UserPreferences

WikiChaos


Wikis are best used in conjunction with other forms of communication. Wikis aren't discussion groups and Wikis without refactoring degenerate quickly into pure chaos.

A perusal of Ward's Wiki will help:

Other forms of group communication which may help this Wiki

Wikis seem to work best when the content goes at the top to be continually tweaked by all, and opinions at the bottom. Opinions are always considered deletable once they have been factored into the content.

In general, write in THIRD person.


Comments:

Its becoming harder and harder to get any sort of idea of the progress or where the process is right now on this Wiki. Comments everywhere, no refactoring, or starting other pages instead of refactoring while leaving out opinions. This needs a mailing list for the churn and more editors and less opinions. [RussellBeattie]

I agree with Russell - the Wiki has worked great up to now but it does appear to be being swamped. Too many cooks? Either a mailing list or more of Sam's blog entries to guide discussions sound like a good idea to me. [SimonWillison]

People, if you want more refactoring: do it! That's the wiki way. Don't complain. Don't flame. Edit. :) (and a tip for following this wiki: use the RSS feed for the recent changes!) [GeorgBauer]

For keeping track of significant changes, use [WWW]the blog, Luke. Nice! -Russ

[JonathanSmith RefactorOk DeleteOk IgnoreFine!] Thanks for the RSS suggestion, Georg! And, even if AaronSw started Echo ProjectNews first, DannyAyers writes a nice ExecutiveSummary.

It would seem that Georg and Russ are responding to the cry for editors and the need for refactoring, and I would agree with Russ that it can be difficult to get a handle on some of the effort so far. Thus, [WWW]Formerly Echo needs to be appreciated, especially, Russ, since we may not hear from the "head monkies" on this wiki. It would seem that this wiki is a team effort in the same way that Feng-Hsiung Hsu writes about the team that built Deep Blue.

While recognizing the considerable efforts of the many participants on Ward's Wiki, the introduction to the topic of this page misses a key point. When my life is in chaos, I don't like it. And, I certainly don't like it when I am in an organization in chaos. Nonetheless, students of ChaosTheory recognize that a new pattern will develop from the disruption of the previous pattern. At the risk of being pedantic, that is the nature of chaos.

The admonishments that Jonathan put after his name are superfluous. From other wiki experiences, one could assume that all of those things can and probably will happen. That is the nature of wikis.