Page out of sync across federation?

[coevolving]

As is my usual practice, I went to http://fed.coevolving.com/view/digests-from-sfw-meetings to add a page. The last time that I edited it was 2014-10-01. I didn't see a "new" notification on that page, so I added a new link for the digest on 2014-11-12.

I now see at http://fed.wiki.org/view/digests-from-sfw-meetings that there was an edit for 2014-10-29 over there. Should that have notified me with a "new" update on the page on coevolving.com?

Could this have been a problem introduced because the code base was upgraded last week (and now I'm downlevel)?

[paul90]

When you are looking at http://fed.coevolving.com/view/digests-from-sfw-meetings do you have http://fed.wiki.org in your neighbourhood?

If you don't the client will not know about the page having been forked over there, and updated.

This is easily solved by forking the page back from http://fed.wiki.org/view/digests-from-sfw-meetings. That way when you visit the page, on your site, you will get http://fed.wiki.org added to your neighbourhood, and so will see if the page their is more recent.

---

There has been some discussion about a courtesy notification when a page has been forked, probably a thought shared in a hangout as I don't see it mentioned in an issue here.

[WardCunningham]

Here is the writeup that Paul is recalling.
http://ward.fed.wiki.org/complementary-notice-on-fork.html

[coevolving]

@paul90 had me searching around my neighbourhood. It turns out that I didn't have fed.wiki.org in my neighbourhood, but did have ward.fed.wiki.org ... which is an entirely different thing.

Just when I thought I had this figured out, I had to go back to the videos to brush up on the fine points.

[coevolving]

If I wanted to add http://hhol.caulfield.pw:3000/view/welcome-visitors/view/the-hidden-history-of-online-learning to my neighbourhood, how would I do that?

[paul90]

@WardCunningham has a video that covers this, see Page Drag Link.

[coevolving]

@paul90 Thanks, I had watched the @WardCunningham Page Drag Link video yesterday, and somehow tried to replicate that action, and it didn't work. It works today. Either it's me, or the software ... and I can't now figure out a diagnostic whereby I could determine which it was.

One possibility could be that I had been doing a lot of other edits at fed.coevolving.com, leading to something that precluded the Page Drag Link from working. This morning, I'm starting fresh, so the Page Drag Link works.

This is a basic function by which federated wiki usages spreads. Is there an alternative way to bring other pages into my neighbourhood other than Page Drag Link? I see that the result from Page Drag Link is http://fed.coevolving.com/view/welcome-visitors/hhol.caulfield.pw:3000/the-hidden-history-of-online-learning , which is a mashing up of URLs that I also tried to reproduce yesterday ... but couldn't figure out the syntax. (I guess a "view" goes into the address when a page is on the same server, but not when it's a different server).

I'm now not a complete newbie, so I guess that I have a usability concern about bringing in other federated wikis. I was updating my forks of the Lists of Lists of Sites page, as well as the Friends from Hangout page, and noticed that there is a "Mike Caulfield" page on mike.fed.wiki.org and fwthoughts.mike.fed.wiki.org , but I'm have a problem finding a "Mike Caulfield" page now that I've added The Hidden History of Online Learning.

We could chalk this up to a user training issue or a usability issue, but I see this as a deterrent to actually having federated wiki spread.

[WardCunningham]

I find it convenient to keep a reference to sites.fed.wiki.org on the Welcome Visitors page of my everyday wiki. This low activity site adds descriptions of fifty other sites to my search space while keeping their change activity at arm's length.

If I search for mike I will be offered these choices.

These references are to pages in sites.fed.wiki.org that contain references to the respective sites. Only when I choose the desired page does that site's reference enter my neighborhood. Now I can go on browsing or searching for the desired page which I will fork so I have more direct access next time I look.

The sites.fed.wiki.org site is reminiscent of the early web index DMOZ with two notable exceptions:

• Our sites index is easily maintained when sites follow the template instructions on Welcome Visitors. See First Write Who & What
• Our sites index is easily federated so long as the index sites are similarly constructed and include the search term sites in their domain name or synopsis.

Mike has created and encouraged the creation of many federated wiki sites. I look forward to the day when he builds a sites-site and adds his familiarity to the task of indexing them. Then we will discover how their federation is best done.

[coevolving]

@WardCunningham , thanks for the pointer on having sites.fed.wiki.org on my Welcome Visitors page. (That's really subtle. I had forked that page, but didn't have it on my Welcome Visitors page. I really didn't understand how that worked). I did have the List of Lists of Sites page on my Welcome Visitors page, but I guess that wasn't enough to ensure search a broader neighbourhood.

I'm now looking for an instruction that suggests putting sites.fed.wiki.org on a Welcome Visitors page. I don't see it immediately on the How to Wiki page.

Starting fresh, having put the sites.fed.wiki.org on my Welcome Visitors page, I see in the bottom right of my browser that ward.fed.wiki.org is my neighbourhood. I don't know why that is, when sites.fed.wiki.org isn't.

Of course, now selecting sites.fed.wiki.org to open another page does bring in that larger neighbourhood.

You happened to know to search on "mike", when I was searching on "mike caulfield". I seem to recall following the First Write Who & What pattern, as I've done that on my Welcome Visitors page, but now don't see that in How to Wiki. Since Mike Caulfield seems to have not followed that pattern, I was having problems getting connected to his hapgood domain.

As a test, I should ask @paul90 to search on "david ing", and find out whether my page in his neighbourhood. If Paul doesn't find me within 10 seconds, then we have an issue where the problem is a user training issue, but the technology or documentation should somehow be extended to make the path easier for the novice.

[WardCunningham]

Federated wiki aspires to be built from a small number of powerful concepts. The trail of documentation we've left behind doesn't make it easy to figure out how they go together. Here is a proposed formula for better help. I wish we had this done already but we're still learning techniques ourselves.

http://help.fed.wiki.org/view/online-help/view/better-help