[Pmwiki-users] Information gems regarding PmWiki

Jonathan Scott Duff duff
Thu Jan 8 08:14:49 CST 2004


On Thu, Jan 08, 2004 at 01:18:51PM +0100, Christian Ridderstr?m wrote:
> You might have touched on another aspect here... 
>   Writing wiki page:
> 	- Using a crude <FORM></FORM> in a browser window.
> 	- Not the usual keyboard shortcuts, no spell checking etc.
> 	- The browser can crash, or you accidentaly press Ctrl-Q...
> 	  (you'd be surprised how often I do that mistake)

Which is why I tend to use pmwe (look in the scripts directory of your
pmwiki distribution) to edit wiki pages.

> but the actual writing of pages is still not so fun. In the development 
> version of my pmwiki-mode, I've been getting very lazy since I can now 
> press C-e in my browser (Opera) and the wiki-page is opened for editing in 
> Emacs...  I simply don't edit pages using the <FORM>-element any more.

Laziness++

> > Also, I find that information on a mailing list tends to invite more
> > commentary and response than if it's in a wiki page, and that's pretty
> > important to me at the moment.
> 
> I agree... and although people can be afraid of posting the first 
> time on a list, it's still less scary than posting to a wiki.

Weird. I wonder why anyone finds it daunting at all. Perhaps for wikis,
it's the feeling that you're somehow changing a sacred text by editing a
"web page", while posting to a mailing list is more like walking into a
room where you don't know too many (or any) people and introducing
yourself. Most people have experience with the latter and no basis for
comparison with the former.

> Somehow there's also a time aspect here... it feels quicker replying by 
> e-mail... maybe because it goes directly to the recipient?

Because you know that (assuming mail is working correctly) a human on
the other side will at least see that they have a message from you and
possibly read it.  And people read their email all the time, but how
many people visit the same web site over and over again to see what's
changed?  Sure, they'll do that for "news" sites, but wikis don't feel
like "news".

When posting to a wiki page, because there's no notification system
(okay, there is, but not for "ordinary" users), there's no telling when
someone will look at it and if they do look at it, they often have to
sift through the stuff that *hasn't* changed to find the new bits.

> Another aspect might be that we (incorrectly) think an e-mail will 
> disappear over time... so any stupid things we write will be forgotten 
> soon, whereas writing something stupid thing on a wiki-page wont :-)

Heh. Ain't that the truth! I was googling for something I had written
recently and found posts I wrote 7 years ago. Email never disappears, it
merely sits on disk waiting to be indexed by google.

-Scott
-- 
Jonathan Scott Duff
duff at lighthouse.tamucc.edu



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