I hope an enjoyable community will grow around the GiftfileSystem?. In appreciation of nonproprietary works (a.k.a. "free as in freedom", libre), we'll be able to exchange real money, using our local currencies, with people all over the world. When a publisher gets this kind of support, he can chose to either take the money or pass it on towards some work that he appreciates. It will be an efficient system, and won't be at the mercy of for-profit corporations.
Imagine a free software developer in Germany who is looking for music for his video game. He can contribute money towards a cool track released by a French musician under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. The French musician is a big science fiction fan, so he passes most of his earnings towards free electronic books.
The system itself is only a tool, and doesn't address issues such as certifying which publisher of a certain free work is the "real one". It must be this way to have a decentralized solution. As always, it is the responsibility of each community member to be ethical, and to treat others with respect. Given a useful tool, the community can build a network of trust on top of it.
I'm planning a hands-on session to help people get aquainted with the current giftfile system implementation. If there are any technical Linux-types out there that are interested, please contact me. A note here is ok.
I thought about making my wiki notes as a PageCluster. But if I make a cluster page called WikiNotes? under JohnBelmonte, doesn't that consume the WikiNotes? page name globally? It seems strange, as I'm used to UseModWiki subpages where that doesn't happen.
People like to use photos here. So far I feel I can get tired of looking at the same shot of someone every day. It isn't like real life, where people change their appearance from day to day. If I were going to use the portrait feature, I'd make my URL hand out one random photo from a set each time it was accessed. I'd set the ok-to-cache information to 24 hours, so that the image wouldn't change too quickly for someone navigating the wiki.
Related to having a photo or not, I wish that I could use [ new:JohnBelmonte ] like everyone else and have it just display my name. This way I can add or remove my portrait at a later date and not have to re-edit all my signatures.
– sylvie