[pmwiki-users] Wiki farm confusion

[The Editor]

On 3/15/06, H. Fox <haganfox at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> It's a good and creative suggestion, but I think the trend of taking
> off our straw hat, climbing off of our tractors, and toning down the
> creation of new farm-related labels might be the way to go.
>
> FWIW I switched to "home installation" in my document.  "Farmhouse"
> seemed a little over the top.  :-)
>

If we want to completely scrap the idea of a metaphor for what we are
doing, that is certainly an option. But I think we lose too much in
the impression it gives of user friendliness.  The problem is that our
current metaphor is just too ambiguous.  We use the word farm to refer
to too many things, and we need a term to refer explicitly to the
place we put the codebase.  I'm just suggesting one word: "barn".

I'm not suggesting we emphasize all the other parallels: tractors,
implements, crops, etc. I was just trying to make the point that the
analogy "works" conceptually in a way comparable to the way
recipe/cookbook "works."  I think adding one new word to clarify the
existing confusion is preferable to scrapping the metaphor completely.

Caveman

P.S. For those of you who are longterm PmWiki users, or professional
programmers, it may be difficult to appreciate how exciting it was for
me to find simple, creative analogies used to explain how this
software works. After working extensively, and frustrating with
several complex, high-powered CMS's, PmWiki was a breath of fresh air.
Another analogy!  :)