Loomio
Sat 2 Nov 2019 1:26PM

fedwiki

M mike_hales Public Seen by 140

I wonder whether some of the solutions adopted in fedwiki are more generally useful in OAE. Specifically, I found the UX in fedwiki exciting, fluid and responsive, and I wondered whether Mikorizal's open-value network apps might have that same sense of UX. Interestingly, it seems to me that the UX emerges directly from the architecture, and isn't just floated on top. I blogged a thought on this - here in fedwiki - and would be interested to learn what folks feel about fedwiki's approach potentially contributing in OAE architectures and apps? Are there fedwiki hackers here?

Here's a note on fedwiki - in a fedwiki on 'commoning'.

M

mike_hales Sat 14 Dec 2019 9:10PM

@Jon Richter I do need to check out these links, thank you. Broadly, what you're signposting seem to be things that are way more tech than I can afford my own involvement in fedwiki to be. I would need others to hack whatever tools/plugins are needed. Even with the existing standard repertoire of plugins, my experience is that how to use them isn't always 100% transparent to a non-code or non-git geek.

Via Silke Helfrich I'm aware of the German commoning community and would love to know more and discuss. But sadly, I wouldn't want to use any tools (such as <translate>) that are branded 'Google', so the language difference remains a real obstacle.

At first sight, I'm unsure whether

a library of vocabularies based on Wikidata

a network for transfer of means between individuals (Commons API), and

a storage for patterns

is equivalent to the three criteria @Bob Haugen is naming. At first glance, the Commons API is very much simpler than the very diverse kinds of economic (value chain, supply chain, transformation network) interaction Bob is concerned with. It seems to amount to something like a tool-sharing and -booking arrangement for a number of finite, permanent objects. Am I mistaken? Is something much more complex intended in the longer term?

Regarding a library of vocabularies, I think Bob probably has something in mind that is much more like live conversation, rich enough to furnish both context for real-world trade and production commitments, and the infamous quality of 'trust' which we're not supposed to need anymore, since hashchains came into being 😉

With regard to a storage for patterns, I would expect a repertoire of patterns (Alexander-style - is this what you mean?) to be much more complex in general than a simple 'storage' would deal with, requiring specialised writing and reading tools, and display formats. I hope for a specialised pattern-writers' toolbench to emerge in the short-to-medium term. @dilgreen is at work on this. I doubt that 'static documentation', such as Bob perhaps wants to handle, would cover a dynamic, evolving, interweaving collection of Alexander-patterns?

BH

Bob Haugen Sun 15 Dec 2019 3:43PM

what do we think about the complexity issue? 

@Jon Richter thanks for http://venners.ward.bay.wiki.org/view/complexity-that-empowers

Complexity that empowers vs difficulties that disempowers.

Local/regional economies that we want to generate and manage together will be complex.

JR

Jon Richter Wed 18 Dec 2019 1:40AM

Hey @mike_hales , thank you for these detailed reactions to the latest posts. I would love to see the thematic fields you bring up in separate conversations. Should we possibly move those over to the empty gardens of https://socio.federated.wiki and inspect them to their fullest? I feel we're overburdening this thread with details already.

The library of vocabularies is also an interesting question (problem space), where an intermediary like Wikidata/-base can be an interesting answer (solution space).

About the aims of Commons API, I will have to feedback with the developers some time. That might take a while. Currently it focusses on Cargo bikes, while an extension to other time-bookable items is not excluded. Inventaire.io are also working in this domain, yet based on Wikidata. https://wiki.inventaire.io/

And back to federated wiki. It's still a place to conceive what a federated wiki could look like. So we are not bound by the state of the current interfaces, as those are only the current means of investigating how such a federation would work. It is the often accidental, serendipituous moments which produce new ideas and understandings.

This is why the current client is also not the only possible form to visualise the content in the federation.

Which asks us new questions about the generalisations used for plugins, so they can work accross clients. A Web Components approach might be of use here.

The wiki client can consume any data that is accesible via CORS, whyfore it depends on the plugins how they eventually cope with it.

Then what seems hard to convey, is, that federated wiki already is a pattern repository and writing environment with large-scale pattern language processes in mind. As was the first wiki.c2.com. David Bollier and Silke Helfrich used it to collect the material for the freefairandalive.org book in federated wikis, for example, which helped formulating the first patterns of a Commoning pattern language:

Please note the new hamburger symbol ☰ at the bottom of your *.federated.wiki wikis, which appeared after the last update, which can make the new lineup diagram visible to you at any time, too.

The graphviz plugin, too, has many ways to visualise your lineups.

M

mike_hales Wed 18 Dec 2019 10:02AM

@Jon Richter Should we possibly move those [themes] over to the empty gardens of https://socio.federated.wiki ? . . I feel we're overburdening this thread with details already.

Seems like things are headed that way. This single thread here won’t hold all the branches of thought in a readable way - and we’re mostly considering things outside my original rationale for posting here, regarding wiki as a possible architectural form for achieving OAE aims. I had been thinking that discussions in this thread should migrate over into fedwiki, with a pod being formed. So in coming weeks I may harvest comments from here, and paste them into a wiki for starters. But I have other things to do short term. I’ll notify progress here.

Regarding social.federated.wiki - I’m not excited by Discourse as a space to dialogue in (rather bulletin-boardish?), and broadly prefer Loomio. However, the fact that the space already exists is obviously good reason to use it. It doesn’t seem to be in very intensive use, am I mistaken on this? Broader than this, is the question of where wiki activists talk about visions and needs. I find the Riot chat space really unhelpful - just a single unrolling thread with no subthreads or searching (in my reader anyway). I am unsure where the best place may be, to have the kind of social and new-economy discussion that’s been bubbling up here, rather than the tech discussions that seem most prominent - the kind of things touched on in your 2013 post on experimenticity.

I accept that the wiki community has deeply social visions (including commons vision and pattern vision) but would be glad to see a forum where the the balance has shifted somewhat towards geeks of another (non coder) kind. Myself, I’m a culture hacker, not a code hacker. My best hunch is, a fedwiki pod (or two) plus Zoom plus either Discourse or a new Loomio group ( but linked somehow within Loomio space, to both OAE and Commons Transition). What views on this?

M

mike_hales Wed 18 Dec 2019 10:15AM

generalisations used for plugins, so they can work across clients. A Web Components approach might be of use . . . The wiki client can consume any data that is accesible via CORS, whyfore it depends on the plugins how they eventually cope with it.

This is the kind of question that I feel is closest to the purposes of the OAE group? More discussion of this kind maybe? App builders (eg @Bob Haugen ) - what could be achieved with apps built as as fedwiki plugins? What benefits could there be in the characteristic fedwiki UI? How does the (tacit?) protocol of fedwiki compare with or integrate with or complement other P2P protocols like Scuttlebutt, Dat, ActivityPub, Holo? @Jon Richter Has fedwiki been set down anywhere, as a protocol?

BH

Bob Haugen Wed 18 Dec 2019 4:41PM

@mike_hales

My best hunch is, a fedwiki pod (or two) plus Zoom plus either Discourse or a new Loomio group ( but linked somehow within Loomio space, to both OAE and Commons Transition). What views on this?

A lot of ideas have surfaced in this very interesting discussion. What I have seen happen at this stage of many similar conversations is that people try to move to a different space or spaces and the conversation dissipates and dies, or at least loses a lot of the active participants. The least disruptive (I think) would be new threads or maybe even new subgroups in https://www.loomio.org/g/exAKrBUp/open-app-ecosystem where this thread lives now. Every idea and topic discussed here fits comfortably within OAE.

M

mike_hales Wed 18 Dec 2019 4:59PM

I would be happy to stay here, if it fits. I like Loomio. But alongside, I would want to have a pod of wiki writers (a) to evolve the exploration through ‘a chorus’, (b) to extract numerous ideas into a net of small pages and (c) to make these more easily accessible outside of Loomio. @Jon Richter does that seem appropriate, given that the Riot chat seems a quite limited format, and discussion is already occurring here rather than Discourse?

BH

Bob Haugen Wed 18 Dec 2019 6:24PM

I'd be happy to see a fedwiki exploration go back and forth with continued discussion in Loomio. Might be better to start another Loomio thread for it?

JR

Jon Richter Fri 3 Jan 2020 11:14PM

That sounds right. Dissipation is something we will like to avoid.

@mike_hales Kudos to discovering the Geosemantik Blog with the Experimentcity article. This was an output heavily influenced by reading through

shortly after working on https://publicspaceinvaders.org/ / https://alpha.publicspaceinvaders.org/

Rich text editors are fun!

I'm happy to participate in a process of an "OAE fedwiki happening" around one or two pods (see https://www.loomio.org/d/r7T9o6b2/fedwiki/67 above) where we align on

  • OAE related considerations

    • app design patterns: like what was sparked within the Kendraio thread around vf-ui and vf-graphql

    • module generalisations: What is a plugin? What inputs and outputs does it accept? How can we generalise the notion of nomadic models moving between systems and protocols?

  • Using Federated Wiki for Value Flows

    • using simple page generation rules (non-code!) to represent an economic network within the web of wiki pages

    • find out how the extensible RDF/GraphQL schema can be fit within the wiki design

  • Internationalisation of the discussion

    • indirectly also hooking up with the Germans and trying to find out how they seek to combine economic networks with pattern languages

    • Build an international network of enthusiasts who can see the benefit of combining Federated Wiki, Economic Networks and Pattern Languages for good! Yikes!

The wiki protocol itself is nowhere defined but in the implementations, and generates resonance where it works. Every forked page shows it is there, and sufficiently defined. The closest to a specification are the following, but from an outdated version of the server software.

In agile manner, the code is the documentation.

Where should we take this?

M

mike_hales Sat 4 Jan 2020 11:03AM

@Jon Richter the Rossiter-Lovink links are very interesting thanks, and join up well with what will occupy me for the next month or so. It’s off topic here, so I’ll be brief. They‘re exploring the practical relationship between network/digital tools & architectures, and the activist making of peer-to-peer society. Classic anarcho concerns but very critical of the equally classic - and today pandemic - anarcho-expressive tendency to the Spectacle of the Event, and the way social media allow bursts of passion to be indulged in without producing enduring new historical practical forms. There’s something here that might form a wiki pod topic. But for the next month or more I have to focus my attention elsewhere, so no proposals from me right now.

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