New Tech Notes Series for Massive Wiki
Author: Peter Kaminski Issue: 2022-12-07
New “Tech Notes” Series for Massive Wiki
by Peter Kaminski
We've started a new pattern called “Tech Notes” in the Massive Wiki developer wiki. Tech Notes are the spiritual descendants of the IETF's venerable Requests for Comments series, which are lightweight position papers written by the engineers creating the services that make up the Internet. RFC 3 describes their original background, in 1969:
The content of a NWG [Network Working Group] note may be any thought, suggestion, etc. related to the HOST software or other aspect of the network. Notes are encouraged to be timely rather than polished. Philosophical positions without examples or other specifics, specific suggestions or implementation techniques without introductory or background explication, and explicit questions without any attempted answers are all acceptable. The minimum length for a NWG note is one sentence.The first Tech Note for Massive Wiki, Preferring a Different Git Forge, details the start of a move away from GitHub, towards Codeberg, a community-driven, non-profit alternative to GitHub.
The second is Permanent Versions, a proposal to create persistent point-in-time snapshots of particular Massive Wiki pages for inclusion in the broader web, that will hopefully last decades or centuries into the future.
The Permanent Versions pattern will be helpful for Massive Wikis in which the culture is to continually morph, evolve, and improve pages. Without Permanent Versions, it's hard to link from the web into such a wiki deterministically.
For more information about Massive Wiki, email Pete, or drop by the Massive Wiki chat channel.
Related:
- Peter Kaminski (author)
- 2022 (year)
- Topics: Tools and Platforms