Wiki Yesterday

There is the WikiNow and then there is the WikiYesterday.

The difference:

WikiNow: Pages or discussions that appeal to the interests of readers and writers to the extent of causing a continued contribution.
WikiYesterday: The forgotten pages, which have reached a point of no longer causing readers to think of something either new or related to say to the pages' content.
WikiTomorrow: Plans, projections and promises in a fluid medium.

This can be for at least 3 reasons:

the page is about something that is no longer of much interest and exists for historical purposes only.
It is of current interest, but about all that can be said has been said.
It is a ThreadMess, meaning that it is a long and incoherent, incomplete, and unorganized.

Pages of the 3rd type are conglomerations and while they beg for refactoring, many months and even years have passed without any takers.

The WikiYesterday can also be that page or group of pages which were well composed, consist of well-factored content, with good linkages to other pages which are related, but are the work of those who no longer are active participants within this wiki. They have moved on or have lost the connection to the majority of the present day wikizens. They may stop by on occasion, add a little here or there, but who no longer have the desire or time to participate as they once did.

There is probably a fair chunk of old wiki pages that have dated information and therefore misleading. For example there was a page on whether distributed transactions can be done outside of EJBs or not. Unfortunately people either want to ignore them, or just delete them. In the above example, won't it be better to refactor what's there into a page on doing distributed transactions within a Java context? -- dl

It would be well if we could retain the sense of WikiNow and a continued high level of participation in content and in intensity. This is what makes Wiki different. What makes this happen is a sense of community. That means that those gathered here feel more like they are at a town meeting than at an International gathering like the UN. The idea of a targeted small set of issues and discussions which is the original intent of this wiki is more likely to encourage a continual WikiNow, instead of coming and going sets of WikiYesterdays. This is one person's opinion, how do you feel about this? -- MarkRogers

Please. I object to the derisive categorizing of pages that haven't generated recent traffic as "yesterday." Sometimes it takes years for some cogitation to produce results, and if you don't have the patience to wait for that good content to be developed here then there's always Slashdot and its ilk. In the mean time, take it easy on the dismissal of old pages as being irrelevant or useless. I still find buried gems here even when I'm not looking. -- MartySchrader

MartyI am not sure that MarkRogers or the other people who started this page are around at all now, so there isn't much point in getting cross with Mark. I am here, and have been for many years. I regard the act of reflection as part of the cogitation you are talking about. I am always finding new patterns in the riches that there are here on this wiki. Different people will see things in different ways. You have put a series of put downs onto pages where you thought the wiki reflection category was not needed. Please let it stand to evolve a meaning too. Thank you. -- JohnFletcher

Very well. However, I am one of those Wikizens who is apprehensive at the prospect of wiki category dilution from having so many WikiOnWiki categories. Navel gazing is all well and good on its own, 'spose, but let's please not make it into some sort of end of its own. The continual Wiki evolution and its attendant history of threads should be able to stand on its own as valuable content, completely apart from the Wikizenry pointing to it and claiming, "Oh! Oh! See how Wiki has developed!" Blech. Pointless aggrandizement, methinks. -- MartySchrader

CategoryWikiReflection