Ben Scott wrote:
On 9/28/05, Bruce Dawson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I'd like to hold off ...
Holding off, then. :-)
My belief is that most people don't want administrivia mixed in with the
"meat" of the web site, which will be a [perhaps undesired] result of
merging the two webs.
Keeping "other stuff" separated from "good stuff" (for various
common definitions of both) is a goal of mine as well.
However, I don't think we have to have separate TWiki webs to do so.
I used to think so -- that having everything in one web would mean
everything turned into a big train wreck. But I've seen Wiki's
**MUCH** larger and diverse then ours cope with a flat namespace very
well (PPR and Wikipedia come to mind), and indeed benefit from it. So
I've concluded it must at least be possible.
OK. You're thinking one step ahead of me, which is a relief.
The only real problem I see is: Maintaining the conventions of a flat
namespace.
A bit of explanation: Having a "flat wiki" implies that a naming
convention be followed for link names. For instance: SummerSummit2005
could just as rationally be Summer2005Summit, or even Summit2005Summer.
Which should it be? How can the convention be enforced without a lot of
time-consuming refactoring of the entire web? How will people feel when
their pages are suddenly refactored and they can no longer find evidence
to the point they are trying to assert?
I myself find the concept rather alien, because my first reaction to
any organizational problem is to put things in a hierarchy. I love
hierarchies. But the flat namespace seems to work as well, if not
better. It's also worth pointing out that a flat namespace doesn't
mean there cannot be hierarchy in the organization of the information.
The Org web appears to have the result of "hiding" important stuff
from interested people. In general, it appears that people don't
"get" TWiki's "web" concept. That may be because it violates the
"zero-one-infinity" rule by having two (and just two) levels of
namespace.
There's also the point that our website is about us, so I have to
wonder what's the difference between "organizing the group" and "the
group", when most of it is the same thing. For example, with two
webs, every big event needs duplication and cross-web links between
the "organizing" and the "content". This is a very bad artificial
barrier.
I agree with the above. Having different webs is a "semantic crutch"
until some better technique comes up. There are two alternatives that I
can think of:
* Naming conventions for links (that I mentioned above).
* Having a some specialized TWiki code that automatically creates
pages and their links. An example from another site I set up:
%SEARCH{search="META:FIELD.*?GrantStateInLNF.*?(Uninvestigated|Qualifying|Processing)"
type="regex" topic="Grant*" casesensitive="on" nosummary="on"
nosearch="on" noheader="on" nototal="on" format=" *
<b>$formfield(GrantStateInLNF)</b> - [[$topic][$formfield(Grantor
Name)]] - $formfield(Web Site)"}%
* <form action="%SCRIPTURL%/edit%SCRIPTSUFFIX%/%WEB%/" method="get">
<input type="text" name="topic" value="ReplaceMeWithGrantSomething"
size="30"/>
<input type="hidden" name="templatetopic"
value="FundingSourceTemplate"/>
<input type="hidden" name="formtemplate"
value="FundingSourceWorksheet"/>
<input type="hidden" name="topicparent" value="%TOPIC%"/>
<input type="hidden" name="onlywikiname" value="on" />
<input type="hidden" name="onlynewtopic" value="on" />
<input type="submit" value="Add as a potential funding source"/>
</form>
(I hope that made it through without being corrupted by the HTML
translator of this MUA). Ask me to demo this at the Autumnal meeting if
you don't understand the above.
I also hope that by tying the "get involved" stuff more closely into
the main site, more people *will* get involved.
Given the "herd of cats" mentality of GNHLUG, I think you are wishing
awfully hard. ;-)
It would also mean less syntax and cleaner links, since there would
be no inter-web links. If you're trying to edit a busy Wiki page
(like PastEvents), that's a big deal.
Speaking of busy pages, should I turn on the "Release Edit Lock" feature
so that pages won't be locked for an hour after someone has editted it?
I've already bumped into it several times.
In fact, I'm contemplating the idea of moving all GNHLUG content
into the "Main" web, and just having the one. The "user pages" are
frequently linked to and potentially on-topic and useful for all
parties as well, and are very unlikely to collide. But I'm trying to
tackle one thing at a time. :-)
I welcome further discussion and dissenting opinions, both online
and/or in meatspace meetings.
:-)
--Bruce
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