Hi, Can somebody give me the light on the ZWiki websites? I don't understand them. What do they, what make them so important? I think I've read all the links which send me to ZWiki, but still I don't see why they are so important. I see DC asking for visiting a ZWiki page (on API?) and elaborate... but sorry I don't see it, it looks spaghetti to me, certainly with the strange names given to a ZWiki page (no offense). Perhaps, some little more explenation would give me the light. Or perhaps a clearer organisation (with easy to understand title-links) would improve an overall ZWike page. Can somebody shine a light? Thanks Tom.
ZWikis, and Wikis in general, are definitely different <g>. As you probably know, the original Wiki is at http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiWeb. It's the largest Wiki (AFAIK) and of course contains a great number of ruminations about the Wiki way of doing things. What's neat about Wikis, to me at least, is that they offer us a communal scratch-pad which is dead simple to work with. It's really trippy to be able to contribute spontaneously to a website, and to intermingle your own thoughts with those of others. The fact that one is also able to remove whatever you want is even more boundary bending. That wiki sites don't typically end up totally trashed is quite encouraging (sometimes things do happen though - WikiMindWipes etc). In a way I'm sure you could see it as an interesting social experiment. The weird naming is there so that link and new page creation is transparent. After a while I found I became quite fond of the style; there's plenty of humor in the Wiki scene and page names ofen reflect this. It does have limitations that bug me sometimes. Nevertheless I think it's a great invention, and one that will probably spawn variants that are just as interesting. Could happen here in fact! ZWiki is utterly simple to set up, thanks to Simon and DC, and eminently tweakable. Michael Simcich AccessTools -----Original Message----- From: zope-admin@zope.org [mailto:zope-admin@zope.org]On Behalf Of Tom Deprez Sent: Friday, April 21, 2000 1:47 AM To: zdp@zope.org; zope@zope.org Subject: [Zope] ZWiki Hi, Can somebody give me the light on the ZWiki websites? I don't understand them. What do they, what make them so important? I think I've read all the links which send me to ZWiki, but still I don't see why they are so important. I see DC asking for visiting a ZWiki page (on API?) and elaborate... but sorry I don't see it, it looks spaghetti to me, certainly with the strange names given to a ZWiki page (no offense). Perhaps, some little more explenation would give me the light. Or perhaps a clearer organisation (with easy to understand title-links) would improve an overall ZWike page. Can somebody shine a light? Thanks Tom. _______________________________________________ Zope maillist - Zope@zope.org http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev )
It does have limitations that bug me sometimes. Nevertheless I think it's a
The only thing that bugs me right now is that there's no shorthand for changing colour. I mentioned this on the list ages ago but got no response :( I wonder if anyone's got any ideas on how it could be done other than by <font color=""></font>? cheers, Chris
[Michael Simcich, on Fri, 21 Apr 2000] :: What's neat about Wikis, to me at least, is that they offer us a communal :: scratch-pad which is dead simple to work with. It's really trippy to be able :: to contribute spontaneously to a website, and to intermingle your own :: thoughts with those of others. <snip> :: It does have limitations that bug me sometimes. Nevertheless I think it's a :: great invention, and one that will probably spawn variants that are just as :: interesting. Could happen here in fact! ZWiki is utterly simple to set up, :: thanks to Simon and DC, and eminently tweakable. [I don't know if it's appropriate to continue the crossposting that began this thread. Maybe continued discussion should be moved to zdp?] Anyway, Michael speaks about tweaking or forming variants of ZWiki, which is akin to something I've been thinking about the past few days. There is a common need among open source and open standards communities (including Zope) to evolve discussions from loose and unstructured to something finally more formalized and ordered (e.g., specifications, documentation, etc.). The difference with the Zope community is that we actually have tools which could be adapted to that purpose. Wikis provide one model for the loose first stage (Usenet and threaded mailing list archives provide another). In a way, they overlay a brainstorming model onto the network model. They permit fleeting thoughts to be "captured in a bottle." The problem is how then to migrate from the loose to the structured, once the discussion has run its course and it's time to organize the material and publish something formal (documentation, for example). Of course this can be accomplished by someone laboriously combing through the Wiki or the archive and hand-assembling something, but it would be nice to have tools or hooks to automate the process. Generators have been used in past to create FAQs from discussion lists, but they tend to require a lot of human intervention and they still end up being too linear. Cognitively, homo sapiens aren't equipped with much bandwidth for complexity; they rely on media to aid them. Wikis eventually evolve into complex representations of information with no abstract or overview representation. What Wikis do well is capturing freeform, brainstorming-style discussion. Thereafter, it would be beneficial to have different representations of the information they contain, perhaps including a tree or outline view. How else can you see the whole picture and organize it into something more useful? The Interfaces Wiki is an example. I imagine Michel Pelletier would be happy, when the time comes to turn the ideas in the Interfaces Wiki into real documentation, to be able to see the whole Wiki in a linear or hierarchical view. I don't know how ZWiki is implemented, but if it were XML at a granular level, then maybe it could be parsable into different presentation formats. Or maybe there is some other tool available which already addresses this. E.g., there is wonderful application program called "Inspiration" (Win/Mac) which allows a user to bring up a graphical view and add boxes containing concepts (text and/or images), and then freely interconnect the boxes arbitrarily with lines to form a "concept map." Then, one mouse click can turn that into a collapsible/expandable outline view. Bottom line: is there a way to parse a Wiki and generate an outline view?
On 21 Apr 2000 16:25:01 -0500, Patrick Phalen wrote: [...]
There is a common need among open source and open standards communities (including Zope) to evolve discussions from loose and unstructured to something finally more formalized and ordered (e.g., specifications, documentation, etc.). The difference with the Zope community is that we actually have tools which could be adapted to that purpose.
Wikis provide one model for the loose first stage (Usenet and threaded mailing list archives provide another). In a way, they overlay a brainstorming model onto the network model. They permit fleeting thoughts to be "captured in a bottle." The problem is how then to migrate from the loose to the structured, once the discussion has run its course and it's time to organize the material and publish something formal (documentation, for example).
Of course this can be accomplished by someone laboriously combing through the Wiki or the archive and hand-assembling something, but it would be nice to have tools or hooks to automate the process.
[...]
representation. What Wikis do well is capturing freeform, brainstorming-style discussion. Thereafter, it would be beneficial to have different representations of the information they contain, perhaps including a tree or outline view.
Or maybe there is some other tool available which already addresses this. E.g., there is wonderful application program called "Inspiration" (Win/Mac) which allows a user to bring up a graphical view and add boxes containing concepts (text and/or images), and then freely interconnect the boxes arbitrarily with lines to form a "concept map." Then, one mouse click can turn that into a collapsible/expandable outline view.
Bottom line: is there a way to parse a Wiki and generate an outline view?
I've been testing some of these concepts out at the research center where I work. It's quite difficult to get people together to brainstorm, and when we do, the time is mainly spent educating people concerning pertinent issues that they didn't even know existed. IMO, the Squish-dots and wiki's don't work so well at combining education and free-form discussions as the edu aspects need more structure to them. So the structure you mention which is needed after the fact is also needed before the fact. I wrote a piddly little ZDiscussion/Cataloged ZClass I called ZAgonos ('Out of Z list' :^) to impose a searchable, heirarchical interface on edu-discussion topics, such as tips, how-tos, design issues, implementation plans, etc. ZAgons are folderish ZClasses which have a topic structure and include a tree display of child ZAgons (and certain other objects). Each Zagon shows only it's tree, but there is a frame-based display similar to the Zope management interface which lets you browse the entire 'list'. It's trivial to drop text from a discussion into a new Zagon, etc. but not automatic, and the Zdiscussions are not tightly woven enough to really make them reasonable for interactive development. The tree-interface and catalog make it trivial to locate information that is buried pretty deeply, and since the structre is uniform and simple, it makes it easy to navigate, locate, and add information. What I'd really like would be to have the ability to morph heirarchy and form onto an object. The ZAgons force heirarchy onto the information, but obviously that isn't the way it really needs to be done. A good example might be an Implementation Plan for Security Issues: One might start out with an Abstract titled "We Need Better Security in this Department". The abstract could be followed by a list of issues that concern the instigator. Following the list of issues would likely be a list of resources including links to man pages, external URLs, etc for more information related to the issues. A mechanism (zwiki, whatever) for allowing others to comment on the topic generates enough interest and questions that some or all of the list issues are wrapped into a tree structure. Say the SSH item generates a lot of heat as it will require more education of users (who would rather just let someone else take care of their security) and breaks into discussions regarding SSH1 vs SSH2 and whether or not to implement a keyservers, etc., all requiring more links and documentation (hopefully in a structured fashion) to assist. Ahh, but there's the larger issue of cleartext passwords and imap clients/servers which really ought to sit above SSH, so the tree is changed. More structured info about SSL and which IMAP clients behave themselves and which do not is added... Soon you have a lot of information which would be almost unmanageable without a heirarchy. As you navigate the tree, each branch or leaf can be structured as its parent, searches operate in context (only search child objects), and topics can be marked as links and cross-referenced (and anchored) in other locations automatically. IMO, workgroup systems without some sort of heirarchy, contextual searches, etc. just become unmanageable and cease to be useful VERY quickly. Ideas?
participants (5)
-
Chris Withers -
kent@tiamat.goathill.org -
Michael Simcich -
Patrick Phalen -
Tom Deprez