Matthew Astley

Absence

To those who care 8-) , I apologise for my unannounced absence. I took an impromptu WikiHoliday? in about August 2003, mostly due to pressure of time. Having lost the immediate RecentChangesJunkie habit but retained the background urge to know all changes that had been made, I couldn't face the growing mountain of changes that must surely have been made during my absence. Yes, of course this is silly.

I shall return RealSoonNow, and bring back here some parts of my other conversations. In the mean time, the rest of this page is probably a little out of date. -- MatthewAstley, 2003-12-30

2004-02-02: new job, which it seems was a relief for all concerned.

2004-08-27: I'm not exactly back in the RecentChangesJunkie seat, but I'm less absent than I was before.

2005-11-24: /me tips hat to kind soul who restored this page after vandalism. ThankYou.

Introduction

I am

I have I've left a semi-infinitely large WikiMailBox space at the end, in case you should you feel moved to give me WikiMail. 9-)

My BookmarkList? of pages I think I need to read later, or again:

So, pages I've done something to and might wish to return to, but didn't feel the need to be a NonymousDonor?: 
 DigressingOne
 EditingPieMenus
 SetInStone
 ReadTheWholeWiki
 DoTheRightThing
 FearOfWriting, WhyDontOthersGetWiki and other stuff linked to MappersVsPackers
 SelfReference
 WikiAsPatchworkQuilt
 ClueMine
Cleaning I should do. March 2003 would be good. 
 DeletionCandidate
Oh dear, missed that didn't I?

Notes for me, later:

[I had WikiMail here! I don't need to keep it, but just so you know I did get some at least once (-8 ]

[Thanks for your support MarkIrons?. I made WikiSquattingResolved, will see how it goes]

[...]

ThankYou for your support. I had too much time on my hands and found the list of OrphanPages. I guess this is PairWikiSpringCleaning?? On WindowsWay: It's still an orphan (except for the links on our HomePages), perhaps you know a parent that would like to adopt it? -- AalbertTorsius. PS: First WikiMail I ever had!

PairWikiSpringCleaning?? Not really. You did the work, deletion just takes two people.

I linked WindowsWay from OneMicrosoftWay. It seemed appropriate. -- m

I suppose this is as good a place to ask you a question as any. I'm very interested in this WikiSquatting concept. I thought, by definition, WikiSquatting can't occur.

Since:

  1. a wiki is a publicly editable web space

  2. a wiki is owned by the collection of writers to that space

  3. disputes in the community are resolved by editing (largely by those most committed to editing in time and quality)

  4. wiki is proven to work

This would seem to indicate that there is 'no such thing' as a topic to be 'on'. In fact, the topic 'is' whatever the writers of the wiki write at the time they write it.

In short, if you think something is OffTopic, remove it, if they put it back with more zealous aplomb than you remove it, then they are right about the topic and you are wrong.

You might say, being OnTopic encompasses both subject and dedication (or rather your dedication in comparison to the dedication of those who think it's OffTopic) to that subject.

Reaction? I'm new to all this, so I don't have a wiki page (DavidDickens? is blank), but I'll be sure to check back here to see if you've replied.

Sorry I didn't write some kind of reply earlier. I think I broadly agree with you, but also I think things have stayed the same while the paradigm has shifted slightly underneath, since we wrote about these things. -- m

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