*This message was transferred with a trial version of CommuniGate(tm) Pro* On Fri, 15 Sep 2000, Rik Hoekstra wrote:
<irony>At the WikiNG discussion page I wrote the following remarks, that I think not everyone will read</irony>
(The territory is just ripe for irony, because we're talking about developing tools for conducting collaboration - including these kinds of discussions! I *really* appreciate that you put your comments in the wiki discussion page, and sent them to the list - i periodically check the discussion page for developments, but i lapse, too, and generally find it painful that i may wind up missing stuff. I think the best model, now, is to make changes and to notify people that they were made via this list - as you've done. (Not sure that will scale, but creating new lists for each proposal definitely won't scale. For a bit of nested irony, if i had time to do some more mailman-connected work, i might make it easier to create maillists - but i'm convinced that "content-based mailling lists" are a much better solution to the problem - eg, that's part of what i'm aiming for with WikiNG, and i'd rather spend whatever time becomes available on that then on tweaking the maillist side of things.))
Make the wiki the central/anchor point for discussion. This means there should be a possibility for making central pages, spin off pages and discussion pages. - Wikis should be moderable on all levels (not editable, changes only after approval, free for all). The point up to which that is done is up to the owners/maintainers of the Wiki.
Yes, this is something i also advocate, as you probably realize i did so in the proposal.
- Include both a (threaded) discussion product for discussion.
I have to think about it more, but offhand i much prefer more tightly coupling the discussion with the wiki content - make the "threading" based on changes to the wiki, and if weblog style is called for, use wiki structuring that restricts changes to the end of the existing content. (With allowance for having people with edit privilege that allows them to consolidate...) The thing is, if we had an annotation style wiki, where people are restricted to insertions, but anywhere in the text, and notifications indicated the changes, then the job of the consolidator would be **much** easier - all the editors would be involved in organizing their comments in the context of the document, as well as referring to relevant existing passages. I would expect this "closer coupling" to promote more salient collaboration - because people would have the burden of finding where their points fit, in the process uncovering points they might have missed if they just appeneded their comments to the end. By offering a view that shows the growth of a document, people can discern what's changed since they last grokked the whole thing, and as easily as possible keep track of the whole thing. Note that there's been a *number* of places in this recent WikiNG discussion where' i've cited existing passages that directly address people's points. I don't mean to complain - i think that's one cost increased by disconnecting the discussion and the document. I may be presuming too much, but i strongly suspect that if we were all making our points directly in the relevant context of the document, the reiteration would be necessary a lot less often - or structural flaws in the organization of the document would be exposed. It's this aspect of "building the stories" together where WikiNG ahs incredible promise, to me.
- Make this discussable from the web and from email. In the case of web discussion the advantages would be that discussions could take the form of annotations with a discussion. In the case of a maillist discussion this would mean instantaneous discussion. It should be possible to indicate in your email whether you want it included into the Wiki. This would also mean that there should be a structured way to integrate e-mails into a Wiki. The noding proposals (divide a wiki page into information nodes) above could well help to enable hooks for discussions. Perhaps even for determining which parts are discussable (namely only the one with a discussion node attached)
See my prior message on this subject. I do think these are great ideas - hope i'll get time before the end of the weekend to visit your comments in the wiki discussion so i can include my responses. If only the wiki took care of this for us!-) Ken klm@digicool.com