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| | <font size="5">'''Convivial Tools Data Base'''</font> | | <font size="5">'''Convivial Tools Data Base'''</font> |
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| − | <font size="3">See the '''[[Main Categories]]'''</font> or go to '''[[:Category:Root]]'''. See also '''[[#Recent Blog Posts|Recent Blog Posts]]'''. | + | <font size="3">See the '''[[Main Categories]]'''</font> or go to '''[[:Category:Root]]'''. See also '''[[User:MichaelSlattery|Michael Slattery's Blog]]'''. |
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| | This website is a database about people, projects, concepts and websites related to [[Convivial Tools]]. For information about the site itself, see [[About this Site]]. For suggestions about pages to browse see [[Road Maps]].<br> | | This website is a database about people, projects, concepts and websites related to [[Convivial Tools]]. For information about the site itself, see [[About this Site]]. For suggestions about pages to browse see [[Road Maps]].<br> |
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| | *'''[[:Category:MediaWiki]]''' -- use of the [[MediaWiki]] software engine | | *'''[[:Category:MediaWiki]]''' -- use of the [[MediaWiki]] software engine |
| | *'''[[:Category:This Site]]''' -- pages and sub-categories about this website | | *'''[[:Category:This Site]]''' -- pages and sub-categories about this website |
| − | *'''[[:Category:RainDog's Opinions]]''' -- miscellaneous rants<br> | + | *'''[[:Category:RainDog's Opinions]]''' -- miscellaneous rants |
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| − | ==Recent Blog Posts==
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| − | Below is a summary of selected recent blog posts. For the original posts, see [[User:MichaelSlattery/Blog|Michael Slattery's Blog]].
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| − | '''18 October 2007 - Steep part of the [[ReFactoring|refactoring]] curve'''
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| − | We're talkin' steep part of the [[ReFactoring|refactoring]] curve, gang. This refers to a post on my [http://slattery.ouvaton.org personal blog] dated 19 September 2007, entitled [http://slattery.ouvaton.org/index.php?2007/09/19/7-exponential Exponential], which begins: "We're talkin' steep part of the learning curve, gang." I just [[ReFactoring|refactored]] this site's [[Main Page]] to add a narrative summary of the contents of the site. In the process, I drastically expanded the site's scope. In addition to categories for [[:Category:Wikis|Wikis]], [[:Category:Convivial Tools|Convivial Tools]] and [[:Category:Open Design|Open Design]], there are now categories for [[:Category:FOSS|Free and Open Source Software]], [[:Category:Whole Earth|Whole Earth]], [[:Category:Appropriate Technology|Appropriate Technology]] and [[:Category:Hacker Generation|Hacker Generation]]. When will I ever find time to fill in all of these categories with relevant information?
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| − | '''17 October 2007 - News from [[Sunir Shah]]'''
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| − | [[Sunir Shah]] posted a message on my [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Redeyed_Treefrog#Articles_I_have_contributed_to: Wikipedia user page], thanking me for the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunir_Shah article about him], and very cordially proposing to buy me a beer.
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| − | '''17 October 2007 - News from EngineerScotty'''
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| − | The Wikipedia user [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:EngineerScotty EngineerScotty] wrote a paragraph about my [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis History of Wikis] article on that [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:History_of_wikis article's Talk page]. It begins: "Good article." He says that it is too long and probably contains "original research." Be that as it may, this much is clear: at least one person has read it!
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| − | '''15 October 2007 - [[User:MichaelSlattery|Michael Slattery]] steps in for [[User:RainDog|RainDog]]'''
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| − | I finally Googled [http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&q=raindog&meta= RainDog] to see what would come up. Yikes - there are ''thousands'' of RainDogs, including one that has a competing series of [http://raindog.jasonarena.com RainDog's Rants]. That finally decided me to take my RainDog off of the stage, and to step onto it myself. So I again [[ReFactoring|refactored]] the site, to put [[User:MichaelSlattery|Michael Slattery]] into the limelight, and to move [[User:RainDog|RainDog]] into the wings. The show must go on!
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| − | '''15 October 2007 - Cloud Therapy'''
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| − | My sister Miranda sent me this link to a [http://www.cloudappreciationsociety.org/gallery cloud appreciation website].
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| − | '''14 October 2007 - [[ReFactoring]] the [http://conviviality.ouvaton.org Convivial Tools Encyclopedia]'''
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| − | I finally started [[ReFactoring|refactoring]] the [http://conviviality.ouvaton.org Convivial Tools Encyclopedia] website. It needs it. I'm also going to rewrite the Home Page to profit from the lessons I've learned about Google: the new Home Page will be a long summary of what is on the site, with links to every article. That way at least the Home Page should pop up once in a while when people are searching Google, and thus the site might get visited from time to time.
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| − | '''13 October 2007 - I finally understand the basic principle of a blog'''
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| − | 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.
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| − | 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.
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| − | I therefore created a new page for my blog on this website, which will ''always have the same internet address'', as follows:
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| − | *http://toolswiki.ouvaton.org/index.php?title=User:MichaelSlattery/Blog
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| − | Put that in your Google and smoke it!
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| − | '''12 October 2007 - The "History of Wikis" article is already on Google'''
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| − | 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!
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| − | '''12 October 2007 - But my "WhyClublet" article got booted off Wikipedia'''
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| − | 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).
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| − | '''11 October 2007 - The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis History of wikis] is on Wikipedia'''
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| − | 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?
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| − | 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:
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| − | ::Your search - "WikiWikiWeb snowballed" - did not match any documents.
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| − | The countdown begins to see how many days before the article appears on Google. (Added note: it appeared the following day!)
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| − | '''11 October 2007 - Google speaks "Elmer Fudd"'''
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| − | 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:
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| − | ::Youw seawch - "WikiWikiWeb snowballed" - did not match any documents. Oh, dat [[Scwewy Wabbit|scwewy wabbit]]!
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| − | '''10 October 2007 - Tweaking MediaWiki'''
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| − | Sometimes this site seems very slow. 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...
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| − | '''06 October 2007 - [[WikiSpam]]'''
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| − | 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:
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| − | *'''date ---- user name --- page name'''
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| − | *5 Oct ------ 8 r8y d9d ----- 雅思枪手13764107295雅思代考雅思
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| − | *5 Oct ------ 8 r8y d9 ------- @13764107295代考雅思代考雅思枪手QQ：27939721
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| − | *4 Oct ------ Luck668 -------- Gold wow-power-leveling
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| − | *1 Oct ------- 8P2q3K68 ----- 代考雅思代考托福代考雅思枪手QQ：27939721
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| − | *30 Sept --- 3P2e3K68 ----- =代考雅思代考托福代考QQ：27939721
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| − | *30 Sept ---- 3j2e3m64 ------ QQ：27939721代考雅思代考托福代考
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| − | *30 Sept ---- 8P2q3K68 ---- 雅思枪手QQ：27939721代考雅思代考托福代考
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| − | 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.
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| − | '''04 October 2007 - Wikipedia article unknown to Google'''
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| − | 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".)
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| − | 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....
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| − | '''04 October 2007 - Wikipedia "Recent changes"'''<br>
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| − | 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.
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| − | '''26 September - ThreadMess'''<br>
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| − | 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].
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| − | ''' 23 September - MeatballWiki and Sunir Shah on Wikipedia'''<br>
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| − | On Wikipedia I transformed the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeatballWiki MeatballWiki article] from a stub to a regular article, and created a new article on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunir_Shah 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.
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| − | ''' 23 September - Technorati's best'''<br>
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| − | 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].
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| − | ''' 20 September - Open Content, David Wiley and Jorn Barger'''<br>
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| − | 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:
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| − | :"A weblog is a webpage where a weblogger 'logs' all the other webpages she finds interesting."
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| − | 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:
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| − | :"A wiki without contributors is nothing but a blog on steroids."
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| − | '''Prior to 20 September 2007 - Meatspace'''<br>
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| − | Wikipedia defines [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meatspace Meatspace] as follows:
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| − | :"Meatspace is a dysphemism for real life or the physical world, and conceived as the opposite of cyberspace or virtual reality."
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| − | See the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysphemism Wikipedia dysphemism article] for the meaning of this latter term.
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| − | 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'''.
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