eekim.com: EEK Speaks

Thu, Aug 04, 2005

WikiMania Hackfest Day 4 #

Bits and tids: (JM7)

I didn't plan my Hacking Days schedule very well. I missed most of the first day, when the MediaWiki developers apparently made progress on a new metadata design. Days 2 and 3, from which I based most of my criticism, focused on servers and reliability, an area to which I really couldn't contribute, not because I'm ignorant, but because I'm powerless. This morning, they discussed SingleSignOn and usability, two areas that I do know something about. Sadly, I missed these sessions, because I was too busy spouting on and on about how we really can save the world. OwenDavis, FenLabalme, KaliyaHamlin, and the rest of the gang will undoubtedly kick my butt when they read this. In my defense, I managed to talk a bit about IdentityCommons later in the day. I also plugged the FLOSS Usability Sprint, and met ZenoGantner, who's done some usability studies on MediaWiki. (JM8)
I was one of the featured participants for the afternoon "Wiki developers informal discussion," along with WardCunningham, SvenDowideit, ChristopheDucamp, and BrionVibber. DomasMituzas, WikimediaFoundation's head of operations, asked Ward, "Why CamelCase??" I won't go into the explanation here -- I have a long interview with Ward, to be published eventually, that explains this in detail -- but you should know that hating CamelCase? is a running joke among this community. I laughed along with everyone else, but when Sven mentioned his desire to remove CamelCase? from TWiki, I felt compelled to pipe up. I gave a balanced defense, describing CamelCase?'s advantages over free links, but also acknowledging the appropriateness of free links in Wikipedia. Then I got a very amusing introduction to ErikMoeller, one of MediaWiki's core contributors and the WikimediaFoundation's chief research officer. Erik had a strongly worded response. It got a bit heated, but never overly so, and I closed by saying that we were in violent agreement. We laughed about it over dinner, but then we got serious again. We also talked about PurpleNumbers. I've explained many times why I may seem like a poor evangelist, but I think Erik was one of the few people who appreciated my perspective. He was clearly not a big fan of PurpleNumbers -- as it turns out, he was somewhat familiar with my work -- but after hearing my explanation, he responded, "Only intelligent people are going to understand what you just said." Fair enough. Fortunately, regular folks don't need to get GranularAddressability for GranularAddressability to become ubiquitous. (JM9)
A group of us broke out into a small group to discuss a WikiInterchangeFormat?, knowing full well that this is an issue that's been discussed many times before (Wiki:WikiInterchangeFormat, MeatBall:WikiInterchangeFormat). Nevertheless, I think our discussion was not only constructive, it has a high chance of succeeding. See my summary. (JMA)
MagnusManske, the original creator of MediaWiki, participated in our WikiInterchangeFormat? discussion. He also mentioned a clever idea: a "shopping cart" where people could aggregate and possibly export Wiki pages they were interested in. (JMB)
SvenDowideit demonstrated the prototype WYSIWYG editor for TWiki, based on Kupu. He also showed a WikiText editor with real-time preview, which was pretty slick. Also, RossMayfield showed me a prototype editor for KWiki in response to my previous post. Very good to see these things. (JMC)
So many people have come to this gathering to learn from others with different experiences. Granted, all of these experiences center around Wikipedia, but I'm still envious. My neverending quest is for folks interested in collaboration to look beyond their own narrow domains for deeper insights. (JMD)

/events | Posted at 1:44pm

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EEK Speaks

A blog about collaboration, community-building, and the various goings-on at Blue Oxen Associates, with occasional digressions on food and other vital matters.