[pmwiki-users] Conceptual challenges from ZAPwiki...

The Editor editor at fast.st
Sat Jun 2 21:13:35 CDT 2007


On 6/2/07, Sivakatirswami <katir at hindu.org> wrote:
> Let's climb a mountain, sit quietly
>   and scan the global information landscape below.
>
> PMwiki is all about collaboration.
>
> Set the code aside for a minute and look at the value system of what PM
> is doing and the way he goes at it and the high, positive level of
> cooperation among both naive users, naive admins and those who have PHP
> competency and working together...
>
> It is "beautiful to behold."


Yes it can be beautiful, but sometimes it's not quite so. I came to
PmWiki knowing nothing about PHP, found the community exceptionally
helpful, and became incredibly excited about the software. And I dove
right into learning it, using it, and eventually developing it. Some
of my ideas may have been misguided, and my code was understandably
naive and immature. Still I gave the best I could to the community,
thankful for its generosity to me.

Yet, for whatever reasons, I have repeatedly had my motives
challenged, my mistakes ridiculed, my ideas rejected out of hand, and
much more of the like. There were of course many others who encouraged
me, patiently answered my questions, collaborated on the code, and
expressed their appreciation for my efforts. Fortunately, these more
than made up for the others.

And lest I be misunderstood, I hasten to add Pm was the most patient
and noble-hearted of the bunch. Always respectful, helpful,
knowledgeable and fair-minded. Many times he was the only one who
seemed to grasp what I was saying, and he provided tremendous guidance
through my learning. I'm very, very grateful to him.

So this mailing list has been good, and the maintainer great. But for
me personally it has been far from what I would call beautiful.

> Politicians and multi-nationals and many religions (not Hinduism) set
> up boundaries and square off markets etc. walls are built and lines
> drawn.
>
> Pmwiki is all about going a completely different direction. I
> know it sounds like I'm overly romanticizing and idealistic, but really,
> when you brought ZAP into the mix, we had faith you were on board that
> vision. Some of us believed in you... That's what it's all about... it's
> not just about PHP this or that. Maybe it's taking the metaphor way too
> far, but in a world at war projects like PMwiki and others like it,
> IMHO make a huge difference on the
> "inner" landscape of the mind of human consciousness.

If anyone was on board, I think it's fair to say I was. Countless
hours--researching, testing, documenting, providing support. True, I
was working to meet my own development needs, but I was eager to share
whatever I could with others. (Ignoring the jeers and jabs along the
way as best I could). But Sivaka, open source communities are not so
idealistic, or open minded, as we wish. Their walls may be invisible,
but they are just as real.

My goal in developing ZAPwiki was not to create a competitor but to
demo a concept (several actually) of how I thought PmWiki could work.
Concepts radical enough I didn't think they could be readily grasped
without a working model. But evidently those who challenge an existing
mindset are just as quickly marginalized in the virtual world as they
are in the non-virtual world. Human nature is human nature.

> You may have good intentions, which  boil down to "aspirations
> for optimization" which is not a bad goal. But you are missing something
> more important here on another level: To pull up stakes, and set
> up another "nation" you "broke the faith."

I have to admit, my experiment proved a rather shocking success even
to myself. The forms processing concept worked far better than I would
have ever guessed. But my honest initial first reaction was, we should
do this in PmWiki. If you call that breaking faith, I'm not sure what
to say. But I know it could be done in PmWiki, and I susect it could
be done easily, making PmWiki far more more powerful. Maybe deep down
I was hoping it would be done so I could stick with the PmWiki
software and community I've come to love.

But so far only one person has addressed any of the specific
challenges I raised with any kind of intelligence Pm, as usual--who
understood exactly what I was saying and respectfully addressed th
issues. (My apologies if I overlooked someone) His basic conclusion
though of "Sorry. No interest", and the communities general attitude,
lack of interest, or even discussion, etc., leaves me little hope of
seeing this come to pass. And I have little motivation left to try and
push it. So in my mind, it seems to me PmWiki (the community) has
broken faith.

Yes ZAPwiki may have it's problems. I've been fixing bugs and plugging
holes for the last couple days, and there's probably lots to go. But
hey, its Acme software! Of course that was never the issue at all. But
now that I have it in hand, I can't really imagine not having in-wiki
skins, styles, etc. I love the backup and instant installation thing
(I think I've got that problem solved). And the simplicity of the page
format and matching markup does wonders for simplifying the code. And
most of all I am totally sold on the incredible flexibility of being
able to create and customize every site action I can conceive without
ever having to touch the php. Again, all this could be done in
PmWiki--and probably without too much trouble. But Pm has no interest,
no one else seems interested, and frankly, I suspect I've lost
interest in trying to port any of it back to PmWiki either.

I've committed to seeing ZAP through till PmWiki comes out of beta. So
I'll continue to be around. I may even get inspired enough to go ahead
and port some of this back to PmWiki anyway. For the benefit of those
yet to come, or perhaps already here but not grasping what we're
talking about. Or hesitant to say something. Maybe. But it really is
about time I get back to the project I came to PmWiki for in the first
place.

Thanks again to everyone.
Dan

PS. I did start a little mailing list for those interested in
discussing any of this further. Just go to www.zapwiki.org to
subscribe. My apologies to anyone I offended by bringing this subject
up here.



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