participants
We tinged about:
The un-fair-trade-wiki, WikiNet, “who helps here?”-feed, human timings (0.1s for reaction, 1s for result, 10s for random clicking), languages, cats
ma: Helmut asked me to take a look at the un-fair-trade wiki. Unknown engine. SystemOne? it’s called. I made a wiki-node and something interesting happened. It created links in the side bar to other wiki-nodes. http://www.un-fairtrade.org/pages/WikiNode/
sh: I should really make that sobby server into a proper daemon one day, starting it manually after every server restart is getting annoying 
ma: a wide offer of possible wiki-nodes to select of (as like it’s on the un-fair-trade wiki, kinda), a bunch of neighbors chosen by the community, two dozens no problem. A selection of these for pages like the wiki-net changes, wiki-net faces,
sh: hmm… it’s pretty weird, I’m not sure how they did it…
ma: me neither. I makes me wonder. Could be something useful. Chased for the InterMap but didn’t find it. Beasty engine somehow. Not too bad though. Seems not to be free software.
sh: hey, maybe these are the referers? like on Alex’s blog? you know, addresses of pages from which people came…
ma: hmm, made the wiki-node few hours ago. Possible. Looks like near-links. All of those on the InterMap having the same title. Anyways. I like it. No need to say “Google: wiki-net”.
sh: It’s nice. aah! it’s “search for this page in different places”, the higher one is ‘on wikipedia’ and the lower is ‘on internet’. And indeed, it seems to be using google. Congrats, the ‘WikiNode’ name is unique enough to be a strong brand on the Internet! 
ma: Thanks. Persistance is all! Well, just a search then. Some sother way of automatically finding 50 likely interesting wiki-nodes in the neighborhood of a wiki and display them must be made up then.
sh: Yes, the problem with this approach is that it will change according to unpredictable politics of Google.
ma: criteria could be: what other wikis are the people on the “who helps here” also working on, certain keywords in face-entries. The tags in the wiki.
sh: I think you need to connect to people’s home pages somehow, to collect that information automatically. People will update their home pages more eagerly than some central page on a wiki. Something like putting IHelpHere? on his page. Or even better, just searching through the recent changes for names. Actualy, I think you can safely assume that anyone with a home page on a wiki is somehow involved in it.
ma: yes. The grid of people is a different. It’s like a second layer. I think it is important and making it visible is just as important as the wiki-net, the net of wiki-communities. Two different things, one is seeing who “accidentially” worked in the same place as another person. The other is “who are the people who conciously collaborate and say towards the public that they do”
sh: different wiki organize it differently. some have namespaces (like mediawiki), some have CategoryHomePage, some don’t really have anything.
ma: like pbwiki. It has email.
sh: I wonder if you could just parse the recent changes feed to get the most recent contributors, and remember the past ones, then list the ones above some thereshold. This would require some infrastructure though.
ma: yes. “Who helps here?” could be mostly automated too. Two, three edits and you’re in it. If you didn’t write for two or three months it automatically removes you.
sh: It could also fade gradually. So if you got a lot of edits, you stay in the list longer. Would prevent a lot of people appearing and disappearing all the time.
ma: Yes, like me for example.
sh: But I think the exact figures for optimal solution depend on the community. Some are slower, some are more dynamic.
ma: True, no rules. Let community figure out themselves how it looks best = how it looks the most precise and understandable for others.
sh: Then again, people are somewhat similar in terms of how they perceive the world and interact with eaach other, so maybe a set of “good enough” values could be achieved experimantally. Like the timing for user interface: 0.1s for indicating that something worked, 1s for showing indication for longer actions, 10s before the users start clicking around randomly…
ma: 0.1, that’s fast
users and where else they work. Then tags I guess. Well, and the wiki-net-feeds
sh: that’s the time your computer has to show that a button was clicked or that you hovered your mouse pointer over a link. Otherwise it “feels” sluggish. It’s interesting how people derieved these values, becausee these are actually the times that people use in conversations.
1s is the time you wait for the facial expression change or a nod. 10s is the time after which you consider conversation finished if there is no reply, or repeat your statement. Not sure where 0.1s came from.
ma: That’s the change in the pupilla only the careful observer can see. What the little machine measures during the replicant test in the beginning of “Blade Runner”.
sh: Ah! must be it! My favorite movie, btw Anyways, these timings are roughly the same for all people around. May be that some longer timings, like the “how long do I stick around when I’m helping” are similarily universal.
ma: sounds like a lot of useful to decover in that area. Reaction and help timing is largely extended on wiki. Good so. I guess wiki-psycology will become diffent from psycology for individuals or real life groups but equally important. The reduction in sensual impression and the extention in transparency, searchability and public memory makes it different.
sh: Maybe someone could make his PhD? on it 
ma: Someone? Thousands!
sh: Nah, the amount of PhD?’s with the word “wiki” in them is limited to 3 a year currently, they need to dose that, otherwise all other areas would be abandoned.
ma: Mixed up PhD? with diploma.
In a way it’s asking “what makes a wiki transparent to wikilandia”. “What and how do you folks supply information about you and what you are currently up with to the entirety of wikis?”
sh: It still feels like we are trying to bring together people who use similar technology, not people who are similar or want to get to know each other, if you know what I mean. Kind of like picking up all the girls who dress green.
ma: I see. True. The example with the girls makes me think of other stuff. I’ve carefully tried to approach to blogs recently (only those dressed in green though). Interesting instrument. sux completly ego still.
sh: I picked ‘green’ just because that’s what I’d go for if I had to choose the color. Or ‘brown’, actually, come to think of it. That’s because the girls I’m after prefer to be hidden and not flashy. Well, blogs are for EGO. That’s their purpose. Wikis are for getting things done, blogs are for boasting. Or complaining. Or ranting. Whatever you like.
ma: in terms of “which girl?” the css turned out “Pipi Langströmpe” (one of my favorites). It’s good for the purpose. Beautiful might be different.
sh: css is irrelevant, you can define your own in your browser
Besides I know one girl with Pipi-like tastes and she’s nasty. Ego the size of a skyscrapper.
ma: hmm, brown.
sh: They wear brown and grays because they are not flashy. Greens work too. Not the safety-vest green though. The browny ones.
ma: I think there’s a new web-Montag in sl tomorrow.
sh: in that nazi-language of yours? 
ma: that is true. Our mothers used it. Our bands sang English but it didn’t help
Anyways. It’s exiting to see. Even when not understanding anything. The French btw yesterday - they haven’t got the advantage sl gained by the voice function yet. It was quite amazing, they had a view of the café the event took place in in sl and you could walk around in it with you avatar. But half of the participants had no voice and the others didn’t dare to talk. Dunno what went on inworld, semt a lot.
sh: I should really get to know it. I feel dumb not knowing it. Really. My grandparents spoke it fluently. One of my grandfathers spent most of his life in Denmark. He sold two farms and returned to Poland with the money, then he bought a pack of cigarettes with that.
ma: well, consider a slavic mothertongue: How many millions are there eastwards until Japan begins? With Geman you understand a bit of Dutch. A tiny bit of Swedish maybe. That’s it.
sh: I think slavic ends at about China
It’s not that I can understand Russian without any preparation either. Russian is on the other end of the “slavic spectrum”.
ma: How’s Slovenian? From a Polish ear?
sh: Never tried, but have seen some comparison charts and it’s 80% similar to Polish and 40% to Russian. Or was it Belrussian? 
ma: comparison chart of similarity of languages world-wide. Interesting. Colored possibly.
sh: They compared words like “mother” and “home” and the like – the most important ones, I think. Css doesn’t matter 
ma: no. Nackt sind alle Katzen grau. All cats are grey in the dark, it says.
sh: More pinkish… All cats are gray anyways, I can prove it to you by induction. We say ‘black’ in Poland, funny.
ma: naked, dark, black. Indeed. It’s obviously not about the (grey) cats, it’s about the naked blackness of their surrounding.
sh: In the whole universe there is not enough darkness to extinguish even a single small cat.
ma: lol