[pmwiki-users] Utility pages

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2005 at 02:38:30PM -0400, Radu wrote:
> At 12:20 PM 6/15/2005, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> 
> I always thought that the main part of a wiki is its content, not the 
> functional context provided in the group so far called Main. Just because 
> some early compiler builders and their dogmatic-ontological descendents 
> thought that the first step into a program is the main part, it doesn't 
> follow that's what the real life meaning of Main.

FWIW, I didn't choose "Main" by way of analogy to anything in programming
language or compiler design, it was just the best of the available
alternatives to denote the starting group of a wiki.  (I'll also note
that there haven't been a lot of good alternatives proposed since then. :-)

The analogues I used when selecting "Main" were concepts like "Main 
Street", "main doors", "main web pages", "main branch" -- i.e., the 
idea was one of being the group at the center of the site, or the 
primary location from which one could then reach other groups.

(On a somewhat humorous note -- this topic reminds me of the time when 
discussing C data types in class and one of my students remarked that 
"file" was just a word that didn't really mean anything outside 
of computer programming languages... :-)

Pm