[ZWeb] Some fishbowl work

Ken Manheimer klm@zope.com
Thu, 6 Dec 2001 17:22:14 -0500 (EST)


On Wed, 5 Dec 2001, Simon Michael wrote:

> Ken Manheimer <klm@zope.com> writes:
> >  2. Adapt simon michael's ZWiki email notification mechanisms to zope.org
> >     WikiForNow wikis.
> ...
> >     Disadvantages:
> >
> >     - It applies only to wikis
>
> which might be fine if 99% of your discussion/documentation takes
> place on some flavor of wiki page.. which I think is reasonable,
> actually.

I think the major problem at the moment is tracking activity in the wikis,
yes.  (I think the clutter in the organization is also a problem; it would
be nice to have some metadata infrastructure for the wikis, by which the
things could be categorized with a controlled vocabulary and w.r.t. time
since last activity, etc.  But i see all this as much more tolerable than
the maddening inability to track the things you've found!)

> [...]
> In case it's unclear to anyone reading, I am certainly not talking
> about prolonging the current fishbowl setup, or any particular
> existing wiki setups really, many of which have the problems we know
> about. I think we are all (other communities) groping to find the new
> structures and processes to solve this problem. It's a complexity
> management problem, of documentation, discussion and workflows.

I agree.  I think we have some of the tools and processes, but have yet to
establish others that we need.  (And the effort for which i have the
immediate mandate isn't going to address all of them!)

> Or, these are just my befuddled late-night ravings. Let me know. :)

:->

> >     - It would not be appropriate for the CMF - tres is clear that
> >       content should not directly bring in dependency on incidental stuff
> >       (like email faculties).
>
> I felt the same way about not disturbing web-based wiki editing, so
> the email stuff is strictly optional, within a try-except, etc.  But
> maybe I'm not understanding the problem here.

A fundamental premise in the CMF, which everyone knows but which can still
be elusive in new contexts, is that content, itself, is supposed to have
the the minimal behavior necessary to its fundamental purpose.  Eg,
content may be editable, and have modification times, etc.  Other stuff
provides additional, generic functionality - eg, tools, or in zope3, often
it'll be feature components.  Email-out behavior fits the latter category
- content shouldn't handle it, it should be a service afforded to the
content.

In such a world, organizational aspects like RecentChanges, backlinks,
lineage, and so on would be features available to general content, not
specific to wikis - and further, collector features like issue workflow,
or mailman-like email subscription and options, would all be available
interchangably to any content, as appropriate.  The component architecture
will facilitate this, and i think some ideas in my organization objects
proposal will also play in, for the organizational features - the "spaces
between the content".

I know we won't be getting to this stuff immediately - i'm expecting to do
so eventually, though.  I think it'll become real...

> I'll enjoy hearing your further thoughts and investigations.
> Something good always seems to come out.

That is nice - thank you!

-- 
Ken
klm@zope.com