Contribute to Cyborg Institute Wiki

I figure that it's probably best for me to collect some information/documentation for people who want to contribute to the wiki (which I hope means you). I think it would be prudent to explain my organizational/technological/administrative decisions, in one place "for the record" and future reference. But, first...

So you're interested in contributing.

Please do contribute!

If you see a link to a page that's prefixed by a question mark click on it to make a new page. Or follow the edit link in the menu bar to edit an existing page. This will bring you to a web interface to edit or add a page. Don't hesitate to edit in this manner, no harm can come of it, if a file ends up in a weird place, or the formatting gets screwed up, we can move it later or reformat it later. If you're worried about where a page ends up, or what it looks like: don't. Anyone can move or clean up the formatting on a page, only you can share your perspectives, experiences, data, and opinions.

Also, our system saves every previous revision, so there's always the possibility of undoing any change if you decide that you don't like it.

If you're interested in experimenting there's a sandbox which allows you to play around with the wiki engine to see how it works. If you're not used to editing wikis, or our format/engine, give the sandbox a whorl to gain confidence. And then contribute.

All that follows, and the rest of the contribution section of the wiki is entirely optional reading.

Conventions and Customs

The awesome thing about wikis is that because they come without structured, they provide a great deal of flexibility which allows the communities that exist around them to determine their own structure and cultural systems. The problem that results, is that even though wikis come without structure, they are not unstructured: the community of a wiki must develop their own conversions and structure.

Most of this, I figure, is an ad-hoc process that will develop as we gather momentum. As we develop conventions notes will be included on or near this page. In the mean time allow me to suggest the following principals and conventions while we develop more organic conventions.

• Ciwiki should accept and encourage the first person. Opinions, unique perspectives, and accounts of personal experience are all--in the right contexts--extremely valuable, and worthwhile to whatever specific goals and sub-projects we might maintain.

  While some might feel uncomfortable with the potential for bias and imprecision in this approach, I feel that the potential for overgeneralizing one's experience and hiding behind the safety of a detached third-person style are counterproductive to the larger project. Through disclosure, discussion, and a respect for the diversity of perspective, I think great things can happen.

  In the pursuit of this, create a page in the people directory for your name or a preferred handle/moniker and put information about yourself, your interests, and your other projects. You may even use the features of ikiwiki to create a (probably cyborg-related) blog or "guest book" on your personal page. Then, sign--when appropriate--contributions with a ?link to this page. For a richer explanation of this practice, read about attribution.

  Just because someone has signed a given text doesn't mean you shouldn't feel free to edit that text. Add your signature to theirs, add inline comments. If you're particularly unsure, use the discussion pages as a back channel to discuss edits. Just use your judgment and rest secure in the knowledge that the editing history is saved and archived, so there's no way to lose information in the wiki by editing it.

• I fully expect that this wiki will function much like a discussion forum in some respects. While our structure for this is largely ad-hoc, the existing convention in other wikis for supporting conversations is by simulating conversation threads. These are accomplished by: sing blockquote indentations, sometimes multiple levels of indention, to produce a "?thread." In the syntax blockquotes are created by prefixing a line/paragraph with a > character, much the way that previous messages are quoted in emails.

• I am inclined to insert carriage returns (hard returns) at 70 characters in my source files. You may share this compulsion, but it's not a requirement by any means. Don't worry about how the source files look.

• (to be continued)

Technical Notes

This wiki is powered by ikiwiki (external link), which is a very nifty wiki engine. You can read more about ikiwiki on its own site. I became familiar with ikiwiki a few years ago because I really like the ?markdown syntax and it provides for some interesting collaborative/offline editing possibilities that I quite enjoy. I even used ikiwiki for my personal wiki that I used to manage most of my projects and work for about a year. While I've moved in different directions with my own work, it's still I think that it's the most functional and elegant wiki implementation around.

Rather than storing files in a database and dynamically generating pages ikiwiki generates static files once and then regenerates specific files after edits. The result is that pages load faster, fewer system resources are needed, and the "source" files are very easy to read text files that can be stored in a git (or other,) version control system.

This means you don't need a network connection to read or contribute to the wiki. Also you can edit wiki pages in your favorite text editor with all of it's comforts and flexibility.

If you're interested in the syntax and how to write pages for ciwiki you can read more about it on the page about ?markdown.

If you're interested in editing the wiki via git and your text editor and you're familiar with ?git, you can clone the repository from the following address:

git clone http://cyborginstitute.net/git/ciwiki.git/

If you're not familiar with git, you can read our page on ?git to learn more about this method.

If you are familiar with git, and would like to be able to submit changes to the wiki via the git interface, please write me an email introducing yourself and include your public ssh key.

Licensing and Legal Notes

It is my intention that the content of this wiki be freely licensed, so that everyone will have an equal steak in the content, future, and use of the this text that we have created together. In an effort to equalize all of our various interests--and with the understanding that this document is the product of a collaboration--I've chosen--to use liscencing terms similar to the emacs wiki as these terms make the most sense for the kind of project. We hope to create.

This work is licensed to you under version 3 of the GNU General Public License.

Alternatively, you may choose to receive this work under any other license that grants the right to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute the work, as long as that license imposes the restriction that derivative works have to grant the same rights and impose the same restriction.

For example, you may choose to receive this work under the GNU, Free Documentation, the GNU GPL version 2 or ?similar licenses.

To clarify:

• The copyright for all contributions to the wiki are owned by the original contributors.

• The "source," of this wiki, as referenced in the GPL is considered to be plain text, like what you will find in the wiki's git repository.