[pmwiki-users] increasing preciousness
Monty
pmwiki at ioioi.us
Sun Apr 10 23:33:02 CDT 2005
Dear Users,
One thing which strikes me when I view a PmWiki website is that, the
form is to focus on meaning itself, which has value apart from who cares
about it, who contributed it, who objects to it, or even who reads it.
The prototypical PmWiki exists for itself: it is self-centric; which,
being that it is a data archive, it is data centric.
This is no different from many other forms of journalism. But it
provokes me to ponder, (and ponder I might,) how might my PmWiki site
become more about its users than about it self? And my inescapable
answer comes - it is about metadata. Capturing, tagging, and
re-presenting metadata in convenient times, at pertinent places.
The eternal problem with metadata is that people are inherently LAZY and
do not spend time with it because they do not understand The Big Picture
of the semantic web and the power connectedness brings. The answer to
overcoming this sloth is to make metadata DEAR to the user(s) - it must
become sentimental.
Monty's Growth Hypothesis #1:
The more connnected data is to other data, and metadata is to data, the
more precious it is and it will want to be. In other words, the more
apparent it is that some data is relevant, the more relevant it will become.
This is accomplished
# by leadership/example -- having a core which cares to contribute metadata
# in ways which are primarily visual -- consequently the graphic design
is crucial - it must say "I am precious, I am dear, I am connected to
you in ways that are meaningful and matter."
# thru eloquent prose which captures something beyond a b&w 2d world of
the wiki and distills, in primitive form, beauty
# by photography. Image inclusion must not only be easy, attaching or
alluding to a PNG or JPG must be compelling.
# by filtering out everything which is not interesting & relevant to the
user and decreasing its salience
# by intelligently bringing to the fore those things which the user has
indicated (through her behavior such as navigation path, search strings,
or expressed preferences) s/he likes
# by making the website more about the prosumers using it than about the
data they consume or create
# by giving viewers choice, and intelligently remembering and
consistently applying her choice throughout the site, whether that be in
## color preference by selecting AN alternate stylesheet ON a particular
skin,
## "smart folders" like mozilla thunderbird, iTunes, and Google have
made popular, which are merely remembered searches presented through
navigation as if they are menus
:) ok!
This is a brainstorming on how to make my PmWiki more audience-relevant
and prosumer-centric.
How may any recipes, features, skins, templates, or scripts be created
or altered to implement any of these concepts?
Sincerely Yours,
Monty d.
More information about the pmwiki-users
mailing list