Tschirl

How i ended up here

i am still discovering wiki. It did not take me long to end up here - laughing out loud. Congrats! i believe this is a good place providing valuable background information. What i do here looks like a blog. i don't even really know what a blog is. i am just an old fart discovering the web - and it really is fun.

Whats this?

Listen to the woes of a newbie.

Wiki-pedia-media-tionary-news confuse

The most confusing issue for me was that Wikipedia is not the only one large great Wiki for everybody but that there are several Wiki-somethings in several languages with several topics run by several disparate groups. it does take time to understand (always keep in mind that i am an especially slow moron).

My missing mission, missioning, greatest miss - whatever: My 2 Cent

i only want to provide mapping technology for wiki pages. i scanned what has been done so far and sorted it out on wm:Wikimaps. i have put up a wm:Proposal for a Wikimaps Architecture. We (a distributed gang of Free GIS Software hackers) can provide technology and know-how for most of what is needed, map-wise. Not wiki-wise.

The Utmost Fear

i fear for being late with my idea. i fear that somebody else gets Wikimaps going and will harvest all the fame and glory. And nobody will remember me and my unknown soul will forever be lost in history.

This seems to be one of the larger strategic Wikosophical problems from what little i have seen up to now (remember, i just got here a few days ago).

Lost in Wiki

i am the sysop of my own Wiki (strange to think of it this way). it does not have user accounts or authentication, it is so small and irrelevant that it can just stay open to the world. it is of no interest to anybody but people working with our Free mapping Software. All of us are trolls.

The first thing that i had to learn in wikiworld was that you do need an account to edit. i inadvertently created a wiki account on the mozilla clone of Wikimedia without noticing - until i did notice that the stuff i edited there would not automatically propagate elsewhere - from one Wiki to the next (which is natural to my domain of geo data clusters and replicating databases). So i tried to move everything to one place which i thought to be the most central. i am German (sorry about that but seems like i can't help it), but our map-thing shouldn't be restricted to one language, so the DE wiki wont work. The EN wiki is the largest one but it is "only" a Wikipedia and maybe some of those other wikis would also want maps?! i identified meta.wikimedia.org to be a good place for Tschirl. Now i wonder whether i should wander some more.

Shortly before, after or while my st(h)umble edits, traffic started on the foundation-l mailing list proposing Wikimaps as a new Wiki domain. i stopped with what i was doing - frustrated to be late (see The Utmost Fear). i continued to read posts and just waited for those other individuals to recognize my natural superiority and do what i was proposing.

:-)

Nothing like that happened - what a sad story.

)-:

But i did learn that one of those individuals invented the original Mediawiki software (and knows SVG) another is CFO of the Wikimedia Foundation (and knows GIS). Means that there already are at least two big shots who probably won't subdue to my whims anyway. Most all of those people are really deeply involved. So i started to hope that nobody would notice my boldly proposed architecture...

Traumatized

Me stupid me thinking that Wiki meant no hierarchy, no oppression, no fights, just easy editing. You must know that i am used to the most conversational and thoroughly happy user communities that i can imagine, the Free Software GIS people. i'm still at a loss explaining why this is so, but there are practically neither trolls nor perceivable sysops and the sysop power structure is a laugh. There seem to be absolutely no necessity for stronger measures.

Insight

A mail to the [Foundation-1] list on Wed, January 26, 2005 got me going. It said:

Consumerium without 142? :-)

My english not being that good i looked up "Consumerium" in Leo without success. Google did the trick and got me here.

Spread the word

Tell people that this is part of wiki community and culture if you want to thoroughly understand it.

Beware

It is annoying and frustrating when you have to find out something unpleasant about something you have just discovered to be the most interesting thing ever. i felt really sad (for the fraction of a second) when i started to understand that people running wikis apparently just are the same common, brassy, raffish, uncouth, vulgar, mean and normal people you get everywhere else. Not sorry, offence intended. That said (fraction of a second later) have a good laugh. Believe in humor, there is too little of it in Wikianything.

Thanx

for your initiative User:Juxo.