Hudson wrote:
> I seem to remember that one of the more trivial issues that we needed to
> sort out when you and I were playing with it during the summer was
> getting ourselves user-names instead of strings of numbers.

That's a non-trivial issue now, actually, because, along with actual user
IDs, we need defined editing permissions and signup procedures.  Wikis
left too long in the open tend to collect spam and vandalism.  At this
point, WG wiki is now in the open.  It's only a matter of time before a
search engine spiders it, and turns it up in searches.

Of course, it's also nice to know who's contributing various changes, for
purposes of discussion.

> Maybe I'll have a go at the default inheritance entry. If I do, I'll
> tell you all on this list.

Um, be careful.  The present caveats on the WG wiki home page still apply:
if you make a change to any article on the WG wiki corresponding to one in
your Encyclopedia, my next set of fixes in the conversion process from
your Encyclopedia to PMWiki format will overwrite the changes.  And I
really should put in a few more fixes to that batch conversion process.

Even though it's tedious "meta-discussion",and "not real work", I think
doing things in roughly the order I suggested below will make the process
of getting started more graceful.

My first suggestion was that we get clear on what it means (legally) to
contribute changes to something that was copyright Richard Hudson -- and
which (legally) still is copyright Richard Hudson, until there's a clear
statement of release from you, and what the new terms are.

I would suggest a license in the Creative Commons family:

  http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/

though perhaps the most restrictive one ("Attribution Non-Commercial No
Derivatives") is the best place to start.  If more looseness turns out to
be OK, you can loosen it later.  But the important thing is to have *some*
explicit statement about what kinds of uses of this material are
legitimate.

Wikipedia allows Creative Commons "Derivatives"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License

But that means anybody can copy Wikipedia and set up their own banner ads
and whatnot, on their copy of it.  It's a common search-engine-spamming
technique (just in case you were wondering why you sometimes find WP
articles -- usually out-of-date -- on other sites, with all kinds of
garbage along with them.)  If the WG wiki ever has ads, I think it's
better to restrict them to more dignified and relevant products, such as
any books or print journals actually cited in the articles.


Regards,
Michael Turner
[log in to unmask]
+81 90 5203 8682
www.tamaryokan.com

"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward
together in the same direction." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery


> Dick
>
>
> Michael Turner wrote:
>>   A wiki might be better suited than Wave to the current pace, which
>> isn't
>> exactly brisk these days, as And points out.  (But Wave has wiki
>> features -- see below.)
>>
>>   As a possible starting point for more sedate collaboration, I cobbled
>> a
>> wiki together over the summer, using Dick's Encyclopedia of English
>> Grammar and Word Grammar for 99+% of the content.
>>
>>   http://www.idiom.com/~turner/wgwiki/pmwiki.php434
>>
>>   This WG wiki is poorly sited at the moment (look at that URL --
>> lovely,
>> innit?).  It's using a rather mediocre Wiki package (PMWiki).  And
>> although it features semi-automated fixes for many of the broken links
>> in Dick's HTML version, my machinery also mangled a few lines: there are
>> some errors in conversion from HTML to PMWiki markup format.  I could
>> probably fix it up a little more, with better scripting.  However, it's
>> been months since I last looked at my hastily written Perl and Python
>> conversion scripts, I wasn't exactly fluent in those languages when I
>> started, and I'm a little preoccupied at the moment, both with
>> business/family matters and with an unrelated WG project.  So maybe I
>> shouldn't promise anything too soon on that front.
>>
>>   I actually considered using Wikipedia as the repository.  However,
>> that
>> idea didn't hold up under even the slightest scrutiny, for reasons worth
>> listing:
>>
>>  - Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, intended to give "due weight" (WP:DUE)
>> to
>> topics, from a neutral point of view (WP:NPOV).
>>
>>  - Targeting Wikipedia would have made it much harder provide nearly as
>> much automated conversion of Dick's encyclopedia.  There are already
>> many
>> articles on Wikipedia with the same names, so WG-related content would
>> have to be edited in, at the appropriate point, in each of those.  (Oh,
>> sure: you could import it en masse with qualified titles, like "Relation
>> (Word Grammar)".  But taken too far, that kind of thing stirs up
>> tempests
>> on Wikipedia -- it makes you look like some crank who's resorted to
>> spamming to promote your failed theory.  WG isn't a crank-theorist
>> failure.  It's a work in progress with a small minority following.
>> Nothing wrong with that per se -- after all, every roaring theoretical
>> success must have at least briefly matched the same description at some
>> point, right?)
>>
>>  - Finally, Wikipedia is open for editing by anybody, anonymously, so
>> having lots of WG articles on Wikipedia would make watchdogs of us all.
>> Who needs the bother?
>>
>>   What WG seems to need on the Web is its own, current, encyclopedic,
>> hypertextual treatment, written from a WG point of view, by more than
>> one author, with weight given where it's due *in WG theory* rather than
>> in linguistics as a whole, and with coherence ensured by criteria for
>> contributor group membership that are a little more exclusive than
>> Wikipedia's.  But with due exceptions, of course.  For example,
>> theory-internal controversies should perhaps reflect the relatively
>> neutral point of view (NPOV) of WG researchers who don't have any dogs
>> in those particular fights.  (Those controversies should probably have
>> their own articles distinguishing them as such.  That way, they can be
>> tagged for automatic categorization *as* controveries, which could be
>> very useful to anyone new to WG who's up to speed in linguistics and
>> cognitive science, and interested in what's been addressed in WG but not
>> yet resolved.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.)
>>
>>   Where should the product of my amateur efforts go from here?  Maybe to
>> Wave, actually.  For all I know, there might be a quick conversion from
>> PM Wiki to Google's Wave wiki format, whatever that format is.  So even
>> if there's no topic so fresh and pressing in WG as to suggest a use for
>> real-time collaborative networking, Wave's wiki might nevertheless
>> provide a better temporary home for a WG wiki than anything I can offer
>> at the moment.  But there are other options -- for example, UCL runs
>> Confluence wiki software, and maybe editing permissions can be gotten
>> from the university's administrators.
>>
>>   If people here want to work on a WG wiki, this mailing list might help
>> get some collaboration rolling.  In the long run, however, it's better
>> to organize and coordinate wiki editing efforts within the wikis
>> themselves.  I think the list is better for time-critical announcements
>> (conferences, calls for papers, forthcoming works, meetings, travels and
>> availability) and for more discussion of WG itself -- discussion that I
>> hope will be sparked by people working on improving WG wiki articles,
>> and noticing interesting new problems in the process.  Any discussion on
>> the wiki should be restricted largely to how to improve articles
>> covering topics on which there's consensus.  That's a general Wikipedia
>> policy guideline that would probably be appropriate for us too.
>>
>> Some wiki improvement projects that suggest themselves immediately:
>>
>>  - establishing appropriate permissions, attributions and content
>> licensing terms, so that everybody knows what it means (in IP legal
>> terms) to be a contributor; Dick and I have already discussed this by
>> e-mail, and with his permission, I can forward those messages to the
>> list
>> if I see enough interest;
>>
>>  - editing to change from Dick's first-person style to one more
>> appropriate to a group wiki; this might be especially good for people
>> new
>> to editing wikis, who want to try making a simple improvement that
>> requires little more than a bit of re-writing here and there;
>>
>>  - getting the wiki current (there's been progress since 2003, hasn't
>> there?);
>>
>>  - citing the literature (including this mailing list's archives) more
>> extensively.
>>
>>   I'm sure you can think of other ideas, especially after taking a look
>> at
>> the wiki.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Michael Turner
>> [log in to unmask]
>> +81 90 5203 8682
>> www.tamaryokan.com
>>
>> "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward
>> together in the same direction." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
>>
>>
>>> dr jasper holmes, On 08/12/2009 19:47:
>>>> http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html:
>>>>
>>>>>> Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and
>>>>>> collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation
>>>>>> and a document where people can discuss and work together using
>>>>>> richly
>>>>>> formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
>>>> As far as I can make out it's like a souped-up email account with some
>>>> cloud computing and social networking thrown in.
>>> + wiki.
>>>
>>> It looks an excellent tool for intensive collaboration or interaction.
>>> But
>>> very very unsuitable for, say, the very very very sedate pace of an
>>> email
>>> list such as this one (which is latterly grown so quiet that one is shy
>>> of
>>> interrupting, with an importunate posting, the thick and stolid
>>> silence).
>>>
>>> --And.
>>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> Richard Hudson; www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm tells more about
> me, my work, my views on Israel and my family.
>