WikiLog

Last edited: 10/21/2004

Preface

As much as it pains the selfish side of me, the INTJ scientist within knows that this publication is the Right Thing to Do^TM. The purpose of this page is to announce my public foray into the synthesis of a Wiki and a Blog, a long-time personal research idea of mine. I was originally tipped off to the notion by other Wiki posts. There, it seemed to me that Blogs and Wikis were at opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum, where Wikis emphasized openness and timelessness, while Blogs emphasized the author's thought of the day. And so, the combining of both Yin and Yang, and the search for Yet Another Content Management tool of my own drives my curiosity. Herein lies my thoughts and discoveries.

Updates

• 10/21/2004 -- During my Unix class, right before my midterm, I was bored and the project just came up in my head... I thought of eBay, my contributions to life, the Grand Compendium, and just my general itch to write stuff down... But mainly, I wanted to document that the WikiLog could definitely exist in at least two states. It's been so long since I've looked at my material, but I do know that a fundamental aspect of this project to assert both the features of a Wiki and a Blog. Henceforth, the Wikilog should give the purest illusion of being one of each at any time. Also, since my last update, I've been looking a whole lot more at the Wikipedia. I feel that with all my knowledge, both public and private, and philosophies, I shouldn't be duplicating any super useful public information that I could just directly put into the Wikipedia. That's why integration with the Wikipedia would be awesome.
  • I will also add and document, for the first time, at least for me, that which I refer to as Google Time. Google Time has been used in both Outlook 2003 and Google. Time isn't merely an absolute reference. It's a relative concept. It is something spent over time. It's duration is felt. It's presence is rushing. That's why we need things like "seconds ago" and "minutes ago" and "today" and "yesterday". At the point of "last year" we would have to be careful of its socially insensitive, absolute construct, however noble its intent might be. On January 1st, December whatever would be considered yesterday to me, but last year to the computer. So what exactly is the difference between a relative span of time ago versus an absolute cut off between frames of duration? The problem has plagued me before, always in the concept of time. Like rolling. Do month span policies roll with the date of infraction? Or do some people get away with fluxuations in policy, leaving others to deal with the brunt of the blow at certain times of the billing cycle. Just more things to consider... Just because the last day of December is last year doesn't mean it can't be yesterday also. So limiting, this talk of span... Maybe it can be both. But both would just be messy, especially since this is just supposed to extend to the layout of an actual calendar. That is, actual calendars don't have duplicate nodes or epochs. So, maybe it would role... Taking preference for spans of ago... And if ago didn't satisfy, it would fall into the frame of actual days, months, and years. Maybe.
• 04/26/2004 -- I feel bad about this one, but here's a list of concepts that I wrote up one time and didn't get a chance to elaborate on. I still won't, at least not for today.
  Timestamps = "epoch" -- CreatedTime not accessible for modification
  • Sort by Epoch
  • Nodes + Node Management Techniques (see Microsoft Photo Library)
  • "all nodes are the same" philosophy
  • WikiBlogDiff (compare features)
  • functional Purity
  • timeful blog view: many nodes on one page, dateCreated view
  • timeless wiki view: single no one a page
  • multi view - date modified view (collapsed)
  • namespaces -- wikiview - WikiWords
  • unnamed entries assigned and accessible by ID?
  • optional command - propagate node title change on edit
• 04/21/2004 -- Corrected an error in the spelling of Ward's name.
• 04/19/2004 -- I received a copy of Ward Cunningham's The Wiki Way, to be used as my primary source of inspiration. I skimmed through the majority of it and find the bulk of the material interesting and worthy of much review. Also, I thought of getting a book on blogs to help balance the research, but I am more familiar with blogs than wikis. Thus and apparently so, there are less to blogs anyway. A formal literature review of past WikiLog thoughts on the Internet to follow.
  I've thought of postponing any sort of coding effort, just to concentrate on the end product and its philosophies. What I expect to see are concepts that are difficult to describe in words alone and thus need snippets of coding. These snippets, paired with diagrams and flow charts of data, will lead me to the promised land. Coding to follow much, much later.

Documentation

• User Views
  • Wiki View - here, the wikilog should be expressed in a timeless, concept heavy format, just like a regular wki
  • Blog View - here, the wikilog should be expressed in a timeful, concept-light format, just like a regular blog
• Integration
  • External linking specifically to the Wikipedia
• Google Time
  • Today
  • Yesterday
  • X seconds ago (a little fleeting, no?)
  • X minutes ago
  • X hours ago
  • X days ago
  • Last week
  • X weeks ago
  • Last month
  • X months ago
  • Last year