CHALLENGE: How would § look like if we started it today?
Mushon Zer-Aviv
Hi fella§,
The last wave of discussions on the dev list proved:
- We're still on top of the latest social/web trends
- These trends and possibilities have changed tremendously over the last few years
- We seem to still enjoy ShiftSpace as an innovative web playground
I don't think these were indeed mistakes but I think the past 6 month break was a good opportunity to think things over and rethink what is the itch we're trying to scratch by doing ShiftSpace, and if the itch has changed how can we rethink the way we scratch it?
Rather than continuing previous fringe-tech threads I would like to challenge all of us (lurkers included) to propose new ideas for how would they build § knowing what we know today. The format would be to propose ideas and to follow up with fresh code (not necessarily built on a fork of the § repo). You can either answer to this thread or better—start a new one to focus the discussion around your proposal (maybe include the [challenge] brackets in there too).
The goal is not necessarily to have the team decide what *we* should do, but rather throw a lot of §paghetti at the wall and later see what sticks and what we and others gravitate towards.
Lastly, for those who haven't noticed, Techcrunch has chose the § table as the leading image for their 2011 Disrupt Hackathon. That's how geeky we are! We have the word hackathon spelled big over our foreheads… :)
Let the ideas flourish and let the hacks begin!
Mushon Zer-Aviv
Shual.com
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§ ShiftSpace.org - an
opensource layer above any website
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David Nolen
Rather than continuing previous fringe-tech threads I would like to challenge all of us (lurkers included) to propose new ideas for how would they build § knowing what we know today. The format would be to propose ideas and to follow up with fresh code (not necessarily built on a fork of the § repo). You can either answer to this thread or better—start a new one to focus the discussion around your proposal (maybe include the [challenge] brackets in there too).
Doron Ben Avraham
technological approach.
There is the social aspect of the platform, the single user aspect of the
platform, both of which need to perform a function (pick any space we
currently have) and perform it well and in a reliable manner.
Both of which I am, personally, not invested in, but recognize they are
the core functions of the software.
How would � look like if we started it today?
It still depends as it did before, on what the platform is supposed to do
and how we see the role of this group in continuing its support and
development.
Fringe tech can become mainstream tech very quickly when it truly
scratches at itch. We have tried to build developer interest for quite
some time, and it didn't work so well, the reasons for this failure are
complex, but ultimately not important to dwell on. It seems that our best
choice is to ride more successful waves and adapt our tech to more
successful developer communities, put simply, latch � as a project on
other communities rather than the other way.
The ultimate requirement of this platform from my perspective, is to make
my role in it utterly redundant and irrelevant.
From my perspective the issues are, and always are, essentially the same.
Scalability.
Reliability.
Redundancy.
These 3 points are a interconnected, and are a challenge, always are for
any platform. The classic solution is vertical, more centralized, more
machines, more control. In that sense almost all social/metaweb platform
suffer from the same issue and the solution present is primarily a capital
investment rather than a technological solution. that of centralized
vertical control.
"The Scene" and the torrent community, show what horizontal control and
scalability paths are, I think our models should come from that mindset.
I hope to add some more points a little later.
Joe Moore
As time goes on I find this question harder to answer. To some degree
I think early and later incantations of ShiftSpace are very specific
to a certain window of time on the web. What excited me about the
project initially, and led to my involvement, was the excitement I
felt about creatively altering and engaging with documents. In some
ways this speaks to the single user use case David mentions. But, as
time went on and websites functioned less like static documents I
began wondering about the longevity of the approach. Taking a snapshot
might be one way of making that alteration "stick" and prolong its
lifetime but, what kind of snapshot/alteration is "sexy" enough to
generate interest for a (ideally?) heterogeneous community of users?
The archive is an interesting place for many artists and scholars, but
I'm not sure about its "general" appeal. I'm personally OK with this,
but I don't know if others are. If on the other hand making something
for a diverse "community" is important and generating a kind of
ecosystem similar to twitter is the ideal, it seems like a drastic
change in what kinds of interactions ShiftSpace makes possible is in
order.
My 2 cents.
What I like most about ShiftSpace is working with all you peeps.
;)
-Joe
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David Nolen
How would § look like if we started it today?As time goes on I find this question harder to answer. To some degree
I think early and later incantations of ShiftSpace are very specific
to a certain window of time on the web. What excited me about the
project initially, and led to my involvement, was the excitement I
felt about creatively altering and engaging with documents.
lifetime but, what kind of snapshot/alteration is "sexy" enough to
generate interest for a (ideally?) heterogeneous community of users?
The archive is an interesting place for many artists and scholars, but
I'm not sure about its "general" appeal. I'm personally OK with this,
but I don't know if others are.
What I like most about ShiftSpace is working with all you peeps.
;)
-Joe
Joe Moore
> interaction on the web. The popularity of Instapaper and similar services
> prove that people still enjoy being engaged with stable documents.
> Hell, if ShiftSpace had more clout with artists and academic scholars I'd consider it a success! Sadly we don't even have a hold on these small communities :)
I totally agree with you here, though I should have been more clear. I
think that the artistic interest is something that has always been a
major factor in the project's development but that interest may never
actually turn into users of ShiftSpace. In including artists, I meant
that archives have become a major source of material and inspiration
for artists and this is one reason why SS is interesting to them. The
example of Instapaper speaks again to your single user use case
scenario, which I think should be considered.
Dan and I had a more protracted discussion about scholarly use but
essentially my own thoughts are that SS could be a "discovery" tool if
a stable document approach was implemented. However, I don't see
academics using SS as a direct source for academic research.
Similarly, Wikipedia may point someone doing serious scholarship to
material but serious scholarship does not cite Wikipedia. I think
there's also a cultural problem in creating a "ShiftSpace for
Academics" if what you are looking for is the embeded analysis and
criticism of documents. There's just too much tied up in generating
academic material job wise, it's how you get tenured, find a job, etc,
and the culture doesn't function well around sharing information
without citation (read plagiarism). There is quite a bit of potential
in the "academic" use of something like SS but there's also a serious
countervailing force.
-Joe