Contact Information
Current Status
I am:
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on an extended break from active involvement in Atom
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available via email (note: I am unlikely to respond to email from freemail accounts. Use your ISP account, one from your work, or from your own domain)
I am not:
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voting on OpenPolls
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monitoring RecentChanges and keeping up with all changed pages several times per day
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annotating edits which may be construed as authoritative but are not (note: I am not doing this to old changes - I simply don't have enough time)
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responding to direct replies to comments I've already posted and discussions in which I'm already involved (note the restrictions in "I am not")
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resuming contributions to subjects which are still under active discussion (note the restrictions in "I am not")
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available on the IrcChannel several times per day (as djjd)
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partaking in discussions involving anonymous wiki contributors. My reasoning appears below. For an expanded view on the over-arching issues, read A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy.
On Wiki Anonymity (Summer 2003)
First, a general comment. Privacy is an important right, one that must never be forgotten. There are many situations where privacy is required. There are many situations where 100% anonymity is the simplest guarantee of privacy. In a number of situations, anonymity is the most practical approach to achieving some degree of privacy.
However, 1 time out of 10, anonymity is used to ensure privacy. The other 9 times it is used as a shield behind which people freely partake in questionable activities, activities they wouldn't pursue without said anonymity.
Wikis need a degree of privacy for their users, but anonymity is generally not required, and further, is most often used counter-productively, or at least in a way that is un-supportive of the wiki process.
On a wiki such as this one, the difference between authoritative information and one individual's comments is critical. As issues are discussed and resolved, agreement is reached and a decision (and the information detailing it) becomes authoritative. Such authoritative information is often presented in an un-attributed fashion, as it is essentially a statement made by the wiki's contributorship as a whole.
Of late, this wiki has become progressively more and more polluted by contributors who are editing wiki content without a) logging in such that their edits can be attributed to a user and/or b) attributing their changes to an on-wiki identity that can be used to tie together their various pieces of input.
Why is this such a problem? It is a problem because this anonymous input has started showing up in places where it could easily be mis-read as authoritative content that has resulted from the collaborative process. The truth of the matter is that many such edits are not in any way a result of the collaborative process.
When anonymous input isn't mis-interpreted as authoritative it is still disruptive to the wiki process as anonymous posters can troll, flame, mis-lead, ballot-stuff, etc. to their heart's content without any opportunity for other contributors to know who has provided what input and without any opportunity for an anonymous contributor to be held accountable for their edits.
It is truly sad that the wiki has begun to degenerate in this way, but completely unsurprising. The internet is full of children who love to have their special brand of fun from behind a shield of anonymity. It was only a matter of time before they found their way here.
Wiki Contributions
- AtomArtwork . . . . 32 matches
- PropertiesVsRoles . . . . 14 matches
- EscapedHtmlDiscussion . . . . 9 matches
- AggregatorApi . . . . 6 matches
- AtomNameDiscuss . . . . 6 matches
- CarrotVsOrangeDiscuss . . . . 5 matches
- ElementsVsAttributes . . . . 4 matches
- RelatedDiscussion . . . . 4 matches
- AggregatorApiArchived . . . . 3 matches
- EchoFeedWithAuthorRefs . . . . 3 matches
- NameFinalVoteArchive . . . . 3 matches
- ProjectNamesTopVotesSoFar . . . . 3 matches
- TimestampVsCreationDateTime . . . . 3 matches
- XmlRpcDiscussion . . . . 3 matches
- AtomNameUsage . . . . 2 matches
- AuthorElementDiscussion . . . . 2 matches
- ContentDiscussion . . . . 2 matches
- EchoRenamingProposals . . . . 2 matches
- EntryContentDiscussion . . . . 2 matches
- NameItEchoConflict . . . . 2 matches
- NamespaceDiscussion . . . . 2 matches
- PermaLinks . . . . 2 matches
- RestEchoApiOneUriForEachEntry . . . . 2 matches
- SchemaPatterns . . . . 2 matches
- WhatIsAtomFor . . . . 2 matches
- AlternativeRepresentation . . . . 1 match
- ApiFacets . . . . 1 match
- CarrotVsOrange . . . . 1 match
- CommentEntryExample . . . . 1 match
- EchoSchema . . . . 1 match
- IetfVersusW3cVote . . . . 1 match
- InfoSetDiscussion . . . . 1 match
- IrcChannel . . . . 1 match
- IsaCommentAnEntryDiscussion . . . . 1 match
- JeremyGray . . . . 1 match
- MementoVsTimestamp . . . . 1 match
- MultipleSyntaxDiscussion . . . . 1 match
- NameFinalVote . . . . 1 match
- NameItProposals . . . . 1 match
- NumberOfAuthorsDiscussion . . . . 1 match
- ProjectNameGuidelines . . . . 1 match
- RSSVote . . . . 1 match
- RdfAndEcho . . . . 1 match
- RelativeLinks . . . . 1 match
- SuggestionBox . . . . 1 match
- VersionNo . . . . 1 match
- WhatIsEntryId . . . . 1 match