Discuss 2 September 2022 MWstake Meeting
Raw transcript:
Bryan: Alex.
Lex: Hi. Right.
Greg: Right.
Bryan: so, Cindy released Smw announcement. Looks pretty good. See. I woke up to. Cindy asking me to do a couple things. I'm setting up the Eventbrite, and PayPal account for it. But I'm gonna work on that while we're on the call and hopefully I will answer Or have it done? Remark.
Mark: Sup, I love the look on Lex's face. He's so intense.
Lex: Yeah, I'm preloading page form data. When you link to a form. Getting through that.
Mark: So hey hey. Greg Jerome and Brian. Hey.
Bryan: Hello.
Greg: Hey guys.
Mark: Yeah.
Greg: I might have to cut out early, I don't know, I've got the day off and I've got tons of things to do besides wiki stuff.
Mark: Oh, come on.
Bryan: Does that mean it's a four-day weekend?
Greg: Yeah.
Bryan: Nice, that's not too shabby.
Greg: I know what I'm supposed to be packing up my bag. So I go to the lake and do some work up there.
Bryan: The, I mean non-coding and wiki.
Greg: Yeah, painting painting. The cottage installing speeds, or building screens and all that kind of
Mark: Okay.
Greg: stuff.
Mark: That's a different kind of work. That's like real manual labor.
Greg: Yeah.
Mark: I don't who wants to do that?
Greg: Oh, I love that stuff. I if it wasn't for that.
Mark: Now, I I just I'm just a man of the mind. I like to Get fat. And Work with my mind. And Not do physical things anywhere.
Greg: I think Brian knows. I got him. I got a motorcycle and I played disc golf. And I do, you know, lots of projects, manual, labor style. So those are all the things that like that I really enjoy, which is just pay the bills.
Bryan: I got a question Greg, do you have a personal wiki?
Greg: My my free file wiki is offline because I've paid no attention to it in two years and and I tried upgrading it the other day and and it um I failed to do the failed to complete it. So it's on my list of things to do this long weekend. Maybe get that thing back online.
Bryan: But what about one because that one
Greg: Remember free.
Bryan: was on.
Greg: Prefile.org.
Bryan: Yeah, that one was like public, but do you have? We have meet my wife have one for just like ourselves.
Greg: oh, Yeah, I don't have a personal one, I should. And if you know as soon as I get free file back online, I, I probably will because, you know, with the whole quality box idea, it's just, you know, easy to just pop them out like cookies, you know?
Bryan: Yeah.
Greg: But yeah, I think you were gonna say like, you use your personal with you and your wife to keep track of like favorite recipes and projects and stuff like that.
Bryan: Yeah exactly, those things and I'm just finishing up a divelog so we can keep our scuba dive logs.
Greg: Oh yeah, yeah.
Bryan: Recorded. Search for when I found lobsters or whatnot.
Greg: That sounds great. I I don't know why I didn't, you know, I guess it's like I don't have time to focus on myself.
Bryan: What. Yeah.
Mark: Anyway, hey Rich and Cindy. so, I, Century Two minutes past, I guess I can start the the only thing I really had to discuss was to talk some about wiki apiary and, and the server move. And I don't know of anyone on this call
Rich (Chat): fyi - I have no audio
Mark: who is saying anything about it, but I know there were some people who were expressing
Rich (Chat): (can't hear)
Mark: frustration. Can anyone hear me Citrage?
Bryan (Chat): I think it's on your side
Bryan: Yeah.
Greg: Like, I can hear you fine.
Mark: All right. um, Yeah, so I first of all, does anyone have any questions about Wiki apiary?
Rich (Chat): fixed!
Mark:
Bryan (Chat): Bueno
Mark: Others that his and I and like I said, I don't think most of the people on this call all were the ones who were complaining. So you know, this is probably not. The best question for you guys. But were there any issues that you
Greg: Do you?
Mark: guys have?
Greg: I don't have any issues specifically, but you want to just give a quick recap, I know that Wiki apiary used to be hosted on Wmf Labs servers or whatever. It's called the Cloud VPs thing I think. But I, and I think you or it was
Mark: It was yes.
Greg: decided that it would be moved or something. And Maybe it's hosted in like Amazon cloud, or something now, but it's running on like Docker or something. I don't know, like
Mark: No, um so I need. Okay, so let's back up. Let's talk history.
Greg: And the reason I'm asking is just that like, if I know generally what wiki apiary is, then maybe someday I could help with any maintenance or something like that.
Mark: you know, Python
Greg: Not really.
Mark: you should learn Python, then you can really help.
Greg: Okay.
Mark: I anyway. So yeah, a month or two ago was the deadline for moving all. Machines hosted in Wmf cloud off of this ancient version of Debian Debian Stretch. We were planning on moving wiki apiary. Anyway, so we're gonna use that time to move wiki wiki, apiary to a different hosting provider. Just because yeah, we were kind of We thought we were outgrowing wmf labs. It was wiki apa. We were slowing down.
Mark: I think there's another issue that's causing the slow down. Now besides the resources, we had there But anyway, so in the meantime we said we're gonna move it. Wiki base, Netherlands stepped up and said, Hey, you know, let us help you with that and So, we said here, go ahead. And it was a volunteer project on their part. so, unfortunately it they there's some lack of communication. Some lack of communication.
Mark: I'll just put it down to that and The. I believe Cindy had said, and I had said, I know Cindy headset, let's just move the site, you know, lifting shift. We'll just take this thing as is and move it to a new Post and then you know, that way we can have as little it's little downtime as possible. I somehow that didn't get communicated quite clearly and Wikibase was trying to do an upgrade at the same time, which we keep here.
Mark: Does need to be upgraded but they were trying to do that before they moved it or as they moved it. Um, so there's this big database behind it and all that database has you have to run update DOT PHP on it. Um, so that that was Hey, Participant. So that is what happened with Wiki Apiary being down for month because it was down for a month and that I got people coming to me and I have tickets on fabricator where they're like just give us a dump of the database and I should have done that and we'll upload it to Internet Archive or whatever.
Mark: So you know which you know, it's not a bad idea but I wanted to have the wiki date. Wiki, apiary up. so, I got frustrated last weekend and just Brought it up on Azure, it's on as you're not Amazon, because right now, Amazon is more evil than it, Microsoft. So, There you go. Um, I,
Greg: I love this country. You can get it, you can get a large helping of evil, no matter which way you go.
Mark: That's exactly, exactly. Um, so yeah, and that's where it is right now, we're again seeing the same sort of slowdowns which make me think that it's a problem with the structure of the wiki itself. Actually, with some of the wiki texts itself, probably a template or something that I was looking at it yesterday and there was the load was Super high on it. And that, that's another thing. We have a bigger machine.
Mark: Now than we had in, we can media cloud So I was looking at it yesterday, it was really slow to load was like 57 from uptime. Which you know, I know we don't have 57 CPUs on it, so that's not good thing. um, and yeah, so in that with all database queries, evidently so, I'm sure that there's some on wiki cleanup that can happen that Just need some help figuring that out so hey it you know you don't know Python but maybe know, some wiki texting can go.
Mark: Look at these wiki, text templates and stuff like that and figure out what's making it so slow. So that would be something that I think everyone here could help with
Greg: Yeah, well I, I actually on that point. I've I've finally gotten around to like starting to set up debugging and full, you know, like full media, wiki debugging and with PHP debug and stuff like that and and profiling. So I finally have some some capability to like actually, look look under the covers as the engines running and see like what's going on here.
Mark: Um, so we do have I didn't it Marin of Wiki Base did ask me.
Greg: Yeah. Marine
Mark: It's at Marine.
Greg: Yeah.
Mark: Well, thank you for the correction, you English speaker.
Greg: No, no. I deal with him all the time, so
Mark: I'm just, Sorry. I'm sorry, I should be more polite. I'm sorry. I apologize. Great. The So Marine asked me to install Xd Bug on there. So I have x debug for profiling. If you want to be able to do that. I'm sure we can set you up if you want to be able to look at that. um, So that's what I that's my mayor Copa about. Wiki apiary.
Mark: Is there anyone who wishes to thrash me at the post now? Okay, what's your tomato there that you have to toss? Rich.
Rich: No, just a general rule, that anytime someone offers to be thrashed. You say, yes. Right. So
Mark: I'm sorry. I didn't hear you. I was drinking. What? What did you say?
Rich: So anytime anyone invites themselves to be thrashed, right? Never pass that opportunity up. So I have I need a stick.
Mark: Ah, I see.
Rich: Someone, give me a stick.
Mark: Anyway.
Greg: Get five virtual lashes.
Mark: Oh, such pain, such pain. Um, so yeah, that that was my thing that I had for this month and I've been I I luckily have found a client that I've been working on very diligently for the past month. So I haven't had a lot of time to work on wiki apiary, but at the same time, I did have time before that to do a lot of work on it.
Mark: So you know, Anyway, is there anything else going on that? That's the that's the Media Wiki stakeholders news and you know the inner dialogue. But is there, is there any news outside of that?
Cindy: Can you hear me?
Mark: Yes.
Bryan: Yes.
Cindy: Cool. I sorry, I'm driving. I just wanted to announce that in about 20 minutes. Registration is going to open on Eventbrite. For Smw Con. I don't think we have updated the Wiki page yet with a link to registration, but there will be early bird registration until the end of September and I encourage everybody to go ahead and register and also to make proposals for presentations to odd And we are looking forward to a great
Greg: um,
Cindy: conference at the end of October at Greater Netherlands.
Mark: Yay. um,
Participant: Congrats.
Mark: yeah.
Jeroen (chat): \o/
Greg: Yeah, I'll check with my employer to see if I can get get. Subsidized for that event. And if so, I'll be there, if not, I won't be there.
Bryan: You should try to get some of your colleagues to come too if possible.
Greg: Yeah, I don't have any colleagues.
Cindy: It is going to be a hybrid, it is going to be a hybrid event. So there will be online through
Bryan: There.
Cindy: pop-in. But of course, it would be better to
Greg: Okay.
Cindy: have people in person. so,
Greg: Yeah.
Bryan: You don't have colleague.
Greg: Yeah. No, at Peg. All my colleagues are not wiki people. And and so the only wiki people I deal with are from Wiki Bay Solutions.
Jeroen (chat): Not yet?
Mark: Interesting.
Greg: Well, I okay. We hired we hired a junior Dev in India and and we just are onboarding another Dev from India. So yeah, half a world away actually, there is a couple of people starting to do some winky stuff. I'm training them.
Mark: Interesting.
Greg: I don't know how, like, has anyone. I mean, this is just a quick off off topic discussion, but like we, we were trying to find supposedly the HR group of Pega was trying to find Wiki developers for two years and could not find anybody, and they couldn't even find anybody in India. Um, and I find that amazing because I know on, you know, from different I don't know, just like fabricator tickets and stuff like that or whatever.
Greg: There's plenty of people out there doing Media Wiki development. It, where are they?
Mark: It does not surprised me at all.
Greg: All
Mark: Does not surprise me at all. um,
Greg: Yeah.
Mark: most most recruiters don't even know what Mediawiki is.
Greg: Yeah, and it's it is weird.
Mark: so, you know, that that's your first first problem there and then Many people. Because there are so few media Wiki people. They're either very focused on Wikipedia and they want to work on Wikipedia or they have their own clientele already and they don't aren't looking for other work. Or they know hey I'm one of very very few people. So their rate is very, very high. um, so, you know, that that is, I think the problem that people are seeing because I did I did have a company asking me if I if I wanted to work for him and I was like sure, I'd love to.
Mark: But, and I got like, 50 calls once people realized. Hey, there's a media wiki, look a person on LinkedIn. so, I was getting, you know, three or four calls a day at one point.
Greg: It's like there's media wiki as big as it seems to us because we're involved every day in. Wikipedia is obviously one of the world's biggest websites. But but if you do, if you do go to like LinkedIn and search for Media Wiki jobs, there's just nothing because you know, there's Microsoft
Mark: Right.
Greg: jobs and there's Oracle Jobs and there's Salesforce jobs, but, you know, media Wiki as a software product does not hit the radar.
Mark: No, no. And I also I think most people think of this is just something that a PHP developer is going to be able to you know pick up. There's a whole which which to an extent is true but also to an extent there's this huge infrastructure you know this environment. This ecosystem that is not really in tune with me with PHP. so,
Greg: Exactly. Yeah, that's you're right on both counts. That's, that's the opinion at my company. Is that, like, any any, you know, reasonable PHP, developer should be able to just like, jump right in and start fixing bugs and media wiki or or developing features and it's like not exactly. It's a big it's a big software product and if you really want to understand it there's like Oh learning curve.
Mark: Well, I know that one of one of the first full-time clients that I had they had looked a lot for someone before they found me and they were very frustrated with the generic PHP developers that they found.
Greg: Yeah.
Mark: So,
Greg: Okay, well, I'm sorry for going off on a tangent but I just took advantage of that opportunity to
Mark: Well, it was relevant to me. I don't know about anyone else, but What have you been doing, Participant?
Greg: get Participant's here.
Participant: Yes.
Greg: We thought I thought you might write off into the sunset.
Participant: yeah, I mean facing a deadline and I mean they're not going to shut the way he off because there's too much information on there. It's almost But they're going to probably disable editing. Once they can get access, everybody accesses other thing which has like a fraction of the information but I don't know. We'll see. Yeah, get 11 months until the person driving the, the sun setting of the wiki retires.
Participant: So We've been trying to always, I've been trying to do some sewing it. What I can because I'm also helping run the other project to replace it. So I love media wiki. I think it's a spiritual. I think they could both work together. I don't know. I've always I've, I mean, I've seen this job because I love it. And but maybe this means I need to go higher in the food chain.
Participant: So that so If we can keep it alive or no, I could preserve it in some way myself. So I'm more firepower. But when your second level boss is the one doing it, it's tough but
Bryan: What's the platform that they're
Participant: I,
Rich: That's very saddened.
Bryan: moving toward?
Participant: SharePoint.
Bryan: Oh my God.
Participant: Because they wanted to be authoritative. Not Uh, not crowd fun, crowd developed. I mean, we have many pages we have 75,000 pages. Now, I mean, that includes file page, redirects all that stuff but I mean stuff is gonna be old some of it and yeah. but they would authoritative this, this information is being validated and frankly they have A staff of 10. To do what? Me and volunteers have done to a degree but not we're not validating it every week.
Participant: I'm wondering what happens when that that disappears and Budget cuts, and The other content will get just as old. So I'm hoping to preserve the wiki long enough that we could flip it back on and I mean, I think the portal would be great having I don't know, as I said, I think they can work well together, but Um, because yeah, the the Secretary's office, what secretary being the head of the Department of Energy.
Participant: Each cabinet level has a secretary, That they want to be able to make announcements and things internally. And SharePoint. Communication site are better for that. And of course there's a lot of things in the M365 suite. Are there can be integrated and now with power automates and power apps. There's a lot of functionality that is that will be tough to to compete but For those who have delved into the M365 area.
Participant: Do we have multiple tenants like 50 or 60? And we also have some who are in the G suite. So getting everybody access is is a challenge because Of identity authentication. And while the wiki we just use an IP whitelist we have never used. Cindy's. a identity provider authentication method, so,
Mark: I'm curious Participant because you just mentioned the secretary is he is he your boss two levels up. Is that who you're talking about?
Participant: No, she's four levels up essentially.
Mark: Okay. I was gonna say so we can blame Biden
Participant: And yeah.
Mark: for this.
Participant: I mean, it is, I mean it is new employees who are driving this, including a Chief of Staff. Of the, the secretary previous sector. The team, the secretary's previous chief of staff was a major driver of this, so yeah, good.
Mark: I'm sorry, I just take every opportunity, I can to blame and politician.
Rich: What On a more serious note, I would say that. one of the things I haven't seen done is like the government has they give people permission to implement solutions for identified needs? And then over time you have a very diverse portfolio of solutions and it becomes unmanageable simply. And so, the solution, you know, from the 10,000 foot perspective is consolidate, you know, and when the consolidation conversation happens that which, you know, you guys somebody here was given me a hard time because I said something about application rationalization, but when you're in an organization and you're trying to downsize your portfolio and you're trying to rationalize your, your solution, if you don't have your rest rationalization in your back pocket with what makes it distinctive.
Rich: You're going to get Bulldozed into some. You know, in into some solution that isn't isn't capable of doing what your solution does. So, again, I think it's a call. Let this be like a lesson learned for the community that we we don't live in a world where we can operate. Our preferred solution without a good rationalization, a business justification for why. And and so a lot of the work that I've been doing over the past year, has been making the case for why? Immediately, because more and more, we live in a world where that question is being asked by people who only have about one or five minutes of your time.
Bryan: Yeah, I have I have something
Mark: so,
Bryan: similar. I mean, I call it like a business case or ROI argument but in both of the wikis that I started as an employee It was always it really, that was attacking it and trying to move it to SharePoint. And my my arguments had to change over time. When at first, it was just people that liked it and didn't want it to move away from SharePoint and then eventually, you know, the C-suite then supported it and then it couldn't touch it anymore.
Bryan: But but yeah basically had to have an argument ready at all times because it was continuous attack and from something that should be a service industry that has somehow weasel them into a command and control industry. That I find, I'll stop there, but yeah.
Mark: um,
Participant: What is the the C-suite?
Bryan: Just people people's names that start with C CEO CTO.
Rich: Yeah, we call it. The A suite. The Administrative Suite. Yes, sweet. But I like C-suite.
Mark: um, so this, this goes back to a talk that I gave years ago where, you know, it talks about I basically I used the medium is the message that the software creates. The use, it affects how it's used.
Rich: Marshall McLuhan.
Mark: Yeah. Marsha McLean, right?
Rich: Yeah.
Mark: I'm thank you. Um, but the wiki is the message here, um, and innocence and we need I mean we have three people here, Rich, Participant, and Brian who are all talking about this that they you know, and seems like y'all could Y'all could have a wiki to
Rich (Chat): I say.. the Content is the Form
Mark: collaborate on exactly what this rationalization is. The content is the form. Well, Okay, but
Rich (Chat): or structure
Mark: Anyway. Though. Yeah, I would say structure because
Rich: I mean, you.
Mark: it form is more confusing anyway.
Bryan: that is that I like to point out too
Lex: Well.
Bryan: to a lot of people that try to push for Things is I try to impress on them and others that they don't actually always know what they're talking about because they'll have they'll say what they want to do. But there's no plan to get there and the when they start, if you expose that especially in a meeting when they don't, they're not well supported which they usually aren't they start making statements that are patently false or really hard to to pull off.
Bryan: But I mean this recently happened, just, I mean, this is in the energy industry anyway, but our governor in California here, a while ago, decided to shut down our last remaining nuclear power plant.
Participant: Mmm.
Bryan: Just just said, they're gonna have, they're gonna replace it with renewables. Like, we're gonna have this many renewables by 2020 and I, I was, I had the benefit of being able to have, like, being a kind of a discussion where he was listening in. And I basically said, Hey, it's not a good idea to just say something, what's your plan? And there was no plan and now that got reversed as of like yesterday because they didn't have a plan.
Bryan: But yeah, I think I think that's a generally, a good idea but it sucks because I mean it could have just gone away or you know you're wiki could just go away and then in five years they realize that's not a good replacement but
Mark: so, So Brian, you turned around the
Bryan: Good Mark.
Mark: energy policy of California. Is that what I heard?
Bryan: You know. I get to mix Gavin Newsom and I like
Participant: Okay.
Bryan: that.
Mark: Anyway. Oh yeah. That I definitely think that this is a Unfortunately this is a conversation that hope happens over and over again. And what I would like to do is capture some of the results. You know, is, is riches said into a rationalization that We could use more broadly than just rant about. Oh this is a problem. I'm having again.
Bryan (Chat): Cindy, question for you about Eventbrite, PayPal, and the MWStake bank account in Element.
Participant (chat): My friend's wife's father, who works there, likely thanks you.
Bryan: Yeah, Rich, do you have you have something? I mean, it sounds like you're It was the term again. Rationalization might be closer to what Participant would need. Is it something you?
Rich: Yeah. Yeah. I've put a lot of text together. So in mediawiki.org, I created a page called Rationalization or Meeting with irrationalization. You can find it easily and if you look at my contributions, And what we're trying to do right now. So the agency the space agency, woke up and realized that they had an unwieldly number of solutions software, that that had repeated functions, right? So there was this big push that started a couple years ago to consolidate applications into a manageable portfolio and they created a table with three columns, The desirable column to be in, is the invest column.
Rich: The middle column is the tolerate column and the third column that you don't want to be in is divest.
Greg (chat): Off topic: my new motorcycle https://photos.app.goo.gl/ezskE2iSN2qCfRhf7 2006 Honda ST1300A
Rich: And so what they did was they inventory all of their all of the different software solutions that were, you know, the different content management systems, the different wiki softwares the different, you know, you name it Action Management software.
Mark (chat): Page Rich mentioned: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Application_Rationalizations
Rich: And you know that's where they put like Office 365 and SharePoint into the invest column and then they basically said that in order to get into the invest column, you've got to prove that there's no duplication of functionality. You've got to prove your uniqueness and you've got and so not only do you have to be unique but you've got the there's got to be a business, right? A business function so what business
Greg (chat): :thumbs_up:
Rich: function do you provide? And how is it unique from solutions that have already been invested in? And that's the game we're playing now and I have made that case. And the case is it loses its legitimacy as you go into higher levels of the organization and it gains its legitimacy as you get down into the low level areas where where, where knowledge is being used on a daily basis and you have processes that are Standardized across your organization.
Rich: But you have niche processes and niche ways of doing things, that's where media wiki shines. And I just a quick follow-up for Mark as a fellow Marshall, McLuhan fan, he
Participant (chat): https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Application_Rationalizations
Rich: famously created something called a tetrad of technology and Mccluen. Famously said that every technology does four things, it improves.
Bryan (Chat): @Participant, the people you should really thank are Kristin Zaitz & Heather Hoff (both Diablo Canyon workers) that started Mothers for Nuclear. Also, Michael Shellenberger came to the plan early on and told everyone exactly what Gavin Newsom was planning (the guy is a real weasel).
Participant (chat): Sorry! I was too slow :)
Rich: Anyway, there's a, There's a recipe for a tetrad and I built a Marshall McLean tetrad of the Media. Wiki technology. You know, I'll share with you guys, if you'd like
Mark: You just, it sounds like that's something you could add to this media wiki amp rationalizations page or link from it.
Rich: Well, the mccluen stuff is a little bit esoteric. Like Yeah, you know, that's it's it's it's very abstract and it's very, you
Mark: Sure.
Rich: know, like, you know, literary theory ish. And it's not the kind of thing business, people want to look at, but if you're a commenter on the evolution of you know, where's technology going and you know, how does it affect us as humans, you know, it's cool. I'll provide both and they'll both have their own.
Mark: So, I'm looking at the Media Wiki
Rich: Value.
Mark: Application rationalizations page and it looks it looks short.
Rich: It has to be.
Mark: so,
Rich: Poked.
Mark: is there a way that we can fill it out more?
Rich: Absolutely. Yeah.
Mark: What would you recommend?
Rich: Yeah. Well. The what we need is an efficient. Statement that like, you know, and so I would say We need to even refine what I've written further, but when you refine it, as you as you boil it down, we don't want to lose potency. So to me, I think, I think I forget exactly the wording but one of the things in there is a model model based.
Rich: A systems management or something like that, where? Basically, it's the idea that you can. That when you're when you're standing up a new, Organizational Branch. So your, your your your company has business functions business functions become organizational units. So you, you have some new organizational unit and the exact role that they function at a high level is defined because that's why they exist. But how they achieve those, the methods of how they succeed in their business function is not well, defined, this is the perfect opportunity for a wiki because this is where you have, you have people working with content and you want, you want the processes and the structure to emerge out of the content.
Rich: And then, once that business unit that organizational unit, once the methods become established, then they can be evaluated for improvement and it can be invaluated evaluated for whether or not they are the kinds of things that can be rolled up into higher level solutions. So the idea that organizations would create wiki's that would live forever, maybe. That is something that we should out of at the onset.
Rich: Stop think think more of the wiki as like, it's it's a, It's an appropriate technology when you're starting a new endeavor, but as the endeavors as the business functions and organizational units become mature and more established, they become better candidates for being For being rolled up into higher
Participant (chat): Nice!
Rich: level, you know, like Microsoft BI and, you know, and and things where you can kind of like, it takes a lot of work to change the process. And so if you're in a mode where you want the process to be adaptable and dynamic, the wiki is the appropriate technology and if you're in a mode where you want the process to be rigid and you know and and fossilized then move it up to the business functions.
Rich: Did I say too much there?
Mark: But no actually you made me think of perhaps what makes it a wiki not fit in government very well. Because government my mind tends to be more rigid and say This is, this is what we're doing.
Rich: Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Mark: And not.
Participant (chat): As the wiki has grown, it has been harder to keep it up to date.
Mark: So,
Rich: The problem is there's spokeness
Participant: yeah, I mean
Rich: there's there's an unpacked about reality that the the government as a as a as an official entity is rigid but the the flexibility of government is an undocumented. Is an undocumented part. Like it's the people in government,
Participant (chat): The Single Source of Truth has been challenging
Rich: like, Participant and myself that are willing to work around, broken processes, to get things done. That's actually how government functions. Now, I've probably said too much.
Mark: No, no, I mean, that, that. So I'm I, I think that this is a very, very good thing. You know, how to think about this, undocumented flexible area of government versus the, you know, rules based what you call it regulations, that's rigid. Um,
Rich: Yeah.
Mark: and in most people do think of government like you know, they think high level legislation and that sort of thing which is rigid um, and then and then, you know, they don't think they don't Think the lower levels where, you know, someone has to adapt. All these, all the rigid stuff and make sure it fits the real.
Participant (chat): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_source_of_truth
Mark: Thing. What Participant you're about to say something.
Participant: Yeah, yeah. I mean it's it's definitely becoming Counting. And I agree that. yeah, with The new administrations. I mean, the wiki has been through a
Rich (Chat): Single Source of Truth "within" the organization
Participant: couple now and Tried to hang low and just document everything and just be able to I know I feel like a lot of times programs. Kids are getting changed. Are lost. or stood up and then Oh no, some of the information that hey, you know, we actually did this project like to administrations ago, and Police trying to recognize, and I don't know. I feel like the Wikia succeeded in that.
Participant: And, yes, there are older information and And some of it is historic, but I think having that history I think is crucial for for federal agencies. Because frankly, it could be every four years and you have basically new priorities and and lots of new staff and you don't remember things. And yes there's and yes maybe I'm I'm talking as a federal employee for Almost 21 years. So I've and I happened at the same agency, so been with you weed.
Participant: But yeah, I mean
Mark: So I I want to go back to what Rich said because and if anyone else wants to jump in, please do. Because, you know, I don't want this, just be the government wiki Mark talks government. Wikis. Um, But I am fascinated by this subject. The I want to go back to what you said Rich about, you know. The younger when, when you're working on something, that's when you need a wiki.
Mark: And then when you have established Rationale's or whatever established procedures, you don't need a wiki so much for that, but what Thomas saying is you need, you do need both, you need the history there. How you came to this? It does. So how do you expose that using a wiki? I mean is that just go look at the history of the page or what? How do you do that?
Rich: So the My approach is you focus on the interfaces between the organizational units, that's where the wiki flourishes.
Participant (chat): The replacement sharepoint site is being billed as the single source
Rich: So every organizational unit has its has its official way of doing business and and every every individual organizational unit tries to be you know like they try to mature their processes and lock it down and they're not looking for this dynamic you know contributor but when you have a parent level organization developing an organizational policy and multiple child branches trying to comply with that in their own way.
Rich: Okay, so each lower level each child, branch of the organization can develop its own official processes for how they comply. But what's missing is you look at any org chart and and the in the nodes of the orbit chart have formal documentation, that's probably not a good candidate for the wiki The wiki is a great place to get to that stuff. But where the wiki really shines is in the interfaces between the organizational units, that is never documented and that's the kind of
Mark (chat): @Jeroen are you recording?
Rich: stuff that like For example, we have a high-level document, we have to comply with right so that that the authors of that document do not want our our particular branch level, implementation detail that's inappropriate for their document. We don't want to create a document that says how we comply, but there's tons of knowledge about how we, how we comply. So so what we've done is we've created at our branch level.
Rich: We've created wiki articles for each
Mark (chat): I would love a recording....
Rich: parent level document for each for each official policy document at a higher level and then what we do is we annotate that document with our local compliance approach. that's the wiki that's what the wiki is is for the fabulous at And then we also use like my personal favorite application is is that we can we can replicate electronic workflows using, you know because because wiki with extensions allows you to store data in pages.
Rich: As you in previous talks that I've given you have to, you have to grow beyond the, you know, if you look up what is a wiki? And we use that term, we overuse that term to the point that it doesn't accurately reflect what we're doing. It's a, it's a database, an interactive database that you can use to. to replicate electronic workflows at the organizational level and and then show how these workflows tie into compliance Between organizational.
Rich: Like a lot of times we get a document where, you know, we're we're working to a higher level document and our workflow has to be able to show that we get audited. We're an ISO organization, auditors, come in, and they want evidence, they want to show me evidence as to how you comply. It's all in the wiki. So using the wiki as a tool for for showing compliance to external auditors and using it to capture branch level knowledge of how you comply with parent level requirements, that's that's the case.
Rich:
Mark: Um so I asked your own because I know he had recorded before but is anyone else recording this? Because I I thought maybe it would be good to have this recorded but if
Bryan: I have yeah. Oh yeah. I have a transcript of it and I'm taking notes.
Mark: Okay, well, that's probably a good thing then because it I think that that would be a good place to Collaborate in the future on some of this.
Bryan: But so Participant really quick that you know
Mark: Yeah.
Bryan: there's different ways that you can
Rich (Chat): https://mwstake.org/mwstake/wiki/File:The_Wiki_as_a_Mcluhan_Effect_of_Media_Tetrad.PNG
Bryan: use a wiki, right? But um you know there's like just collection of information and aggregating and soliciting stuff that people say and then there's, you know, building a consensus around it. And and you know, you could use like a namespace or somehow separate parts of it out and even put like, the background is a different color but then use something like approved revs and some other system where you have more authoritative. You know.
Bryan: Like if you get to a page and it's
Jeroen (chat): @Mark I might be ;)
Bryan: green, it's been reviewed by that SME. Here's who the SMEs are that have reviewed it. You know, there is a way to approach some of that single source of the truth. But the other cool thing about that is you're still soliciting information from everybody else to get there. Idea about, you know, learning from history, I mean, I've never worked. Well, I actually have worked for the state for firefighting but I've never worked really for a government agency but in private sector, I mean, it really helps to understand how you did things in the past.
Bryan: I mean, when we had an edict that said, Thou shalt not buy from this vendor anymore, we would write that down in the wiki and then when the vendor came back begging, You know, to come back on before we the Wiki
Jeroen (chat): Why do you want a recording?
Bryan: would be like I know there was an edict going out, we don't know why
Rich (Chat): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrad_of_media_effects
Bryan: but you're not, we're not allowed to purchase from you anymore and you know, if we said okay well they were, you know, they need vowels and they're that porosity and the castings and control issues or
Mark (chat): I was hoping to share this
Bryan: whatever. We would say exactly what it was and then they can test and get back in our good graces. But yeah, if you don't know, history, you're You're kind of hosed.
Participant: Yeah, yeah. It's definitely Yes. I mean I think. and and just if I anything I'm saying
Mark (chat): would probably clip out the wikiapiary bit at the front
Participant: I could not be attributed that appreciate but yeah, it just Yeah, the they want to ride out into the sunset of retirement having that one last
Mark (chat): but won't b/c of what Participant just said
Participant: project and and yeah, I mean, I think There it's the government. But Dewey is so fractured that it's the they're trying to basically have everybody have fall one process and There are dozen. Of processes, if not more. So, I don't know. Yeah it's
Mark: so,
Participant: Gonna be interesting.
Mark: I appreciate what you just said, Participant? I I would like to share some something from this discussion but I appreciate that. You said you don't want to have your attribution on this, your name, put on this, which
Participant: Yeah. I mean, I mean, if we reviewed in some way, but yeah, just, I mean
Mark: no, what I'm thinking is is
Participant: Yeah, I vented.
Rich (Chat): Wikis need: 1. A Business Justification (purpose) 2. A software rationalization 3. A software management plan (lifecycle) 4. A security plan 5. A training plan
Participant: I've been to a little bit on this so, and
Mark: so I was thinking, you know, maybe we could collaborate on a document to come up with something that would be anonymized and have Distilled wisdom that maybe, maybe you would not, you would not necessarily be quoted as an author on, but, you know, you're, you would have input. Would that be interesting or
Participant: Sure.
Mark: acceptable?
Participant: Yeah, yeah, man. I would I would love to help others. And yeah, I know we've helped other organization.
Rich (Chat): 6. Data Management Plan 7. Disaster Recovery Plan
Participant: Most recently Nuka regulatory commission. Get their own, Wiki stood up. And if I can help with that, through future organizations, including feature federal agencies to do so likewise that I definitely open to that.
Mark: So yeah, I definitely think this is an actual thing that I mean, This is kind of what media wakey stakeholders should be. Is coming up with these.
Rich (Chat): 8. Org Policy
Mark: Sort of documents to. To, you know, a jet, a rationalization here. You still driving. Are you or it? Because I was wondering if
Cindy: I am. I am still driving.
Mark: i so if you if you've heard any of this or have any thoughts about it, you have any input from your side of
Bryan (Chat): What's an organizational policy?
Mark: working with minor of how the government should use a wiki and what in frame that in terms of what, Participant and Richard been saying,
Cindy: No, I've agreed with what they've said, You know, I think it makes perfect sense. I'm a little bit more removed at this from that now, after five years of distance from working, so I'm sure that they're information is more current but, you know, it does reflect the kinds of experiences that That I had in the observations that,
Rich (Chat): The ISO document that says - thou shall use the wiki for X, Y, and Z
Cindy: you know? And again, we weren't actually working in a government agency, we were helping the government agencies and so he had their own
Mark: Sure.
Cindy: Their own hurdles. They had to get through. so, Yeah. No, I agree with the discussion today.
Mark: so yeah, that but I think that I think this is all did, unfortunately, this is one of those things where Alexa Lex will come back at me in two years and say, We've been talking about this for five years, why haven't you done anything? Um,
Lex: Now remember I I suggested a major workshop for exactly this in my last email that I answered to odd.
Mark: So you know that that is a good point that it, this next conference would be good to have a workshop based around. This is there and seems to me though that the people the two of the people who would be interested in this or more able to most contribute Participant and Rich are not going to be able to be there, physically, I don't think. Um, but is this something that you would be willing, I'm rich.
Lex: No, no, no. Remember, I'm I'm composing this new website MW stake or and the goal is not to brainstorm at the conference.
Mark: Yep.
Lex: The goal is to take the 20 bullet points and agree on what to distill and mold into a coherent, powerful message. because brainstorming will, Take too much time. We have to prepare everything before.
Mark: Well, look.
Lex: So all the LEGO brakes have to be in a box and we just open the box at the conference and we build a little house. That's it. Otherwise we lose look. This is it. This is been a an issue for the last six years ever since I know you. So I I suggest now that we that I collect all of this and I'm rich has already provided a lot of input.
Lex: My favorite one is the comparing it to excel. That's, that's a very, very compelling one. And yeah, I'm preparing this. and I was, I was suggesting such a workshop at the conference
Mark: So could you and I appreciate what you're saying about? Not having this the brainstorming. Could you clarify? What you mean about that? Does this actually writing a document or
Lex: No, no not, right? Well, collecting arguments and then weaving them into a story. That people can use. Visa v several. Decision makers. You know, it's it's really. I I have I have material prepared there. And the the most advances, the one about Excel. So comparing media weekly to Excel because the funny thing is Excel is probably the most abused piece of software in the world. And it is it faces absolutely no resistance.
Lex: I mean if you suggest to anyone put it into an excel. That no problem even, you know, make a photo gallery in Excel. Just drag it all everything into Excel, align it with the cells print it out and send it. They will love it. and and if we, if we can connect media weekly to that Excel story and say, Look, this is exactly like Excel just better, you know, in terms of multi-user corporation, history, accountability, semantics to hear and
Rich: The cells are bigger, the cells are bigger.
Lex: consistency everything then we have. And that's why you know of all the stories of all the stories of course the best one comes from rich because he's so amazingly intellectual that of course he makes the links between these things. So I I Yeah, I was frustrated, I didn't come up with that comparison actually. but, Honestly this is that I'm I'd like to prepare that and then Yeah run that workshop that that's not a presentation it's it's a real workshop.
Mark: Are you the person I'm supposed to It so rich. attribute this? This the wiki is a spreadsheet of the web to that because I I've been using that a lot. So I I thought I came up with it but maybe
Lex: Well. I just heard it from Rich first. Sorry that's why attribute rich.
Greg (chat): I'm out of time. Thanks everyone. Have a great weekend!!
Rich: I have, I think it's one of those things where there is no fact of the matter, you know,
Mark: Yeah. Okay, that's fine.
Rich: so,
Mark: I I don't you know I don't need to own it. I just
Rich: I don't need to own it either.
Mark: um, anyway, I just think it's very
Rich: I think we're all. We're all like-minded.
Mark: aptoide.
Rich: Oh that yes, thank you. I think we're all like-minded that that no, what. All of us care about is the flourishing of the technology and and whatever. Whatever our names are are irrelevant.
Mark: Um, so so I I think though, that I would like something to happen before this conference because the conference is, is in a few, it's in a month or two And it would be good if we could. Work on some of this stuff and have it done before the conference, at least a little bit of it. Is that something that you be willing to get involved with Lex Rich?
Lex: No, I'm already doing this.
Mark: And Well, I know you are less.
Lex: But now I understand myself as the
Mark: Not.
Lex: moderator not as the Creator. But the moderator that reaches out to people, as I would like to reach out to you regarding the boilerplate. So it's the same, the same thing.
Mark: Yeah. So yeah, definitely. You can reach out to me regarding the boilerplate. I I just really want to capture what Rich and Participant are saying as far as you know, the because rich you have a lot of detailed thoughts on this. You the bullet points you put in chat here about what we need is it would be great to have each of those filled out and I would love I would love to be able to do some of that.
Mark: and have because yes, it is it is something that You go to the CIO, it'll come an organization I work with and he's like, you know, What is this wiki? Why do we have it? We don't need it. Any that, you know, and that, that affects me, of course. And so I'm selfishly trying to keep it, but it also affects all these people out there who are using the wiki who, you know, they they do find use for and it's
Rich: Yeah, the people that it benefits, it's it. I think the classic problem is is it's um, we don't The problem that is unique to meeting wiki, is that the people that get it? Are are not coherent in their defense of it. It's never going to be a technology that the that the people with suits and ties are going to advocate.
Mark: Yeah. Um so so yeah, in a lot of it is communication with the suits and thighs, maybe I should just start wearing a suit and tie.
Participant (chat): Thanks Greg!
Rich: change, change the system from within
Mark: Yeah.
Rich: Yeah.
Cindy: So I have it.
Bryan: Well, they fired up.
Cindy: I have a thought. you know, and I think this is great, I think, you know, having these Analogies like the spreadsheet one and other arguments that folks can use when they're trying to convince. Their organization, their power structures, that the wiki is the right way to go. I think that's wonderful and I think that this will be really useful. I'd say the flip side to that coin.
Cindy: Is that very often? There are things that folks Who try to use the wiki? Say, oh, but what about X? And we were having a similar conversation in the open CSP meeting earlier this week. Issues like the ability to comment on a page, the ability to have tracked changes, the ability to do collaborative real-time editing together. And so, It would also be helpful to have. If not answers, you know, at least a You know what are the pain points? What are the places that you can expect that people are going to You know, react that are going to react negatively about the wiki and are there mitigations for those or are there opportunities for the Enterprise, Wiki community to come together and add functionality? That would address the most Impactful of those pain points.
Cindy: So I sort of see that as the flip side of the coin. Yes, absolutely. I think it's super important that we be able to articulate what the benefits are of, the wiki way. But also we need to be able to acknowledge where there might be shortcomings and have an answer to those
Mark: Such a downer.
Rich: yeah, there's another statement that I get a lot of, a lot of that, resonates with a lot of people that I use and that is, is that every email I'm trying to like ape You know. I forget the presidential quote, you know about every every rocket, you know, represents something but like every email, That contains an attachment is a failed use of wiki. You know, represents you.
Cindy: I love that.
Rich: That's yeah that ask ask an
Cindy: I love that, that's awesome.
Rich: organization to what degree do you rely on your inbox on your employee inboxes for your for your organizational knowledge? That's what the wiki replaces. And so you have to train people, that email is dead and email should only be a a history of references to a single source of truth in the organization. But every email should simply say, FYI.
Cindy: Yeah,
Rich: This this fact, Stored here. FYI, right? And you emails, good for notifying, people of change, notifying people of new things. But every time every email, every attachment, and every decision and every business rationale that is, that is Distributed that is developed and distributed in an email chain. Is a is lost knowledge, and is a failure to use the wiki. So sorry. That was mine. So box.
Mark: I think that's a little bit more dogmatic than I would be about email, but But I yeah, I appreciate where you're going.
Rich: Yeah.
Participant (chat): We were getting close to having many information being able to be linked off the wiki
Participant: Yeah, we are getting close to that or
Rich: I,
Participant: yeah. I mean the wine information. US or you're posting information. We're getting close. But yeah, new management, new rules. But I definitely appreciate all this. Yeah, I'm gonna have to drop but thank you all.
Mark: Yeah, thank you. I'm talking. Participant. Can we contact you? If we we have some work that we want to do on this.
Participant: Sure.
Mark: I mean offline, whatever.
Participant: Sure, you're always. Yeah. I'll try to keep an eye out.
Bryan: Participant Moonwood.
Participant: Hopefully don't miss it.
Bryan: Um I usually there's a This meeting is being not recorded like audio but it's just like a voice to text transcription that I get. And I usually just posted and it's raw form, but I can strip out any or all. I mean, pretty much the entire discussion was about this, so I can just Remove your name from it and just put
Rich (Chat): I regret that we will not have time to discuss: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:HierarchyBuilder
Bryan: somebody or I can just not post this, but it's up to you.
Rich: We need like reservoir dogs when you like, you know, Mr. Mr. White Mr. Pink,
Bryan: Yeah.
Participant: Yeah, if you I mean you could just put another name or no, right? I don't think that they will be looking for it but You know, see why?
Bryan: Sure. Okay.
Participant: All right, thanks.
Mark: All right, that. Yeah. I think that's it. Um, by by the way, Lex, before before
Rich (Chat): And I have to go too. Thank you!
Mark: we go you said you were talking about the boilerplate thing. Is there it? You have a time? Have you talked about that flesh out. That idea of what you want a little bit more in there? Hey,
Lex: Now, I'm going to, I'm going to prepare a page but it's notably the hooks. and I get garbled JavaScript using
Bryan: Sounds good.
Lex: the minifier, and I, I spent a couple of hours on this, but I don't manage to to get to get it solved.
Mark: Yeah, if