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==<font size="5">'''Convivial Tools User Guide'''</font>==
<font size="3">See the '''[[Main Categories]]'''</font> or go to [[:Category:Root]].

This website presents useful information dealing with [[Convivial Tools]]. For more information about the site itself, see [[About this Site]]. On the subject of [[Convivial Tools]] see also these companion websites:
* [http://conviviality.ouvaton.org Convivial Tools Encyclopedia]: encyclopedia-type articles about [[Convivial Tools]].
* [http://ctwiki.ouvaton.org Convivial Projects Wiki]: projects related to convivial tools.

==Pages about Wikis==
For pages about wikis, see [[:Category:Wikis]].

==Is this Website a Wiki?==
This website operates under MediaWiki software and thus has the potential to be a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki wiki]. However, the site is protected against random editing, which means that you must create a user account to edit articles. In addition, at present only WikiSysop can create new accounts, because the wiki was recently spammed. Read the details at [[Spam Attack]].

==RainDog's Recent Posts==
[[User:RainDog|RainDog]], the administrator of this site, would have preferred to end this page with a simple link to [[User:RainDog/Blog2007-10|RainDog's Blog]]. However, it seems preferable to summarize below a number of recent posts from [[User:RainDog/Blog2007-10|RainDog's Blog]], in order to try to get this Main Page into the Google listings. For an angry reaction to the way Google works, see [[RainDog's Second Rant]].

*On 9 October 2007 the Main Page of this website is '''not listed''' on Google. For the history of this page's listings see [[Google Log]].


'''09 October 2007 - GING is not Google'''<br>
A few days ago I came up with the idea of "[[GING]] is not Google." Modelled on Richard Stallman's original free software project "GNU is (not) Unix," [[GING]] is a project to use P2P software to pool thousands of PCs together to provide 
enough computing power to create an alternative to the [[GoogleMafia]]. But in order for anyone to know about [[GING]], the pages describing it will have to be listed on Google...


'''06 October 2007 - [[WikiSpam]]'''<br>
The toolswiki has been spammed. It started a week ago, when this site started to show up just a little bit on Google, but I only discovered  it today. Fortunately the site had been configured to require creating an account before editing. The spammers were discrete, and created only a few pages, to avoid being detected. Consulting the page histories, I recreated the following record:

*'''date ---- user name  ---  page name'''
*5 Oct ------ 8 r8y d9d -----  雅思枪手13764107295雅思代考雅思
*5 Oct ------ 8 r8y d9 ------- @13764107295代考雅思代考雅思枪手QQ：27939721
*4 Oct ------ Luck668 --------  Gold wow-power-leveling
*1 Oct ------- 8P2q3K68 ----- 代考雅思代考托福代考雅思枪手QQ：27939721
*30 Sept --- 3P2e3K68 ----- =代考雅思代考托福代考QQ：27939721
*30 Sept ---- 3j2e3m64 ------ QQ：27939721代考雅思代考托福代考
*30 Sept ---- 8P2q3K68 ---- 雅思枪手QQ：27939721代考雅思代考托福代考

I quickly modified the LocalSettings.php file to allow account creation only by WikiSysop. I then logged on as WikiSysop and blocked one by one all 8 unwanted users. As WikiSysop I could have deleted these files, but I decided to leave them for the moment. To see them go to [[Special:Allpages]]. For the full story, see [[Spam Attack]]. Now I have to figure out a strategy for fighting spam, so that I can allow new user accounts again.


'''05 October 2007 - [[GoogleMafia]]'''<br>
I discovered that my [http://conviviality.ouvaton.org Convivial Tools Encyclopedia] website has already completely disappeared from the Google ratings. This saddening discovery prompted [[RainDog's Second Rant]]. See also [[GoogleMafia]] and [[GING|GING is not Google]].


'''04 October 2007 - Wikipedia article unknown to Google robot'''<br>
I tried to Google "Sunir Shah" to see if my [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunir_Shah Wikipedia article] about him has started to show up yet. I searched deep into the Google listing but never found the article. I finally put together a foolproof combination: "Sunir Shah" with "Early Life." That only brought up a couple of pages of Google listings, and the article wasn't there. So it hasn't even been crawled by the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlebot Google robot] yet! I put that article on Wikipedia more than two weeks ago. Apparently Google waits to find an external link before it crawls a new Wikipedia article. How long will that take? (Happy added note: on 8 October 2007 the Sunir Shah article is listed by Google and appears in '''eighth place''' for the search entry "Sunir Shah".)

When I was desperately searching, I tried the combination "Sunir Shah" plus "Wikipedia." Several pages down in the Google listings I found the  [http://www.wikirage.com wikirage website], which had put the "Sunir Shah" article on an automatic list of "what's hot on Wikipedia" (so hot that Google missed the article entirely). The "Sunir Shah" article was on their list of articles that had received the most edits over a short time period.... So I'm a perfectionist....


'''04 October 2007 - Wikipedia "Recent changes"'''<br>
I suppose every Wikipedia contributor has tried this at least once: when I finished saving an edit, I went straight to "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges Recent changes]" to see it listed there. In the second it took me to open "Recent changes," some thirty edits had been saved on other articles, showing up on the list on top of mine.


'''04 October 2007 - Googling "toolswiki"'''<br>
I Googled "toolswiki" as a way to find this website (the URL includes "toolswiki.ouvaton.org"). There are several varieties. "ToolsWiki" in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel_case CamelCase] belongs to a [http://www-theory.lbl.gov physics site], although the wiki itself seems broken. The page called [http://www-theory.lbl.gov/toolswiki/index.php?title=Monte_Carlo_Generators Monte Carlo Generators] on that site is a long list of links to porn sites. This seems to be [[WikiSpam]]. My site shows up as "toolswiki" all in small letters. For "toolswiki" the Google list includes the main page of [http://communitywiki.org CommunityWiki]. Not because "toolswiki" is listed anywhere on that CommunityWiki page (it isn't), but because Raindog's Blog '''points to''' CommunityWiki. Just how does Google work anyway?


'''26 September - ThreadMess'''<br>
Ward Cunningham's original C2 wiki has a page about [http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ThreadMess ThreadMess]. This brought to mind a more general term, "WikiMess," which I Googled, finding a [http://ferret.bemidjistate.edu/~morgan/cgi-bin/blogsAndWiki.pl?WikiMess definition of WikiMess]. This is a page on what looks like a [http://ferret.bemidjistate.edu/~morgan/cgi-bin/blogsAndWiki.pl?Entry_Point pretty interesting wiki].


''' 23 September - MeatballWiki and Sunir Shah on Wikipedia'''<br>
On Wikipedia I transformed the MeatballWiki article from a stub to a regular article, and created a new article on Sunir Shah. Since Sunir should have had an article long ago, I surmised internal Wikipedian resistance to this article, and expected a reaction. There was none. Apparently all the peevish Wikipedians have lost interest in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/MeatballWiki MeatballWiki conflict] and gone on to something else.


''' 23 September - Technorati's best'''<br>
Thinking about useful links to be found on other peoples' blogs, I went to Google and typed "best blogs." Thus I found technorati, which I had heard of, but never intentionally visited. Technorati gives a [http://technorati.com/pop/blogs list of most popular blogs]. From a first selection my favorite is [http://lifehacker.com lifehacker].


''' 20 September - Open Content, David Wiley and Jorn Barger'''<br>
Wikipedia indicates that the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_commons Creative Commons]  licenses were preceded by the  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Publication_License Open Publication License] developed in 1999 by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_A._Wiley David Wiley]. This lead me to [http://opencontent.org David Wiley's website], which includes an article called [http://opencontent.org/docs/begin_blog.html A Beginner's Guide to Blogs for Instructional Technologists]. Wiley states therein that the term "weblog" was invented by Jorn Barger in 1999. The article gives a link to Barger's [http://www.robotwisdom.com/weblogs original 1999 page] where Barger gives the following definition:

:"A weblog is a webpage where a weblogger 'logs' all the other webpages she finds interesting."

David Wiley also operates an [http://opencontent.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page OpenContent Wiki ] with a page on [http://opencontent.org/wiki/index.php?title=Maintaining_a_wiki maintaining wikis], where it is stated that:

:"A wiki without contributors is nothing but a blog on steroids."


'''Prior to 20 September 2007 - Meatspace'''<br>
Wikipedia defines [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meatspace Meatspace] as follows:

:"Meatspace is a dysphemism for real life or the physical world, and conceived as the opposite of cyberspace or virtual reality."

See the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysphemism Wikipedia dysphemism article] for the meaning of this latter term.

Did the term "Meatspace" serve as the inspiration for the name of the [http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?MeatballWiki MeatballWiki]? I saw somewhere that "meatballs" were wiki communities. Another hypothesis is that since Meatball was the first '''meta-wiki''' (a WikiOnWiki), Sunir swapped the t and the a to make it '''meat-wiki'''.