Renaming Spirit-Web to Web-of-Life
This should be complete now, but may have missed some instances. ~Hans June 11, 2005, at 05:02 PM
Love the new logo! :D I'm wondering if we should keep the word "wiki" in the name when we use it on the site? ...Welcome to the Web of Life" sounds a little... odd, but "Welcome to the Web of Life Wiki" sounds more like an invitation to participate in the site creation... just my 2 cents worth... :-) ~Sharon? June 11, 2005, at 05:14 PM done on the Homepage now.
I was thinking about restructuring of Web-of-Life and like to share some ideas here for discussion.
I feel that the original blueprint with a small number of groups working as categories may have become to narrow. I like the general idea of permaculture encompassing agriculture, gardening, housing, energy, transport etc., but many people will not necessarily look in Permaculture for energy topics, and also theEarth group covers some aspects of this. This made me think that waht is required is a more flexible approach.
I can look at spirit-web as a web of pages, linked to node-pages, which link to each other. Like a mind-map, with links between the nodes. Each node functions as an index page of sort, like GreenEnergy. There is no central node-page, but some nodes are more important than others (which may change over time), and we keep an introductury Home Page, which has linkd to some important index pages. There may be one or more "central" nodes, which index other nodes.
The Side Bar will remain with a listing of the more important nodes. Again this may change over time. It will also have the New Stuff as now, with links to the most recently changed pages. But the list of groups may not stay as static as now. If we can make the list shorter we can also introduce sub-items on th elist, which will only show when clicked on the main one. The Side Bar will this way expand in a way relevant to the topic.
I would like to introduce a new way of categorising pages. A page can be categorised by adding at the bottom a special "category" link, like [[!Energy]], which will point to a page with alist of all pages in this category (this is automatically generated). One can also have a page with a list of all categories, like a general index. the beauty of this is, that it is possible to give a page several categories if necessary, and that it is not necessary to manually edit index pages. But it does not preclude having manually edited index (node) pages as well. one drawback is that this category system works by pmwiki doing special searches, which takes time, so it is slower than linking through manual indexes. But pmwiki keeps getting improved to give the best possible speed for this.
Now one big question is, if we should get rid of the groups as they are right now, and have all pages in just one group, or leave the groups, and perhaps add some more as needed. With just one group we do not need to worry what group we want to create a page in. All links become much simpler. We add categories as special links to the page, and perhaps also add a link to a relevant node page manually. Node pages are then no longer index pages of a certain group, but they can be more freely created and maintained. this is much more like a living web. The disadvantage is that the pages are less easy to administer on a file level (each page is a file). I mean it may be harder to find certain pages, and pages may get lost easier. But the original wikiwiki seems to manage with 30.000 pages all in one group. It also means we loose fast group-listing through the button-link at the page bottom, and the group link in the title bar. Perhaps the backlink button will become more important, showing from which pages th epage is linked. Finally it means also some work of editing all existing pages so the links will keep on working, but much of this I think I can do automatically.
If we decide to go for a spirit-web with just one group, I would create it entirely new from the existing pages, and we can see both versions side-by-side, and see how it works, before taking out the group-based system. - So what do you think? ~Hans June 06, 2005, at 02:30 PM
I love it! This is much more like the brain is structured, like a web with the interconnections of neural nodes (key index pages) and neurons (pages) with synapses (links) created whenever and wherever ideas intersect. It may be more difficult for you, oh Wise Web Master :) but it would be awesome! And so much easier to link pages between groups if there aren't any "groups" in page names. I love the idea of expanding lists on the sidebar. I vote "YES"!! :D Brilliant! :D ~Sharon? June 06, 2005, at 03:17 PM
Check out this page from the Institute of Noetic Sciences. We don't have to do the fancy graphics, but I like the web structure... actually it's not showing the sideways connections much in the graphic, but they are there. ~S
Although the Noetic graphic is done in the round (and it is very visually pleasing, btw), the actual structure is still a tree. (If you follow their browse link, you will see this.) I can see several potential drawbacks to going to one group but I am open to running the two structures side by side for a chance to compare. (Maybe a mini version to save on work.) Hans, when you talk about 'category link', do you mean something similar to tagging? If yes, does it not mean that one is dependent on searching to create, say, a temporary group? ~ ~Gemma June 06, 2005, at 05:43 PM
I created a new testwiki, transferred all, or most, of the pages, renamed them so they are all in a group called "Web". I also created a "Category" group, and added category links to two pages as a trial, so you can see and experiment: WalkingASpiritualPath? and Ecophilosophy?. The url is not meant to stay like it is, but is okay for testing. See the link in LatestNews above.
Categories work by putting on a page a link to the page category in the Category group. Uhh, this sounds confusing. Well put in a link like [[!Art]] will point to a page Category.Art, which lists automatically all the pages which link to it. Thee is no temporary group, but a group called Category, which holds all the categories as pages. so you get a listing of all the categories as well on the page Category.Category. Clear? Just look at it, and try adding categories to pages.
Hope all is working, but some links may not be working in some pages. Aslo some picturs may be still missing. I have not checked all. Anyway this is a start. Some inner workings need to be seen to by me when I am awake enough. I will transfer this page to the new testsite too. ~Hans June 06, 2005, at 11:16 PM
I can see how to add a Category to a page and I can see how the Category page automatically indexes the new page. How is a new Category created? I added a test page to Health & Healing Arts with category 'Art' to see how it worked. Wondering how easy it might be to lose track of a page that has wrong category link or no category link at all. As it is, when I am on the test page, I have lost any context of Health & Healing. To find the page, I did a search and found 51 of 341 pages with the word test. Thanks, ~Gemma June 07, 2005, at 01:34 PM
a new category is created by creating the category link on any page, and then opening the link to this new category page. It opens in edit mode,and you type in a blank space and save the page, because the content is getting put there automatically throug a GroupFooter directive. Category pages are not really different than other pages, they are just pages in a group called Category. A link like [[!Art]] is the same as [[Category.Art]], which is the usual form. The ! in the link gets interpreted as a link to a page in group Category, that is all the mystery. Just easier to type.
Looosing pages is no different in principle with one big group than with many smaller ones. Only it is a bigger group to look through, if one does a group listing. A page is categorised as the category link(s) one puts in it. So it is not automatically in a group "Health" for instance, even if you create a link from such a page. So it needs a different kind of awareness. Mind you pages don't need to be in a category, the category linking is just another way of indexing, which may be helpful. And there is a way in pmwiki to search for orphaned pages, pages which are not linked to from anywhere. ~Hans June 07, 2005, at 06:58 PM
I added category links to some pages, some with more than one. See Category.Category. I also updated the search behaviour and the backlinks. Backlinks will show a list of pages which link to the current one. Now you can crawl over the web with normal pagelinks, crawl backward with backlinks, or see the category pages and go from thee to others, apart from the index pages through the sidebar. ~Hans June 07, 2005, at 10:44 PM
Gemma, your last attempt to edit this page resulted in a big part of it being deleted. So I restored it to what it was before. Please try again! :)
This is a niggly thing, :) but before we go too far into this new structure, could we think about calling the sections "topics" instead of "categories"? It makes more sense to me, that something like "climate change" or "wisdom" be called a topic rather than a category. ~ Gemma, your comment about the structure of the Noetic Sciences site is technically correct, in that there are tree-like branches both in the graphic and in the "browse" structure, but I seem to remember that when one actually dives in and explores from the graphic, at a single page level, many of the pages link up sideways between topics and show up in more than one topic, making it truly weblike farther from the centre. Haven't gone exploring there for a while, though, so I can't remember for sure.
In our site, though, if individual pages are created as individual pages with content that could link to more than one "branch" of the web (or "topic" or "category") then it should be an easy thing to just put a link to the main "node" pages it could relate to at the bottom of the page, as well as links to pages in other topics within the text of the page itself, as they relate to what is written... I'm still not sure how this linking at the bottom of the page works, Hans, but I think it would still be necessary to make an actual text index-like page for each of the topics, as we have now, with the individual pages linked to them, branch-like, but just not use different group names in the page link url. So we would still keep our current "art" index page, for example, but a page like "Photo Gallery" that links from it wouldn't need to be called Art/Photo Gallery when we create the link, but would just need "Photo Gallery"... Is that correct? So in fact, the difference between the new structure and the old is mainly "under the hood", with added search features by topic... ??? (I think I understand, but maybe I'm still a little confused... :) ~Sharon? June 08, 2005, at 07:09 AM
When the wiki does a search on a category from the link at the bottom of the page, how does it sort the pages it finds? Alphabetically? Is there a way to sort the pages by numbers of links to them, like Google does, so the most linked to page (most likely the index of the topic) comes first in the list, with main subtopics coming next and so on, down to individual pages? Or is that asking for the moon? :) ~Sharon? June 08, 2005, at 07:19 AM
it is okay to ask for the moon..., but it is not forthcoming, there is no provision at the moment for this. so, yes, it is an alphabetical search. And yes, i agree that we need manual index pages as we are having all along. The automatic ones are just an addition. On the "other site" with many groups it was achieved by clicking "list group". Yes, we do not need to use the groupname within pages which link to pages within the group. So that makes link creation a lot simpler. This is probably the only advantage of a single group structure compared to multple groups. Be aware that we can use the "category" links also in a multi group structure. And technically the group with the category pages does not need to be called Category. Not sure if i like "Topic". We really talk about two changes here: One group (called Web? here) instead of multiple groups. And introducing Category links for additional searches and navigation.
~Hans June 08, 2005, at 09:01 AM
I'm not crazy about "Topics" either, but "Categories" doesn't quite fit the content either... What about "Threads"... of the web, of thought...? ~Sharon? June 08, 2005, at 03:37 PM
I think I prefer the multi-group structure. I find it a lot easier to keep an overview and to find pages when they are in groups, i.e. there are not so many of them, and I can use "list group", and I can use the group link in the titlebar to take me to the groups node (index). The inconveniance to have to link to pages in other groups with their group-prefix is small. The inconveniance to have to decide in which group one wants to put a new page is about the same as to decide which category the page should be assigned to. So I would like to stay with the previous structure. But I like it improved in at least two ways: Re-thinking the Earth and Permaculture group (not sure how yet), and introducing a Category group (perhaps call it Threads?) and using category links to add another layer to the web. This does not necessarily need to coincide with the groups, there can be more, and different threads. I alsolike to see apage with a graphic web of nodes and their connections. And I see it as a web and not a hierarchical/tree-like structure. ~Hans June 08, 2005, at 06:55 PM
PS: please don't add new material to this One-Group wiki, apart from testing it, as it will be difficult to convert into the multi-group wiki. - And if we going to add Category/Threads to th emulti-group wiki it would be good to agreeon this and a name.
PPS:I registered the domain web-of-life.org.uk, and have introduced it here, but I did not mean to introduce it "through the backdoor" to replace spirit-web. Just to let you know that I liked the name, and wonder if it makes any sense to change Spirit-Web to Web-of-Life?? ~Hans June 08, 2005, at 07:00 PM
Whatever structure is easiest for you to administer is fine with me, since you're the one doing most of the work! :) Perhaps we could continue adding pages to whatever group we see them fitting in as we do now, but if you see a better group to put them in, you could move them as you see fit? One problem I have is finding and linking to pictures that have been uploaded to other pages, perhaps in other groups. Could you give us a way to list all pics on the site, with the links we need to use if we want to put them in a page in another group? Perhaps a "graphics" category?
I actually prefer the name "Web of Life" as a domain name, since the ideas are becoming truly interconnected and weblike as the site develops, and the spiritual perspective, while an important one, is not the only one. I also like the added dimension of having Category/Thread links at the bottom of each page, as they intersect with other information. As we read new pages and think of other pages where they might connect, we could just add a new category/thread to the list at the bottom... so for example, when Gemma started to write about EOS and I saw connections with healthy community strategies, all I would have needed to do is to add the "community" category at the bottom of her page... but a link on the community page back to it would have still been necessary, wouldn't it? Ooohhh web thinking is confusing sometimes! :D ~Sharon? June 08, 2005, at 07:33 PM
Since the Threads :) pages list the pages in alphabetical order rather than by importance, could we perhaps put a * in the title of the main index for the group? I sometimes do that on my computer when I want a page to appear at the top of the list for a folder. So the "Wisdom" page that is the key index for that group would be named "*Wisdom". Then it would stand out in the list, even if it doesn't move to the top of the alphabetical list... What do you think? Oops... the * would appear in the page title on the page, wouldn't it? Is there a way around that? ~Sharon? June 08, 2005, at 07:43 PM
Shall we close the discussion and testsite?
I vote yes. Also, I like the name "Web of Life" too. Thanks Hans for the test experience :) ~Gemma June 11, 2005, at 01:23 AM
I transfered the discussion from the test-web to here. Maybe more need to be said. Am I right to think we all would prefer the name Web-of-Life over Spirit-Web? A change of name is not a trivial matter.
I introduced Threads as category links on many pages by now (not all yet), so we can start using this additional groupingtool here. I thought it may help me to find a clearer group structure. A new structure begins to gel inside my mind... ~Hans June 11, 2005, at 05:50 AM
I vote yes, yes and love it. :) Yes, we should collapse the test wiki back into the original one, yes, I like Web of Life better as a title, since it sets a more integrated theme for the site as a whole, and I love the threads links at the bottom of pages. They will help the structure grow organically as new information is added. I also like that you've renamed "categories" as "web nodes" in the sidebar. :-) ~Sharon? June 11, 2005, at 02:36 PM
Threads: WebStructure