View source for Main Page

<font size="5">'''Convivial Tools User Guide'''</font>
----

<font size="3">See the '''[[Main Categories]]'''</font> or go to '''[[:Category:Root]]'''. <font size="3">For pages about wikis, see '''[[:Category:Wikis]]'''.</font>

This website presents useful information dealing with [[Convivial Tools]]. For more information about the site itself, see [[About this Site]] and [[User:MichaelSlattery/Blog|Michael Slattery's Blog]]. On the subject of [[Convivial Tools]] see also the [http://conviviality.ouvaton.org Convivial Tools Encyclopedia] and the [http://ctwiki.ouvaton.org Convivial Projects Wiki].

==Is this Website a Wiki?==

This website operates under MediaWiki software and thus has the potential to be a [[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]]). The site thus currently operates as the personal database of [[User:MichaelSlattery|Michael Slattery]], who hopes that it may be of use to others.

==Convivial Tools==
<font size="3">For pages about Convivial Tools, see '''[[:Category:Convivial Tools]]'''.</font>

[[Convivial Tools]] are tools which allow the user to operate with independent efficiency. The term was coined by [[Ivan Illich]] in his book [[Tools for Conviviality]] (1973).

Illich's philosophy of Convivial Tools notably influenced [[Lee Felsenstein]], one of the hardware hackers who invented the personal computer. Felsenstein adopted in particular Illich's vision of tools that would be maintained and developed by a community of users. This vision of community tool development has been embodied in several more recent movements, such as the [[Free and Open Source Software]] (FOSS), [[Open Design]] and [[Wiki]] mouvements.

For encyclopedia-type articles about Convivial Tools, see the companion website the [http://conviviality.ouvaton.org Convivial Tools Encyclopedia].

==Wikis==
<font size="3">For pages about wikis, see '''[[:Category:Wikis]]'''.</font>

A [[wiki]] is a website whose pages can be edited by any visitor. The first wiki, called [[WikiWikiWeb]], was created by [[Ward Cunningham]] in 1995. Wikis were brought to the attention of the general public by the success of [[Wikipedia]], an online collaborative encyclopedia created in 2001.

This website presents numerous pages with information about [[:Category:Wiki People|people]], [[:Category:Wiki Websites|websites]], [[:Category:Wiki Engines|software]] and [[:Category:Wiki Concepts|concepts]] in the realm of wikis, a realm also know as [[Wikilandia]].

==Open Design==
<font size="3">For pages about Open Design, see '''[[:Category:Open Design]]'''.</font>

[[Open Design]] is the application of the principles of [[Free and Open Source Software]] (FOSS) to the design of physical objects such as machines.

Open Design is a general term covering a number of Open Source movements. [[Open Source Hardware]] refers primarily to Open Design of microcomputer chips (integrated circuits). [[Open Source Tool Design]] refers primarily to the Open Design of machines. The specific goal of these Open Design mouvements is to use collaborative design principles to assemble on-line libraries of open-source designs. The requires federation of Open Design communities around relevant websites.

It may be preferable in some cases to incorporate certain proprietary elements into the otherwise open-source designs, thereby permitting open-source designs even for high-tech products. For example, given the difficulty and expense of design and fabrication of today's extremely complex chips, the [[Open Source Hardware]] movement accepts the use of certain proprietary, closed-source, elements as part of the open-source approach.

==Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)==
<font size="3">For pages about [[Free and Open Source Software]], see '''[[:Category:FOSS]]'''.</font>


==Recent Posts==
[[User:MichaelSlattery|Michael Slattery]], the administrator of this site, would have preferred to end this page with a simple link to [[User:MichaelSlattery/Blog|Michael Slattery's Blog]]. However, it seems opportune to summarize below some recent posts from the blog, in order to maintain the presence of this page in the Google listings. For an angry reaction to the way Google works, see [[RainDog's Second Rant]].

*On 13 October 2007 the Main Page of this website '''is listed''' on Google. For the history of this page's listings see [[Google Log]].


'''13 October 2007 - I finally understand the basic principle of a blog'''

All of this worry about getting pages into the Google listings has finally lead me to understand the basic principle of a blog: A BLOG PAGE ALWAYS HAS THE SAME INTERNET ADDRESS.

Once the blog page gets onto Google, people who click on the link will always go to the same page, and will thus see the new content added to the top of the page. Whereas if you create a new page, there is little chance that it will get listed on Google, which means no one will ever see it.

I therefore created a new page for my blog on this website, which will ''always have the same internet address'', as follows:

*http://toolswiki.ouvaton.org/index.php?title=User:MichaelSlattery/Blog

Put that in your Google and smoke it!


'''12 October 2007 - This [[Main Page]] is finally on Google'''

This Main Page of the toolswiki site is finally on Google. '''For how long?''' See [[Google Log]].


'''12 October 2007 - And so is the "History of Wikis" article'''

I launched again the Google search for my new Wikipedia article on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis History of Wikis], using 
the following character chain, which should find it and nothing else: "WikiWikiWeb snowballed." Bingo. The article is already listed on Google, and I only posted it yesterday!


'''12 October 2007 - But my "WhyClublet" article got booted off Wikipedia'''

My [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Redeyed_Treefrog/WhyClublet WhyClublet] article got deleted by a Wikipedia administrator called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Marasmusine Marasmusine], for failing to meet [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:WEB notability guidelines for web content]. I had also created a page called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Drake Richard Drake], which I redirected to WhyClublet (the redirect was left in place). I claim that Richard Drake, the founder of the WhyClublet wiki, was ''notable'' as one of the original WikiReductionists, who were historically the first group anywhere to deliberately delete other peoples' articles from a wiki (from WikiWikiWeb in this case). The article about the first person to delete articles from a wiki was just deleted from a wiki (from Wikipedia in this case).


'''11 October 2007 - The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis History of wikis] is on Wikipedia'''<br>
Today I posted my big [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis History of wikis] article on Wikipedia. This evening I [http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&q=%22history+of+wikis%22&btnG=Recherche+Google&meta= Googled "History of wikis"] to see if the article would appear, although I knew from experience that it will take a few days before the new article is crawled. The number one search result was the Wikipedia article on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki Wiki], with a tag in the "history" section saying "Main article: History of wikis." I just added that tag today! The Wikipedia article on "Wiki" was thus crawled today '''after''' I added the tag. Coincidence? Or are certain Wikipedia articles crawled every day?

Then I searched for a chain that would be ''only'' in my article on the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis History of wikis]: "WikiWikiWeb snowballed." The result was:

::Your search - "WikiWikiWeb snowballed" - did not match any documents. 

The countdown begins to see how many days before the article appears on Google. (Added note: it appeared the following day!)


'''11 October 2007 - Google speaks "Elmer Fudd"'''<br>
For my blog post that told the above story about searching for the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis History of wikis] article, I needed to capture the sentence "Your search ... did not match any documents" in English. Since my Google speaks French, I went to the [http://www.google.fr/preferences?hl=en Google settings page] to change the language, and discovered that the list of available languages includes "Elmer Fudd." I set it to that, and the fruitless search mentioned above gave this result:

::Youw seawch - "WikiWikiWeb snowballed" - did not match any documents. Oh, dat scwewy wabbit!

They're a load of laughs, they are, those Google guys. [[Scwewy Wabbit]]!


'''10 October 2007 - Tweaking MediaWiki'''<br>
Perhaps this site would have more visitors if it were faster. I did a Google search with "Mediawiki faster," and got a [http://www.mwusers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4338 forum page] that said I should enable caching, install APC (or a similar product) to pre-compile the php, and do a Google search for "mediawiki performance." The latter leads to [http://dammit.lt/2007/01/26/mediawiki-performance-tuning Five minutes of MediaWiki performance tuning], which tells how to install [http://fr3.php.net/manual/en/ref.apc.php APC], Alternative PHP Cache. But how do I execute the commands that are shown? And is APC installed on my Ouvaton server? To be continued...


'''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 first 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'''<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 few seconds 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'''.