Weekly Reports

This is where I reflect on the progress I have made each week on this wiki.

Week April 16 - 22

What I did

I started working on finishing up the wiki. I created pages for anything I felt was important to add information about, and began finishing some of the stubs I made. I did not create many new links since I wanted the wiki to look more complete.

What I think I did well

While writing a page about wikipedia, I found that there were many practices I used that both wikipedia and the origional wiki were using such as making pages more than just a general definition of a topic. I also found that my wiki was more like the original wiki's style since a lot of what I wrote came from personal or general knowledge that I had a feeling did not require any crediting. This did leave room for possible misinformation to slip into the wiki, but I figured if those reading this wiki noticed a mistake then they would not be afraid to practice Cunningham's law.

What problems I faced, and how I worked around them

In the page on finite state machines, I had to write many mathematical expressions. This required learning how to write in LaTeX, but this was not difficult to figure out. I also began to worry that a lot of the pages I wrote made my target audience appear to be more focused on other programmers. However, after reading Madelyn's tour post I found that the wiki was still understandable for those without a computer science background.

What I learned

I had some background in everything I wrote about, but for FSMs I found a lot more information when I started to find out how certain topics in the theory of computation were related. I was also staying away from Wikipedia for most of this project since it is different from Cunningham's wikis, but finding ways in which it was similar was useful in understanding what wiki aspects are carried out in other wikis. I also learned that most of the pages I wrote for this wiki would not pass as pages on Wikipedia since they often involve personal research or citing content from biased sources.

Plans for next week

I plan on searching through my wiki for any stubs. Though finishing this wiki reduces its wikiness in the wiki wiki web sense, I feel it would give this project a sense of completeness. I think it will also be beneficial to my write up since I will be drawing conclusions from a finished work rather than a work in progress.

Pages worked on this week


Week April 2 - 8

What I did

I created pages to describe a few more of the technologies that the wikis used, and I began to write about a few of the plugins available for the Federated Wiki.

What I think I did well

As I described these pages I was able to link more often to previous pages. I also found similar topics within multiple pages so I created new pages for these topics. There were also many topics that involved many small pieces of information. Rather than cluttering the wiki pages with such topics, I created tables to organize this information.

What problems I faced, and how I worked around them

I found it hard to describe the syntax of languages. To work around this issue I created examples after describing them in writing. The plugins that Cunningham developed were also for existing technologies, hence just describing the functionality that the plugins added to the Federated Wiki did not relate to the actual plugin. To work around this issue I dedicated a section to each page to how that program was able to become embedded into the Federated Wiki.

What I learned

I knew a little about CGI, but upon reading more resources on it I found a more modern implementation, FastCGI. I also learned how RSS readers generally function. I never heard of SDR before, and working on the twadio page I was able to do some research on it. While researching SDR, I learned more about the open source firmware that the Federated Wiki's twadio plugin integrates with, and I also learned about how SDR generally works and how to set up an SDR system. Reading the code that Cunningham wrote, I learned how he was able to integrate SDR with the federated wiki by creating processes that work with the twadio software.

Plans for next week

For next week I will start developing more links to later provide greater detail about the remodeling of the original wiki. I was holding off on this level of detail until I got the most closely of the related information covered. My plans also involve finish writing about all of the plugins that Cunningham wrote. I may also add information about the programming language used to implement each plugin since the original wiki mentioned its transition involving becoming a switch to using more modern languages and practices.

Pages worked on this week


Week March 26 - April 2

What I did

I went deeper into technical details about the development of some of the technologies the new and original wiki use. This allowed me to write about the main reason the original wiki was made, the Portland Pattern Repository. I also covered one of the formats that the original wiki used, spam, and described one of the philosophies used to develop the original and Federated wikis. With the norms that the original wiki's community upheld, I attempted to improve my current explanation of these norms by writing about one of the behaviors that were not allowed.

What I think I did well

I knew of the political differences between open source and free software. Therefore, I think I did a good job explaining these differences. I also elaborated the advantages of both philosophies. When I came across something that did not have much information, I compared it to something that it is often compared to. This served to better express the information about a topic, but this also got rid of the need to make irrelevant pages since I would describe the compared content with the relevant page.

What problems I faced, and how I worked around them

I did not have see as many opportunities to link back as I had hoped, but I am planning on adding more links when revising some of these pages as I learn even more details. I also think some of the information I provided could come off as slightly biased due to the nature of free software's concern for freedom. Open source software does not have much negative to state about free software since it does not focus on this freedom. I worked around this issue by expressing why free software can sometimes be viewed as restrictive.

What I learned

I think the most useful information I learned was about programming patterns. It typically described what I have always considered to be good practice, but I find that it may be beneficial to learn about many programming patterns so that I can expand upon what I see as good practice. I also learned about the OAuth process, and I found it similar to how other applications verify their credentials.

Plans for next week

For next week I would like to research some of the plugin's that the Federated Wiki uses. That way I can develop a technical understanding of how the Federated Wiki interacts with other wikis and upon itself. This may also create opportunities to create deeper links for highly detailed information about how the Federated Wiki operates. I may also create new pages for each pattern of the Portland Pattern Repository so that readers of this wiki can view what the content of the repository was like.

Pages worked on this week


Week March 19-25

What I did

I finished the starting page of the project so that I could start to work on deeply linking throughout the wiki. I knew about most of the topics already, but I was able to add more content by reading into documentation and other people's opinions. I can see myself reading much more documentation in future weeks due to the technical nature of the project.

What I think I did well

This week I came across many concepts to link to. I think I set up enough content to link to such that I would not hit any roadblocks as I work on this wiki later. I also think that I went into the correct amount of depth for each page so that future pages would not become redundant. I think this will work out similar to the modular programming concept I wrote about in that I will be able to build upon other pages through linking rather than having to reiterate their content.

What problems I faced, and how I worked around them

I often came across many terms that had the same meaning, such as SFW, Fed Wiki, and the Federated Wiki. I wanted to be consistent, but at the same time I thought it might be a good idea to include the additional terms to allow readers to understand that they represent the same thing. If I found that the a term was not used often then I mentioned what it is also sometimes called, but I did not use the term to describe the subject. If more than one term was used often then I attempted to use each term an equal amount, but I used each term separate after explaining they meant the same thing.

What I learned

I learned about the Federated Wiki's approach and how it works to allow sharing, prevent spam, and innovate the design of the wikis. I was also able to easily learn about the negative opinions some people held about certain concepts since the original wiki allowed for that content to be displayed. I also learned a little about package management, and how it can be optimized. There were also some difficulties that the wiki's community had with making software modular. I also noticed this as I viewed the project on github. Rather than making small pieces to build up from the start, they reworked larger pieces until they had something small enough to adapt.

Plans for next week

In the next week I plan on going deeper into the technical details of the project. I also plan to start linking back to other pages so that I can build upon topics I have already written about. Aside from the page about free software, I am thinking these pages will be smaller than what I have already worked on, hence I will be working on more pages. I will attempt to make the content descriptive, but at the same time I will be working to keep the new pages related to the project.

Pages worked on this week


Week March 5-11

What I did

Before this week I attempted to help myself get started by adding a few links to try to map out how I will write the wiki, and this also helped me while writing to look back at the resources I needed. I found this method helped with creating a bibliography as I add content to a page. For this week I started with creating a summary and information on the initial design to my main wiki page while generating a few stubs to other pages. Additional pages I created were on Cunningham, version control, Cunningham's law, and extreme programming.

What I think I did well

I think I linked new pages well enough to help me create content in future weeks. These are not deeply linked yet since these are just links from the main page and the links from the links on the main page. Citing sources was also made incredibly simple, and the table of contents for pages were also automatically generated. For most of the content I wrote, I was also able to use some of my knowledge to add additional information so my wiki would not just become a collection of facts from various sources.

What problems I faced, and how I worked around them

Getting use to the interface was a challenge at first, but I eventually learned how the formatting works in this wiki. It is still somewhat of a challenge to use at times since the page needs to take up the full screen to work with so I can not have view a resource as I write about it. I was also unsure if I should be citing my resources, but I decided I should since this wiki makes it easy to create a bibliography and keeps annotations from becoming messy. Another issue I had was finding information on Cunningham's education, specifically what degrees he obtained. I did find a resource for this, but it is from a book I would need to purchase, and, since it was only Wikipedia with this information, it seemed somewhat questionable.

What I learned

I gained a deeper understanding of version control software, and I also gained a feel for what the Wiki Wiki Web was like when it was interactive. This information may become more useful as I start to compare how this wiki operated to how the new wiki works, how other wikis work, and what features other wikis may have derived from this design. Understanding the methods of version control may also be useful when I describe parts of the wiki in great detail.

Plans for next week

I plan on working on the Reasons For Closing and Changes Made sections of my main page, and I may go into the Current State section as well if I can find enough information by then. I will try to generate many new stubs and work on a few of them like I did this week. With the Changes Made section I will focus more on the possible reasons for Cunningham's new design decisions and for the Current State section I will focus on what is currently implemented, what are some road blocks he is facing, and how far he plans to go.

Pages worked on this week

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