Monthly Archives: August 2005

Help for help

Jason Kottke’s remaindered links today point to a slick PDF presentation by Marc Rettig and Aradhana Goel illustrating design principles. Of particular interest here is a case study of library redesign; these designers helped Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh transform from a cluttered headache into what looks like a perfectly pleasant place to find information. The …

August 31, 2005 – 3:32 pm | By Mark Phillipson | Posted in Libraryworld | Comments (0)

New playpen

I just installed a MediaWiki 1.4.7 package on Clayfox’s shared Unix box. It actually wasn’t such an ordeal, even for a non-techie. But its coding conventions and image processing are just different enough from SnipSnap to make me wade around through what seems like endless documentation. Whatever doesn’t bore me to death will make me …

August 23, 2005 – 11:46 am | By Mark Phillipson | Posted in Metawriting | Comments (0)

Defending the group

An essay by Clay Shirky, called “A Group Is Its Worst Enemy”, has been floating around for a couple of years – but I just ran across it. It’s an interesting meditation on group dynamics and social software, shaped by crushed hopes for Usenet as well as a book about neurotics thwarting group goals (by …

August 11, 2005 – 5:21 pm | By Mark Phillipson | Posted in Metawriting, Wikiwatch | Comments (0)

Visualizing wikis: History Flow

It’s all in the visualization. When I describe wikis to someone still grappling with the oddness of the word ‘wiki’, my description inevitably kicks into abstractions about joint authoring, organic development, networked interactivity. What is likely to lodge, in an innocent auditor’s mind, is an amorphous sense of wide-open vulnerability: You mean, anyone can change …

August 10, 2005 – 10:13 am | By Mark Phillipson | Posted in Metawriting, Wikiwatch | Comments (0)