yet, but I feel like I'm getting the scaffolding in place.

Hi Bill! Would you be interested in putting your Web Seitz in the Primarily Public Domain http://www.primarilypublicdomain.org ? And would you be interested in feeding our Idea Feeds http://www.ideafeeds.com ? You right good blurbs and it would be cool to circulate stuff around groups. Andrius Kulikauskas, ms@ms.lt

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