Raible Designs

Monday February 23, 2004

Whaddya think - comments as wiki pages? Dan sent me the following in an e-mail and I think he might be onto something:

...what if the comments where organized as
a wiki page themselves (meaning a single wiki page for all comments
to an article)?  This way, the readers could work together to
construct a "follow-up" to the article in an organized,
collaborative manner.

Maybe the problem with comments is the fact that they are linear
(even if threaded) and go on without end.  A wiki would allow some
structure to be established in the comments.  The best part would be
that comments could then have the chance to evolve into core wiki
pages overtime, even though they begin only as a collection of
comments, links and ideas...wait, isn't that what a wiki is anyway?

It sure sounds good. From an implementation perspective, this might be easy to do in Roller with a comment type that uses an <iframe> that points to a JSPWiki installation. A simpler solution might be that users are allowed to edit their own comments. In Roller, we could set a cookie after the user added the comments - allowing them to see an edit/delete link when they return. Whaddya think? Is there a better way for comments to compliment blogs?

While we're talking about comments for blogs - I remember seeing a cool comment-alert system a while back. I can't seem to find it now. If you're spotted a cool alert system you'd like to see in Roller, let me know! Posted in Roller at Feb 23 2004, 11:36:08 PM MST Add a Comment

Tucson Rocked - long live the Saguaro We arrived back in Denver safe and sound this evening. The only casualty was we forgot Abbie's pack n' play in DIA's parking lot. Doh! Maybe we can call and get it back tomorrow.

Erik Hatcher recommended some good spots to check out. We had dinner at El Charro's in downtown Tucson. We also spent a day touring Saguaro National Park and the Desert Museum. We played lots of Pinochle and my Aunt and Mom had a great time with Abbie.

My Aunt Mary Craig is quite a woman. She grew up in Montana during the great depression and her mom and dad (Hilma and Hank) were gold miners. They never made any real money off of it, but my Aunt has many stories about living in mining camps and helping her dad out when she was a kid. Her most amazing feat was going back to school in her 40s, getting her CPA and becoming the head of the Department of Revenue for the State of Montana. After that, she went on a speaking tour of the US about her childhood and how she became of the of the top 10 business women in Montana (at the time).

Meeting with Rick Hightower was a real treat and I got a lot of great ideas, and a ton of motivation from our meeting. I expected to sip Starbucks for about an hour, but time flew and we ended up talking for around 3 hours! Heckuva guy - he had a lot of knowledge and a great perspective on the whole independent consultant lifestyle I live.

Unlike most vacations where I drag myself back to the computer, I abandoned all electronics for the weekend and now I'm super motivated to pound out some code this week. My sister flies into town a week from today for a few days, so I've only got 7 days until the next vacation begins. Family Rocks! Posted in General at Feb 23 2004, 11:26:04 PM MST Add a Comment