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Metaweb:Meta-Metaweb

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

This is a place for discussing the Metaweb, its user interface, and naming conventions. The goal is to figure out how to improve the site.

The original discussions are on Metaweb:Meta-Metaweb/archive.

New front page

Here's a preview of the new front page by User:Ken. To view it, extract the zip to a folder and open up index.html in a browser.

:Image:Metaweb-new-front-page.zip

--Pat 11:32, 17 Feb 2004 (PST)

More web logs linking here. --Pat 21:08, 21 Oct 2003 (PDT)

Authored vs anonymous pages

One of the reasons we (User:Nealstephenson, Danny Hillis, User:Patrick Tufts, User:Tpierce, and others) started this site was to give a voice to particular authors and viewpoints. So we created a place for authored contributions as well as a place for community (that is, shared, neutral) contributions.

But what about users who wish to be anonymous or untracked, but still want to create entries with strong points of view? Is there a good way to allow these users to contribute in a way that reflects that their pieces express an opinion, yet are not authored in the sense that there is an associated name?

The discussion is on metaweb: authored vs anonymous pages. --Pat 10:01, 17 Oct 2003 (PDT)

Metaweb in the news

Here are some recent mentions of this site. --Pat 17:30, 2 Oct 2003 (PDT)

Printable version of all page annotations

I've produced a PDF version of the current set of page annotations. I know this defeats much of the usefulness of a linked, web-based collection of information, but while I am reading Quicksilver, a printed version of the annotations will be more useful to me. I suspect others reading the book would be interested in such a file.

Questions: Would this document or the scripts used to generate it be useful for the site? Would this be better placed elsewhere on the Internet? What sort of attribution should appear on the document in either case?

I would love it if you put the scripts and PDF on the site. The attribution should follow the metaweb:copyrights guidelines - cite your source (us) and put the same license on any derived work. If you want to have your script auto-update the PDF file on this site, send me email (click the email this user link on my user page). --Pat 17:12, 26 Sep 2003 (PDT)

This could eventually get us into some interesting filter work. As matters stand now, the annotations-by-page-number are mostly by yours truly, and there aren't that many of them. Others like Jeremy Bornstein and Steven Horst have begun posting their own annotations, which is a welcome development. If a whole lot of annotations get posted, then the script-generated PDF version may become bigger than some users want. That would present an opportunity to begin playing around with some simple filtering capabilities.Nealstephenson 10:37, 28 Sep 2003 (PDT)

I put a link at the bottom of the all_annotations_by_page_number page to the current PDF file on my web site. I'm happy to have it hosted on your server, if you like, but since the (current) script can't do the job without human intervention, it seemed easier to just have it hosted here where I can keep it updated. As to the filtering idea, I was thinking about pulling in some non-page-specific notes into the annotations, where appropriate. I haven't experimented to see if this is possible, and it might make the file too large to be useful for some readers, but it might be fun to pull in more content if it can be done well. --cswingle 10:45, 28 Sep 2003 (ADT)

All Pages Index

This page seems to be broken, as it only lists pages up into the letter "L". Can someone have a look at it? - Mike Lorrey 25 Jan 2005 You mean this page? Check this page instead. Also, it goes Lucy Walter, MMORPGs:Breaking The Addiction (Timberbee) due to sorting caps before lowercase... - Pronoiac 17:38, 26 Jan 2005 (PST)

Administrative issues

Metaweb:To serve and to protect -- should we protect authored pages from edits?

Federation of Metawebs

Shouldn't metaweb look into federating with existing wikis, such as wikipedia.org? Can't see much use in creating Metaweb specific topics for, example: Newton, Leibniz, and Huygen are already defined on wikipedia... along with various topics such as monads.

I'm not sure what federating means, but you might be interested in the differences between the Wikipedia and the Metaweb. See Metaweb:An explanation of the similarities and differences between Wikipedia and Metaweb for some discussion of this. If you would like to link to Wikipedia content in the metaweb:intermediate pages, I encourage you to do so. If you want to copy content from the Metaweb into the Wikipedia, or vice versa, this is fine too, as long as you cite your source. --Pat 21:38, 28 Sep 2003 (PDT)

Two challenges that prevent "federating" are (a) lack of a wikitext standard to keep content portable. So far most GFDL wikis have used mediawiki software, but it clearly isn't the best, so, that will probably change soon. (b) Metaweb:governance ideas that may differ from other Wikis. Especially since Wikipedia is always provoking discussion of how bad its governance is and has no peace process in place to head off its vicious cycle. Very different editorial standards don't easily cooperate, nor it seems do different political views. Just what do you mean by "federating"?

I don't know what the original poster meant by "federating". There's a lot of ideas floating around at http://CommunityWiki.org/ on various ways of making it easier for people to go back and forth between wiki. Those methods include: * Sister sites: When you reach the end of the article, there's icons for a few other wiki. When you click on one, it sends you to -- not the homepage of that wiki, but -- the corresponding page with the same name. It's useful for seeing different wiki point of view on a particular subject. (for more details, see http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SisterSites ) * Interwiki linking allows Page authors to use simplified links. It's easier to write [[Wikipedia:Newton]] than http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton. This is already built into MediaWiki software. It's used on http://wikibooks.org/ all the time to link to Wikipedia articles, and vice versa.

--DavidCary 09:37, 28 Feb 2005 (PST) I found this odd spelling works where noncapitalization of the P fails: [[WikiPedia:Newton]] - Sparky

Featured Article of the Month

I'd like to suggest that we institute a featured article of the month-type program, so people going to the main page may see a listing of more articles than just what's been sitting there since 2003... Mike Lorrey I'd really like to reiterate the need for updates to the main page, perhaps someone to administrate it to rotate in and out particular recent articles and other news.....Otherwise people may get the idea that this site is dead...Mike Lorrey 18:27, 7 Jun 2005 (PDT)