[wiki-standards] Time for a real wiki standard!!!

Tue Jun 3 22:58:08 CEST 2008

Hi Mike,

First of all, I want to say that I like your passion, and I understand
your critiques of Creole.  I led the project and worked on it
part-time for a year.  I think the biggest problem was that I tried to
please everyone.  I think we all know the saying "You can please some
people all of the time, or you can please all people some of the time,
but you can never please all people all the time."  It's funny you
mentioned cat herding, because I started the WikiCreole workshop at
WikiSym with the famous EDS ad about cat herding.

Now, with that out of the way, I've since started a new job at a web
startup in Berlin which takes an extraordinary amount of my time and
so I don't get to follow projects like Creole and direct the community
as I'd like.  So, let's step back.  If you were in my shoes a couple
of years ago and you were going to lead the WikiCreole project, what
would you have done differently?  I know I'm getting a bit theoretical
here, but I'm wondering what you would concretely do.

Best wishes,
Chuck

On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 9:49 PM, Mike Haseler <mike at lenzie.org.uk> wrote:
> Janne Jalkanen wrote:
>>
>> So, let me recap:
>>
>> You say that "It is time the wiki community realised that the public like
>> me are fed up with this shambles".
>>
>> In other words: "You morons don't know what the real users want, but I
>> do!"
>>
> Janne, if I thought you were morons, I wouldn't even have bothered writing.
> It is not that you lack intelligence, nor am I slating your efforts, I just
> wanted a COMMON MARKUP SPECIFICATION and was really pleased when I first
> came across creole but got a little pissed off to find that Creole isn't
> what is says on the tin because it really doesn't want the hassle of that
> goes with being a specification.
>
>> Is insulting the people who've managed to create pretty much the only
>> markup standard that has been adopted by multiple wikis, really the way to
>> build a community around your own pet peeves?  It ain't perfect, but nobody
>> has even yet given it a proper chance to prosper.
>>
> I've been writing on the creole project pages for perhaps a month or so with
> almost no response. I couldn't understand why I had so many questions about
> creole that couldn't be answered until I realised that the goals of the
> project were frankly ridiculous and specifically ruled out trying to be a
> specification from day one.
>
>> Look, you're assuming we're morons.  We're not.  We know everything there
>> is to know about the cons and benefits of wikimarkup, and the problems that
>> the "ubiquitous layman" has with it.
>>
>> And you know what?  Nobody has so far cared enough about it to drive the
>> process to really create a standard.  Every few months, some self-righteous
>> fool comes in and screams on the top of his lungs that "wiki people are
>> morons who do not understand that users want standards".  Then they complain
>> a while and then they go away, never to be heard of again.
>>
> Perhaps, you should ask yourself why you think I am self righteous, and why
> there seem to be so many people like me who come along get frustrated and
> then decide that their time would be better spent doing something else.
>
> I am here because I wanted a markup specification. I thought creole wanted
> to be a markup specification, but after a great deal of effort, I have now
> discovered it doesn't want to be a specification, and it never will be if
> the goals of the project do not change.
>
> If I am being stroppy I intend it for your own good because a project
> without clear goals and without any real ambition isn't going to get
> anywhere and the effort of all these good people will be wasted.
>
>> Christoph and the folks are the first people who actually managed to
>> create a community around Creole.   They did the work.  They called us all
>> together, and we all sat down and agreed on the basic rules and markup.
>>  They contributed WikiCreole filters to many projects.  They created the
>> wikiwizard, a wysiwyg (kinda) editor for Creole.  They worked their ass off
>> to help the community.  And you know what?  People agreed to help.  Whether
>> it sticks or not is a good question; at the moment it's just something which
>> lives as yet another markup.  But it might work.  If people care enough
>> about it.
>>
>> Wikis are about *communities*.
>
> Look, I really do appreciate the effort that has gone into Creole, but it
> will go to waste if you don't have the guts to create a "specification". ...
> and if you won't do it, then whether through accident or design (or BILL
> GATES) it will happen somewhere else.
>
> It is a real shame that something with so much potential seems to be failing
> because the goals weren't clearly thought through. Particularly this
> "collision free" goal.
>
>> Anybody can create a spec, and wave it around and say that people should
>> adopt it.
>
> You are talking to someone who produced a specification for pressing a
> button which took several months to get agreement on. If you think anyone
> can produce a specification you clearly haven't ever produced one.
>
>> But that does not make it so.  Nobody can force anybody else to adopt
>> anything.
>
> Bill Gates.
>
>> There is no "wiki community" that thinks or acts in one voice, has
>> leaders, or can make any decisions.
>
> In one breath you tell me I am treating the wiki community like a bunch of
> morons, in the next you are saying that such a community does not exits  ...
> what do you want me to be hitler or Gandhi?
>
>> We are regular people, who just work on something we love (or get paid to
>> do, or both), and being a pompous ass is not the way to gain favours.
>>
>
> I'm not trying to gain favours. I made it very clear I was pissing into the
> wind and didn't expect to get any thanks.
>
> I am your most valuable asset - a potential user who not only wanted to use
> the "specification", not only tried to use the "specification", but is
> telling you why they couldn't use it, why you must change and how to change.
>
>
>> Remember this, please.
>>
>> (And I'm not even going to touch your "wikis are anti-rules" rant.  You
>> have obviously no open source experience.)
>>
>> (Personally I think the public wants free sex and less taxes, but that's
>> about all I what I  can say what the public wants.  If the public really
>> wanted better editing, why is it not paying to companies to provide it?  No
>> wait, they *are* paying.  Ever seen Google Docs?  Or SocialText? WYSIWYG all
>> around.
>>
>> I think any attempt at creating a better standard than Creole is about as
>> sane as the cavalry trying to agree on a new signal flag language right
>> before the tanks roll in.)
>>
> Janne, the fundamental problem is that CREOLE IS NOT A STANDARD and those
> involved don't appear to want to create a standard. You explicitly says in
> the goals that you do not want it to be mandatory and a specification must
> be mandatory.
>
> My own position is that I now have a consistent markup which started trying
> to be "compatible" with creole, but with so much that I needed to add on to
> gain the same functionality as the original markup (even removing a few
> features) and with such a huge amount of ambiguity and irrational decisions
> (which I can only understand by the decision to be "collision free") I ended
> up adding so much of my own specification that I simply started ignoring
> Creole and making a consistent and understandable standard.
>
> I now have a choice of whether:
>
> 1. to put the time and effort into drawing up a proper grammar for my own
> markup so that I can parse it properly,
> 2. try to implement Creole a standard that does not want to be a standard
> and which looks like it never will be given the responses I received so far
> from those involved in creole.
> 3. Revert to the original markup that I inherited with the application.
> (Which I don't use)
>
>
> And ... when I asked my kids what they wanted from a markup, they said "big
> red text" ... which rules out creole anyway.
>
> Mike
>
>
>> /Janne
>>
>> On Jun 3, 2008, at 13:48 , Mike Haseler wrote:
>>
>>> I was just looking up some information on wikipedia (to which I have
>>> contributed a lot) and having worked on the creole parser, tried to enter
>>> two lots of text as bold as **Well done**.
>>>
>>> The first use was just stars, the second turned into a series of bullet
>>> points.
>>>
>>> So, I entered '''Well done''' and it was italic, so I entered ''Well
>>> done'' and it worked (or was it the other way around?).
>>>
>>> The point I'm trying to make is that even the simplest text cannot be
>>> entered into a wiki without running into these stupid problems, and what
>>> should have been a one minute helping to improve the article, ended up being
>>> three edits simply to get the formatting right ... and in future I just
>>> won't bother!
>>>
>>> The primary reason I've never got a wiki going on my own site (I can't
>>> run wikipedia) is that every wiki seems to be full of perverse oddities
>>> which I can't remember so how on earth can I expect those with less interest
>>> to bother to learn.
>>>
>>> The first thing I looked at when evaluating wikis was: "Could I
>>> understand the mark up ... ".
>>>
>>> It is time the wiki community realised that the public like me are fed up
>>> with this shambles. We don't care what character we have to use to make
>>> bold, italic, etc. etc. so long it is easy remember and the same where ever
>>> we have to use it.
>>>
>>> Why when I go to PHPBB do I have to enter [b] or whatever it is, when I
>>> go to wikipedia it is ''' when I go somewhere else it is **Bold,  __bold or
>>> ...
>>>
>>> Even Creole doesn't specify whether there can be a space between the
>>> **Bold** or ** bold ** when it seems obvious to me that ** on its own is an
>>> ambiguous character whereas **bold is not!!!
>>>
>>> What the public like me wants the wiki/blog/bulletin board community to
>>> do, is to agree a standard, not a "wouldn't it be nice if" thing like creole
>>> which seems intent on avoiding upsetting anyone and in doing so will satisfy
>>> nobody, but a tough standard where there are clear rules as to what is, and
>>> what is not compliant.
>>>
>>> What the public really wants is something like the W3C compatible symbol
>>> on website that says this blog, newsgroup, wiki is "KIRK compatible" so that
>>> they know how to **boldly go**.
>>>
>>> I know that I am pissing into the wind, because getting wikis to be
>>> compatible is like herding cats ... and the reason wikis are all different
>>> is that wikis are fundamentally anti-rules, ...
>>>
>>> What I would like to know is there anybody else out there who would be
>>> willing to actually develop a clear mandatory and user-centric
>>> specification?
>>>
>>> Mike
>>> _______________________________________________
>>>
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>>
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