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InfiniteMonkey
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MissionStatement
Novel design ideas from TheCollective and problems facing TheCollective have languished for years unresolved at Meatball while the underlying server has lacked consistent development attention. The current situation is increasingly untenable. The primary objective of this project is to correct many of the major underlying design problems with the MeatballWiki system so as to make it easier to fix new problems as they arise as well as integrate new design ideas as they are encountered.
Furthermore, many new design ideas suggested by TheCollective have been stalled for lack of a ConsensusDecision?, which was necessary because the wiki is a GlobalResource that has to be maintained coherently for TheCollective good. However, the solution is to EnlargeSpace by to create areas of local control. Since the issue at hand is that the GodKings of the central server are not efficient at enacting TheCollective's will, yet the central server cannot be opened to the public (however, contrast this with the IncompatibleTimesharingSystem), the solution is to DevolvePower over the wiki away from a central server towards servers under control by CommunityMembers (LocalSpace?s).
By given TheIndividual community members control will hopefully result in several useful outcomes:
- Defenses can be erected quickly by any developer in the network rather than waiting for central developers to respond. This also frees central developers to have lives.
- Desired services can be created by those who want them, rather than requiring a ConsensusGroup to agree and motivated core developers.
- New ideas can be introduced to TheCollective tangibly, by being enacted on living data. Designers will benefit from the free exchange of new techniques as well as having an available user pool to test their ideas against a useful data set.
- New ideas can be introduced gradually into the mainstream in an experimental, scientific way, rather than through a pseudo-philosophical/political method that often resembles Wiki:BigDesignUpFront. It's better to prototype and improve now through use than to argue philosophically for years.
- New NetworkStandards can be implemented and tested against a living system where, hopefully, TheAudience of the standard also participate.
Since Meatball is meant to be a collective of CollaborativeHypermedia designers, and Meatball's main medium (MeatballWiki) is a collaborative hypermedium, it is natural that Meatball should evolve towards enabling experimentation on itself.
Method
The wider project of fostering a community of experimental designers will be called InfiniteMonkey. The previous project of that name will be dropped. This project will have several components, such as CommunityMarketing and a building a LearningCommunity about how to actually make a socially-decentralized NetworkService?s platform work in practice. Since this is probably the hardest and least understood part of the initiative, less will be said about it for now.
The underlying technology to enable this will be a new wiki engine, named InfiniteTypewriter (IT). Like previous wikis, InfiniteTypewriter will provide basic and essential wiki services through the the main website. However, InfiniteTypewriter will also be a NetworkService? to the community, offering an extensive MachineInterface as well as exposing the PageDatabase as a NetworkRepository.
Because Meatball is not a project about itself, but rather about supporting other projects (cf. MeatballOutreach), it is imperative that InfiniteTypewriter will not be an exercise in Wiki:NotInventedHere; rather it will fit within the general model of the WorldWideWeb and its associated NetworkStandards. Designers and developers should be able to reuse their work for InfiniteTypewriter on their own projects.
- Discussion on MonkeyDiscussion