Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] page renaming on the Haskell Wiki
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello Graham, Wednesday, February 22, 2006, 12:57:39 PM, you wrote: GK How to do this in a wiki, I'm not sure, though I don't take that to mean we GK shouldn't try. I think the mediawiki mechanism you mention is reasonable if not GK ideal, though this would clearly be overwhelmed if page-renaming were to become GK the norm. my 2c is what new wiki is just two months old and we should refactor it now extensively to make it useable in the future. for example, i think that all libraries should be under Library or Libraries root and so on. we started with filling up the pages, now we had enough contents to see what the structure will serve better Well, yes, better now than later, for sure. My comments were really directed toward longer term principles. I think I've said enough for now. #g -- Graham Klyne For email: http://www.ninebynine.org/#Contact ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell] page renaming on the Haskell Wiki
Am Mittwoch, 22. Februar 2006 06:24 schrieb Donald Bruce Stewart: [...] Though the renamings (which I agree with) did break some internal links. What links did they break? Actually, I took care to update at least redirects which pointed to the old titles, since MediaWiki doesn't handle multiple redirects. For all other links, the automatic insertion of redirects for moved pages should prevent broken links. Of course, I may have missed something, so please tell me if something is broken (if you didn't already fix it yourself ;-) ). I'd be hesitant to do large renamings again. So we should probably establish a clear naming scheme and urge contributors to choose the titles of their newly created pages according to this scheme. -- Don Best wishes, Wolfgang ___ Haskell mailing list Haskell@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
[Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] page renaming on the Haskell Wiki
Wolfgang, [Switching to haskell-cafe] Re: [1] http://www.mail-archive.com/haskell@haskell.org/msg18352.html [2] http://www.mail-archive.com/haskell@haskell.org/msg18356.html [3] http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI Wolfgang Jeltsch wrote (in [2]): On the other hand, I think that the above W3C article is far too extreme. It tells you that stability is the most important thing concerning URIs. I will pursue this a little further, because I think that getting the web presence right is very important to maintaining an online community. It may be that we must agree to disagree, but based on my experience of using the web, stability of URIs *is* the most important thing (after content, of course). I have been using the W3C web site now for many years, and the inconsistencies you mention have never been a problem for me -- indeed, I hadn't even noticed them until you mentioned them. Why is this? I hypothesize that it is because, when the Web is used effectively, it is really quite rare to enter a URI manually. Instead, one uses various index pages, RSS feeds, search tools and so on to find a URI, and then simply click on it. Many URIs are never seen by human eye, but placed behind descriptive links. W3C themselves use URIs very intensively in transient communications, and their mailing system is set up to facilitate this (see their x-archived-at mail headers). A result of this is that the email archives, together with the web site pages, form a tightly interlinked collection of documents and comments that can be, and are, frequently cross-referenced rather than reinvented. But, for this to work, once a link has been placed in a document, feed, archive or whatever, it is crucially important that it continues to work for as long as the information it references is of interest to people. Without this, all the devices we use to find our way around the web simply fail -- not all at once, but over time. Even with every intent to maintain stability, this happens, but if you allow that URI stability is somehow less important than other conveniences, then I think all hope is lost for information continuing to be accessible. As for the difficulty of designing a consistent URI naming scheme for all time, the W3C position explicitly recognizes this, and this is why they recommend incorporating dates near the the root of the URI path. That way, fashions can change without requiring that pages published using older conventions be removed. How to do this in a wiki, I'm not sure, though I don't take that to mean we shouldn't try. I think the mediawiki mechanism you mention is reasonable if not ideal, though this would clearly be overwhelmed if page-renaming were to become the norm. There are, as you indicate, other technical concerns. But I still think they are more easily solved that the problems that arise by failing to maintain URI stability. Best regards, #g -- Graham Klyne For email: http://www.ninebynine.org/#Contact ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] page renaming on the Haskell Wiki
Hello Graham, Wednesday, February 22, 2006, 12:57:39 PM, you wrote: GK How to do this in a wiki, I'm not sure, though I don't take that to mean we GK shouldn't try. I think the mediawiki mechanism you mention is reasonable if not GK ideal, though this would clearly be overwhelmed if page-renaming were to become GK the norm. my 2c is what new wiki is just two months old and we should refactor it now extensively to make it useable in the future. for example, i think that all libraries should be under Library or Libraries root and so on. we started with filling up the pages, now we had enough contents to see what the structure will serve better -- Best regards, Bulatmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
[Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] page renaming on the Haskell Wiki
Am Mittwoch, 22. Februar 2006 10:57 schrieb Graham Klyne: [...] Hello Graham, thank you for your answer. I have been using the W3C web site now for many years, and the inconsistencies you mention have never been a problem for me -- indeed, I hadn't even noticed them until you mentioned them. Why is this? I hypothesize that it is because, when the Web is used effectively, it is really quite rare to enter a URI manually. Instead, one uses various index pages, RSS feeds, search tools and so on to find a URI, and then simply click on it. Many URIs are never seen by human eye, but placed behind descriptive links. I'm not convinced. Many other people might not notice improper URIs or might not care about them. But I do care! URIs are text and shall be human-readable and human-understandable. (I think, this view is also backed by the W3C.) Normally, every URI can be seen—at least in the browser window. Nowadays, people might have gotten used to cryptic URIs like http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/301128/028-9225198-9779755? site-redirect=de so that they don't think of a URI as something a human should be able to understand. But I'm sure that this is not what the inventors of URIs (or URLs) had in mind. And users should be provided with URIs which are as easy to remember and as sensible as possible, in my opinion, so that they have the ability to also enter them into their browsers by hand. How often can you see publications on paper which say something like: To learn more, first go to http://www.our-institution.org/, then click on the link departments, then on the link our department and finally on the link great new project. I think, it is far better to just say: To learn more, go to http://www.our-institution.org/departments/ours/great-new-project In the past, URIs became mostly something that only the computer is expected to deal with, not the human. I'm very much opposed to this and are therefore a fan of nice URIs. ;-) W3C themselves use URIs very intensively in transient communications, and their mailing system is set up to facilitate this (see their x-archived-at mail headers). A result of this is that the email archives, together with the web site pages, form a tightly interlinked collection of documents and comments that can be, and are, frequently cross-referenced rather than reinvented. But, for this to work, once a link has been placed in a document, feed, archive or whatever, it is crucially important that it continues to work for as long as the information it references is of interest to people. Without this, all the devices we use to find our way around the web simply fail -- not all at once, but over time. Even with every intent to maintain stability, this happens, but if you allow that URI stability is somehow less important than other conveniences, then I think all hope is lost for information continuing to be accessible. Of course, stable URIs have a lot of advantages so URI stability is not something that should be ignored. But it should be weighed against other (important) things. I think that URI stability shouldn't always have the final word. As for the difficulty of designing a consistent URI naming scheme for all time, the W3C position explicitly recognizes this, and this is why they recommend incorporating dates near the the root of the URI path. That way, fashions can change without requiring that pages published using older conventions be removed. Of course, this naming scheme isn't really consistent, since the naming schemes you use inside the name spaces of different years might (and probably will) differ. How to do this in a wiki, I'm not sure, though I don't take that to mean we shouldn't try. I think the mediawiki mechanism you mention is reasonable if not ideal, though this would clearly be overwhelmed if page-renaming were to become the norm. There are, as you indicate, other technical concerns. But I still think they are more easily solved that the problems that arise by failing to maintain URI stability. The fact that we are dealing with a wiki here makes retaining URI stability especially difficult. You don't have a webmaster allocating URIs. Since the key point of a wiki is that everyone can edit, more wrong things are made at first which have to be corrected later. I want to add another point which is maybe the most important argument for being open to renamings. In the wiki, the page title affects not only the URI but it's also part of the page. It's the human-readable title you see as a part of the article. So this title *has to* be meaningful and sensible. And if this title doesn't fit into some kind of guideline for titles or is not well chosen in another regard then it is just wrong and has to be corrected. Don't misunderstand me. You have a lot of important arguments but I think
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] page renaming on the Haskell Wiki
Am Mittwoch, 22. Februar 2006 13:00 schrieb [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [...] for example, i think that all libraries should be under Library or Libraries root and so on. we started with filling up the pages, now we had enough contents to see what the structure will serve better Be careful. A title is not a path name. I think, using hierarchy is good in cases like GHC/Documentation since the page is strictly about documentation *for GHC*. So it is clear what the ancestor page should be (GHC). The non-hierarchical title GHC documentation would contain the GHC anyway and the hierarchical title has more structure. But Libraries/Edison seems not like a good idea to me. The more structure you add, the higher is the probability that your structure will not fit future needs. If we want to minimize the reasons for page renamings in the future, we should tend to use flat names, i.e., names with little or no hierarchical information. If we develop software, we also don't know the right design right from the start. (And therefore we need something better than CVS since CVS doesn't support moving of files and directories. ;-) ) Best wishes, Wolfgang ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
RE: [Haskell] page renaming on the Haskell Wiki
Sounds good to me. I wonder whether the haskell home page http://haskell.org should say something like This entire site is a Wiki, and is maintained by its users. To find out how to contribute, go here, where here gives guidance about logging in, and your page-naming guidelines? Simon | -Original Message- | From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Wolfgang | Jeltsch | Sent: 20 February 2006 23:51 | To: haskell@haskell.org | Subject: [Haskell] page renaming on the Haskell Wiki | | Hello, | | I just renamed several wiki pages. One reason for this renaming was the | inconsistent capitalization of page titles. The thread starting with | http://www.haskell.org//pipermail/haskell/2006-January/017485.html contains | some background of this renaming. | | I think that a consistent and sensible naming of pages of the Haskell Wiki is | very important. Since no further opinions were given concerning page naming | and late page renamings might be inconvenient for wiki users, I decided to do | this page renaming now, according to what was said in the above-mentioned | thread and to what I thought was sensible. | | I have put some further information about the renaming on the wiki itself | under http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/User:Wolfgang_Jeltsch/Page_renaming. | Maybe the rationale for page titles given there can server as a basis for a | kind of standard for Haskell Wiki page names? | | I'm open to comments. | | Best wishes, | Wolfgang | ___ | Haskell mailing list | Haskell@haskell.org | http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell ___ Haskell mailing list Haskell@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
Re: [Haskell] page renaming on the Haskell Wiki
In making such changes, please bear in mind Cool URIs Don't Change: http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI This isn't to say don't, but where possible, provide some redirection from the old name to the new name. To be effective, the web relies on stable links, so that references from elsewhere don't fade away. In the end, it is publishers own (presumed) goals in publishing to the Web that are compromised if URIs become inaccessible. #g -- Wolfgang Jeltsch wrote: Hello, I just renamed several wiki pages. One reason for this renaming was the inconsistent capitalization of page titles. The thread starting with http://www.haskell.org//pipermail/haskell/2006-January/017485.html contains some background of this renaming. I think that a consistent and sensible naming of pages of the Haskell Wiki is very important. Since no further opinions were given concerning page naming and late page renamings might be inconvenient for wiki users, I decided to do this page renaming now, according to what was said in the above-mentioned thread and to what I thought was sensible. I have put some further information about the renaming on the wiki itself under http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/User:Wolfgang_Jeltsch/Page_renaming. Maybe the rationale for page titles given there can server as a basis for a kind of standard for Haskell Wiki page names? I'm open to comments. Best wishes, Wolfgang ___ Haskell mailing list Haskell@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell -- Graham Klyne For email: http://www.ninebynine.org/#Contact ___ Haskell mailing list Haskell@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
Re: [Haskell] page renaming on the Haskell Wiki
Am Dienstag, 21. Februar 2006 10:56 schrieb Graham Klyne: In making such changes, please bear in mind Cool URIs Don't Change: http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI This isn't to say don't, but where possible, provide some redirection from the old name to the new name. To be effective, the web relies on stable links, so that references from elsewhere don't fade away. In the end, it is publishers own (presumed) goals in publishing to the Web that are compromised if URIs become inaccessible. #g Hello again, well, there are certain points in the above-mentioned article which one should really think about. For example, I totally subscribe to the point of view that a URI shouldn't expose implementation details and should therefore not include a path component like cgi-bin, for example. In a similar regard, we should probably think about removing the path component haskellwiki from our URIs since this path component forces our site to be a wiki. On the other hand, I think that the above W3C article is far too extreme. It tells you that stability is the most important thing concerning URIs. But I think that this is not true. In my opinion, another very, very important thing is that your URIs are reasonable and your URI-space is well structured. Otherwise you will confuse your users. How should a user know, for example, that one page uses sentence-style capitalization for its title and the other one doesn't. Or look at some URIs they use on the w3.org website: Annotea http://www.w3.org/2001/Annotea/ HTTP http://www.w3.org/Protocols/ Internationalization http://www.w3.org/International/ Patent Policy http://www.w3.org/2004/pp/ This inconsistency seems not very good to me. You cannot plan in advance what naming scheme will be appropriate in 50 years and maybe the one that will be appropriate then won't be appropriate now. I think that good URIs somethimes have to change. Especially on a wiki where there is no webmaster allocating URIs so that you will often need to fix things later. Websites are changing, they are, in a sense, always dynamic. This holds especially for wikis. That said, I'm sure that changing of URIs is not something which should be taken too lightly. At least, one should always provide redirects from the old URI to the new. MediaWiki automatically inserts a respective redirect if you move a page. Alas, MediaWiki's redirects are not really (HTTP) redirects. Instead MediaWiki delivers a page under the redirect's URI which contains the content of the article the redirect points to, together with a note that a redirection took place. So the URI you see in your browser will be the old URI. Having said that redirects are important, let me state that, in my opinion, redirects shouldn't live forever. Normally, a redirect introduced by moving a page should be removed after a certain amount of time when nearly everybody had a chance to update his links. Managing a growing set of redirects is just not feasible. Keeping redirects forever also clutters the All pages page with lots of old page titles. Best wishes, Wolfgang ___ Haskell mailing list Haskell@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
Re: [Haskell] page renaming on the Haskell Wiki
Am Dienstag, 21. Februar 2006 11:17 schrieb Simon Peyton-Jones: Sounds good to me. I wonder whether the haskell home page http://haskell.org should say something like This entire site is a Wiki, and is maintained by its users. To find out how to contribute, go here, where here gives guidance about logging in, and your page-naming guidelines? I have done something like this now. Have a look at the second paragraph of the main page. Simon Best wishes, Wolfgang ___ Haskell mailing list Haskell@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
Re: [Haskell] page renaming on the Haskell Wiki
On 2/21/06, Graham Klyne [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In making such changes, please bear in mind Cool URIs Don't Change: http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI This isn't to say don't, but where possible, provide some redirection from the old name to the new name. To be effective, the web relies on stable links, so that references from elsewhere don't fade away. In the end, it is publishers own (presumed) goals in publishing to the Web that are compromised if URIs become inaccessible. Although, while the wiki is still so new, it's unlikely that there are already links to it so there shouldn't be any harm in moving pages created before there was a clear naming policy established. Furthermore, I think that pages that were initially created by mistake or with misspellings (e.g., Perforamnce) are fair game for deletion. Davor ___ Haskell mailing list Haskell@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
Re: [Haskell] page renaming on the Haskell Wiki
cubranic: On 2/21/06, Graham Klyne [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In making such changes, please bear in mind Cool URIs Don't Change: http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI This isn't to say don't, but where possible, provide some redirection from the old name to the new name. To be effective, the web relies on stable links, so that references from elsewhere don't fade away. In the end, it is publishers own (presumed) goals in publishing to the Web that are compromised if URIs become inaccessible. Although, while the wiki is still so new, it's unlikely that there are already links to it so there shouldn't be any harm in moving pages created before there was a clear naming policy established. Furthermore, I think that pages that were initially created by mistake or with misspellings (e.g., Perforamnce) are fair game for deletion. Though the renamings (which I agree with) did break some internal links. I'd be hesitant to do large renamings again. -- Don ___ Haskell mailing list Haskell@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
