Hmm. I'd better get started building a network of fake addresses from
which I can plug my own FAQ, then.
>Imagine that *everyone* could build up documents that point to their
>favorite resources, and maintain them. Really, the distinction between
>actual lists of information (the classic FAQ) and information that
>points to other valuable information (resource pointers) is so blurred
>as to become almost nonexistent today.
There's a big, big difference between transclusion (*) and summary,
just as there's a big difference between inclusion and summary.
[ (*) "Transclusion" is the hypertext equivalent of inclusion. It's a
term coined by Ted Nelson for Project Xanadu. ]
The news.announce.newusers documents explain that posting a bunch of
articles does not represent "summarizing to the net". Similarly,
creating a document which is a bunch of links to other documents does
not (in my opinion) make for a good FAQ file. True, there are many
FAQ files that are like that, but we shouldn't rush to assume that
that's the way FAQ files *should* be.
There are some tasks which a good FAQ editor performs which cannot be
performed simply by making a link to an existing document. To me, a
good FAQ is one which condenses and summarizes information, and
presents it in some sort of prioritized order, with a sense of "flow"
from section to section. You can't do that simply by transcluding
other people's text verbatim.
>Unix sockets do not anticipate huge loads. What happens when thousands
>of people are trying to simultaneously get at port 70 of the same
>server?
It falls in a heap. "Literary Machines" (Nelson) talks about the
scaling problem with hypermedia systems. An essential part of Project
Xanadu was the development of a distributed approach to hypermedia
data storage which would allow performance to degrade gracefully.
WWW is really a "poor man's Xanadu", and fails to solve any of the
basic problems with hypermedia (which I won't go into here). It's
therefore fundamentally unsuited to anything more than light use.
>is that Gopher coupled with FAQs and hypertext is a fantastic resource
>that is evolving as we speak. let's commit to it! let's be a part of it!
I'm certainly going to produce an HTML version of my FAQs, painful
though it may be. However, I'm not going to *commit* to gopher or
WWW. I sincerely hope that PAX (Public Access Xanadu) arrives soon,
before these second-rate technologies get too entrenched.
>Ratings systems are one way that users can find the most popular FAQs.
Or bump up their own ratings using SNAKES and TENTACLES.
>to utilize in hypertext form. But *nothing* on rtfm.mit.edu supports
>traversing `pointers to info' painlessly, unless you think that CD and
>LS are `painless traversing'.
Eh? WWW can handle the ftp. You can just include an HTML link which
will fetch the appropriate file from rtfm and display it. All the
user has to do is click the mouse once.
>Therefore, I propose that we come up with a new classification of FAQs,
>what might be called POINTER PAGES. a PP is nothing but a big hypertext
>document that *anyone* can create that points to useful PPs `out
>there'.
People are already doing this, setting up home pages where they list
their favourite stuff.
> But it is crucial that anyone can submit these PPs to existing
>servers with a minimum of hassle.
I think it's far better that we keep them distributed.
>But look how much hassle it is for anyone today to come up with their
>own favorite list of services and put it on a server!? you have to
>virtually be a gopher guru and own your own FTP site.
All you need is to be able to make a file available by anonymous FTP.
>Doesn't anyone see that PPs are really the salvation of the `noise
>problem'? When anyone can build up their own PP that lists their own
>most favorite services, and others can traverse their selections, that
>is the `quality problem' and the `moderation problem' and the `signal
>to noise problem' and the `ratings problem' solved *right there*!
Not really. I still need to know which of the ten million people on
the network can be relied on to have pointers to good stuff.
mathew
-- I have a flawless philosophical and scientific model of reality. Unfortunately, it's actual size. We must never be dogmatic. Anyone who says otherwise is wrong. Will betray country for food.
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