Year: 2004

Categories
Weblogging

Build the walls higher, boys

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I was astonished to read this morning, a little brain storm between Don Park and Dave Winer, to have ‘refereed conversation’, i.e. a conversation between two people on their weblogs, given a special category, which is then aggregated and captured into a weblog and managed by a third person. Or I should say ‘refereed’ by a third person.

Dave Winer’s idea runs as follows:

Suppose there’s an issue, say Choice vs Life (to pick something heavy) and you’ve got two people who like each other enough to be willing to have a refereed online back and forth. So there are three people, one on each side of an issue, and the third making sure that there are no personal attacks. The discussion takes place only between the two people, for two months, two years, two decades, two lifetimes, however long it takes, however long both have something to say. (Of course people can comment on the discussion on their own blogs, on mail lists, radio shows, where ever.) A document with three authors that’s constantly being revised. Sure you can take vacations, maybe a month or a year at a time, as-needed. This would be different from a mail list, or a blog, or anything else. A deliberate respectful discussion, more about the respect and exposure of issues, than about settling the unsettleable. An interesting idea?

We have come so far in this medium to do what we can to open the doors on conversations, to enable the technology to allow people to join in based on interest, only to turn around to purposely pursue a path that guarantees to shut most of this down.

Mike Sanders in comments loved the idea, writing:

It’s a great idea and I hope you focus some of your seemingly endless energy to show how well it could work. Maybe you could get it going by picking three high profile bloggers to take on one side of an issue and three relatively unknowns to take on the other and have three high profilers moderate. I think this would give it a nice dose of drama (ie big guy vs little guy).

Here are some possible topics/bloggers: Rich Interface Apps vs Web Apps (Scoble vs whomever) Foreign Policy – Preemptive or Protective (Daily Kos or Atrios vs whomever) Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Resolution (Eric Alterman vs whomever) Limitations of Blogging (Dave Winer vs whomever) Limits of Indecency (Jeff Jarvis vs whomever) Truisms/Fallacies of Cluetrain (Doc Searls vs whomever)

I wrote at Mr. Winer’s weblog the following comment:

What you’re proposing is to increase the voice of the elite, while simultaneously shutting down the voice of the dissident.

Mike Sanders, look at what you’re doing? You’re promoting those who don’t need more voice. Why?

Do we need to hear yet more opinions from Jarvis and Scoble and Winer and Kos? Why even have weblogs? We’ll just install random link generators to these gentleman, and call it quits.

Are you all so afraid that fresh voices will take away some, even a tiny bit of your audience?

As for moderated conversations, I responded in Don Parks’ weblog on this.

To be fair, Mike did recommend that on the other side of the ‘fence’ there be relative ‘unknowns’ — but why can’t there be unknowns on both sides? Why do we keep returning to these men, again and again. Are we so dazzled by the light of their linkage?

Don wrote about the idea:

Very cool. Dave’s blog-based debates can be implemented using a new type of blog category: Conversation Category. The idea is for a small number of people to share a single blog category and converse over a long period of time through their blogs.

A conversation aggregator subscribes to the category feed of all the participants and merge them into a single feed and publishes a mini-website dedicated to the conversation. The ‘referree’ of the debate or the conversation moderator gets editorial rights over the merged feed and the mini-website.

There, I responded with:

What you’re doing is taking what we’ve achieved in weblogging, and then limiting the number of participants (which smacks of elitism) and allowing an outside person to constrain the conversation even further (which smacks of censorship and control) and then wrapping it up with a syndication bow (we’re assuming RSS 2.0) and calling it new technology.

Are you and Tim adults? Can you manage the hypertext link? Are you willing to turn off comments on those posts to eliminate distraction? Guess what — you’re all set to have a conversation in weblogging. And if you need examples of how to do it, I can point out about a couple of thousand.

Whatever happened to people monitoring and being responsible for their own behavior? To allowing fresh voices into a conversation? To keeping the barriers to participation low?

What’s even sadder is the number of techs who have jumped on, specifically talking about this implementation or that, not even really paying attention to the social ramifications–somewhat like the scientists who pursue research regardless of the consequences, just to see if they can make it happen.

Here at this site, we kept the Kitchen door open. We’re using basic weblogging technology. We want fresh voices, and diverse views.

Shame on us for doing this all wrong.

There is precedence for a formalized match between webloggers, refereed by other individuals.

Categories
Books Just Shelley

A little puffery

I discovered that I’m a Google Scholar. I guess this means that you’ll have to treat me with more respect; call me “Ms. Powers” or perhaps “Lady Burning” (please, not “Lady Bird”) and that sort of thing.

I don’t normally jump on all the cool gadgets that come out, but the Google Scholar looks to be very useful, and intriguing. For instance, when I did look up my name, I could click on a Library Link associated with my book, Practical RDF, and find out that it’s part of the stacks at St. Louis University and the University of Missouri. Which is rather cool if you think on it: the service and the fact that my book is at these two universities.

From there, I can access a page that could be used to request this book, or at least do a search at that particular library. Now that is pretty damn exciting, even for a jaded tech such as myself.

Let’s say I’m interested in finding out which library might have a copy of the popular book, “Birth of the Chess Queen: A History”, by Marilyn Yalom. I can search on her author name and the title, and find a reference to this book. From there I can click a link to find the local libraries that have this. Clicking on one of these, actually takes you to the web-based system to request this book. I’ve had a request in for this book at the County library for a couple of months. However, I found that the city library now has this book, and it’s checked in, so I can cancel my request at the County and place it at the City.

Good stuff. Read more about it at the Google Blog.

Categories
Weblogging

Beginning Morph: Wordform for groups

Rather than closing The Kitchen we’re moving into a totally self-sustained environment. To that end, I captured a snapshot of the most recent WordPress 1.3a code and have started modifying it to provide administration free group weblog support. This will become, eventually, a group form of Wordform.

(My inclination is to separate out the group aspects of Wordform into a product separate from the individual installation of Wordform. The main reason why is that the group management aspects should become more encapsulated as a result, and this is a good thing for product development and support. More than that, though–why add extra functionality when 95% of the users won’t need it?)

Before doing so, I did look very carefully at the possiblity of using Drupal; testing it out in an installation of my own, as well as trying out the version at OpenSource CMS. There is no doubt that this is a very powerful product, with some pretty amazing abilities. However, it is the power that makes it, in my opinion, not the right product for a totally self-sustained environment.

First of all, Drupal is a community tool, not necessarily a group tool. By this I mean that the community decides which post shows in the front of the site at any point in time, rather than having posts show in the front as they are created. As such, the sense of community is fostered, but at the cost of the freedom of each individual writer. WordPress, from which Wordform is being derived, is a group tool in that it is provides functionality for a group of autonomous, independent individuals who determine when their writing is going to appear in the front.

Drupal is also a bit too geeky, and though Wordform might border on this at times, not to the extent that Drupal does. For instance, what do the words “taxonomy module” mean to you?

In addition, Drupal is too powerful, and by this I mean there are too many options, even for new users. What I’ve found working in the software and web development business for a couple of decades is that while providing more options might appeal to the geekier folks, too many options can be intimidating to newer users.

WordPress has a way of controlling which options show up by assigning different options based on different user ranks in the menu management file (menu.php). I’ve taken this and modified the settings for Wordform so that a new user has very limited access to functionality: they can write and edit their own posts, add a link to their site, moderate their own comments, and adjust their own profile. That’s it.

Over time they can ask to have their rank increased if they want additional privileges, and any user higher ranked then them can increase it. However, they have to specifically ask for this in a post and another member then has to grant this request.

I’m modifying the WordPress installation even further to automatically add their profile URLs as a link and then removing even the feature to add a link. Eventually, I want to add a newbie edit page to the site that eliminates the post-slug field and the custom metadata fields, as well as limiting their post and comment status options. I’m already eliminating all of the password protected post options from both the group and individual versions of Wordform–I’ve yet to see this used, and if it were, it’s rather rude because it leaves a post in the middle of your page that demands your users enter a password to see it. If you’re going to password protect writing, you’re better off sending email, or creating a new password protected site.

I’m also modifying the Manage page so that only each individual’s posts show on the page, and the posts of those who have lower ranks then themselves. Of course, for new people, this means only their posts will show. Those with the highest ranks of 9, the site admins, will also be able to pull a person’s post and disable a person’s posting privileges.

(Any site admin with a rank of 9 can promote any other person to a site admin.)

One other aspect of the Kitchen site I want to modify is the ability to upload and edit themes. Right now, Kitchen members who have contributed something to this point have earned what I call “Founder Rights”, which also gives them site admin rights. They can also modify themes, but since all of the folk are known, I’m not worried about granting this right. What I would like to do, though, is provide an ability for a site admin to upload a new theme, or create a new theme.

Right now, none of the themes that are loaded can be edited, but I’m about to change this. Again, only site admins can change the files, so this should be a safe change to make. Just in case, and following on the rule that sh*t happens, I’m also creating automated jobs that backup the themes and the database nightly, so that I don’t have to bother the host if we have to back out changes from accidental or malicious changes.

There are other changes I want to make to both the individual and group Wordform, such as replacing the static radio buttons for Post Status with a database driven option so that new statuses can be added without modification to the page (ditto for comment status), and doing something with the categories so they’re not so hard to read. I also want to add in my full page preview option, and remove in the inline preview.

Another major change I want to add is an option, similar to what Movable Type has, to turn on edit formatting options on a per-post basis; so you can choose not to apply formatting (if you use your own HTML), use the basic line-break formatting, or use Markdown, Textile and so on, on a post by post basis but this is a very major change to the underlying architecture of the product and far down the road to a finished release.

For now, I should be able to tweak the installation enough to allow the group to manage itself without an administrator. We’ll see how it goes.

Categories
Weblogging

Ethical Committees

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

This is not a good day for my blood pressure.

Catching up on other weblogs, I found a pointer to this at Head Lemur’s weblog:

Nick Denton put up a pleasantly surprising post today, complimenting me for being a “volunteer watchdog” for blog ethics. He proposes Jeff Jarvis and I start a blog ethics committee in order to create some standards in blog advertising. It’s a great idea, a lot of work, and very important to the blogosphere.

So the man that brought us weblogging porn has appointed another person who runs a site called “Blogging Ethics” (and is rather tempermental and contentious to boot) to hook up with Jeff Jarvis, who is famous for protecting Howard Stern, and they’ll all come up with a bunch of ethics we need to live by.

Alan, Head Lemur, responded with:

The implication I see is that bloggers are out of control, have no ethics and need to have a keeper. Because there is no seal of approval or codified vetting process we are by default liars, thieves and if we take money whores.

The issue of the so-called Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing is appearing in an increasing number of conversations lately. Ben Hammersley was the first weblogger I knew of who was paid to write about a product through his sponsorship by Cuban Crafter Cigars, but he’s always been open about this. None other than Chris Locke, aka “Rageboy” just joined the ranks as Chief Blogging Officer for Highbeam Research. Marc Canter also brought this up recently, but I can’t find the link at the moment.

Much of the conversation about WOM comes down to trust–how much do you trust the person you’re reading? I have written recently about my PowerBook and my new Canon Printer, and how much I like both. If I did so and received money from Apple or Canon to write complimentary material, and then didn’t disclose this, this would be a pretty tacky thing to do. Or would it, if my opinion was genuine and everything I said was the truth?

Or does it all come down to how much you trust me? If so, then what does money have to do with it?

Categories
Just Shelley

Accepting death

The Robert Lowell poem Terminal Days at Beverly Farms focuses on the poet’s father’s death, which he dispassionately describes in the poem’s closing:

Father’s death was abrupt and unprotesting.
His vision was still twenty-twenty.
After a morning of anxious, repetitive smiling,
his last words to Mother were:
“I feel awful.”

Loren Webster rejects Lowell’s father meaningless smiles and resigned acceptance of the end, seeing himself fighting that long slow slide into night:

When death finally comes I won’t be greeting it with polite civility (my apologies to Emily). No, I’ll be raging, raging against the dying of the light, not standing around with my “cream gaberdine dinner-jacket,/ and indigo cummerbund sipping an “old-fashioned.”

The Dickinson poem Loren references is her Because I could not stop for Death, which begins with:

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

Rather Loren agrees with Dylan Thomas, who wrote at the death of his own father, Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Three months ago I would have been in complete agreement with Loren, and had even re-published Thomas’ poem here in these pages. However, that was before the death of my own father in the beginning of October; a death in which he did rage against the night. For a time. But it was a hollow victory that lasted only five days, and left behind much devastation in its wake, as all battles tend to do.

I wrote about this in a post, and subsequently pulled the writing, still trying to find a way to deal with his death, and the manner of his going. However, Loren’s post reminded me how difficult Dad’s death was made because I didn’t know what to expect in the end–we never talk about death in anything other than the most poetic terms.

I had assumed that my father would quietly die in his sleep, or be there one moment, lucid and talking, and next his eyes glaze over as he took one last gentle inhale of breath. I expected to see the same dignity and strength in dying that I saw in my father in life. I expected many things, from Loren’s noble rage to Dickinson’s polite and genteel acceptance. I wasn’t expecting what happened.

I decided to re-print the entire post I wrote, including the writing which I had pulled–if for no other reason then a reminder that there is a difference between fighting for life and fighting against death.

—-

In Memoria

I had finally gone through all of Dad’s books and decided which to keep, and which to give away. I called the library, but they weren’t accepted any new book donations until April. The lady I talked to asked what kind of books they were. I said they were mainly mystery and detective novels. She suggested I call the local Veterans hospital and see if they could use them.

The hospital said they’d be grateful for the donation, and I went down to drop them off at the Jefferson Barracks Medical Clinic. The weather was fine today, and the place was very pretty with the old barracks buildings and their peeling paint. I asked the person who helped me unload the books if I could take pictures, but she I better not – the place is also the local Homeland Security office.

The hospital is right next to the National Cemetary and I stopped by it to take photos. There were several funerals underway in various places and I could, from time to time, hear the faint echo of shots being fired. It never fails to move me to see the row after row of white gravestones, especially so soon after my own father’s death. I was grateful for the camera, because through it I could view everything dispassionately. I managed fine up until I heard the single trumpet playing Taps.

The sound brought back the memories I still haven’t resolved yet, of my Dad’s death. Especially the Monday before he died, when I was the only one with him in the early morning when the morphine started wearing off.

Dad was dying of congestive heart failure, and it can feel like you’re drowning at times, which is why he was kept so heavily sedated. When he started to become aware, he began to panic when he had trouble breathing and kept patting at his chest and asked me to help him. The most I could do was ring for the nurse and ask for more sedation.

It was the morning busy time and she was late, and Dad got worse and I finally screamed out “..for someone to come help me, Damn it!”

Several people ran into the room, and one nurse went to get the shot, and a second came in to help calm Dad and me, because by this time I was crying so hard I couldn’t stop. When she left, I sat next to Dad, still crying, telling him how much I loved him.

I don’t know where he found the strength, but he pushed himself up on his left side and somehow brought his arm around me, and dragged himself over to the edge of the bed so he was almost in my arms.

I clasped him tightly, and softly told him that it was okay now, and that it was time to think about letting go; we had been advised to tell Dad this, so he could face the resolution of his death. He held me tighter and said just one word, in a voice that was like that of a child, exhausted and high-pitched with confusion and fear: “No”.

The nurse who went to get the shot opened the door and then stopped in astonishment at what she was seeing. She helped me get Dad back into the bed and gave him the shot. After she left, I told Dad that I loved him again, and he said, so faint I could hardly hear him, “love you, dear”. He then fell asleep, and from there to a coma, and never woke up again.

—
What price

I sat that last night alone with Dad, as his eyes slowly began to turn a odd color since the eyelids never completely closed. I watched the Travel Channel all night long, and held Dad’s hand and just listened to him breath. For four days, I had sat there and listened to my father breath.

What was the most difficult aspect of Dad’s death is that we could have made decisions to move him to a hospital and given him extraordinary care, rather than keep him in his bed at the nursing home and just provided comfort. If we did, he might have lived longer, perhaps even a few months.

Did we make the right decisions? Did we deny Dad his last chance to rage, rage against the dying of the light? I don’t know, and I never will know.