The latest problem is fighting MeatBall:WikiSpam. The best solution I have to offer so far is MeatBall:CitizenArrest. I have a better one coming, but not yet.

Feels excessively technolibertarian to me. It would be nicer if we could all just fly over to China and explain to the spammers how much they are hurting us.

A dangerous strategy: MeatBall:RegionalBan

We're pushing towards understanding enough of MeatBall:WikiSyntax to build a MeatBall:WikiInterchangeFormat; we're trying to avoid a MeatBall:WikiMarkupStandard as that won't wash with the masses (e.g. me).

Well, it's been a while since I last said anything. For those of you who know me, well, you know me; for those who don't, well, I'll write a little bit about myself.

Lately I've been in a Masters program at the University of Toronto. I'm in the Knowledge Media Design Institute essentially studying what I've been doing on MeatballWiki, which is not just wiki design, but online culture, information policy, and governance.

Last week we had a guest lecturer, Greg Wilson, come speak to us about "open source." His lecture was intended to be antagonistic, to shake us up, to say the least. He opened with a description of how compscis are all misogynistic cloistered anti-socials before going on to explain the why "Social science is useless," to a room full of social scientists. His thesis was simply that the "word games" of social science were beneath the time of compscis who actually did "useful" work; and then he turned around and said compscis were fecklessly unpolitical, which made them useless for society as well.

His overall mission, as it turns out, was

"the web as we know it was built by and for white, male, physically-able, English-speaking, emotionally-arrested geeks. The rest of the world has overcome the ``white'' and ``English-speaking'' hurdles (as evidenced by how much content is now in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Tamil, and other languages), but if you want to understand why it still all seems broken sometimes, you still have to look at its roots."

And I disagree. I know the Internet. Sure, there is some truth to that, but I think it plays into brutally negative stereotypes of compscis. I don't think that many of us are emotionally-arrested, although I do think that our compsci degrees are really painful. I don't think that compsci is as hopelessly gendered as he suggests. I don't think the world is as bad as we're told it is.

I wrote about it on my LiveJournal (which I have to maintain for this class). If you would care to read that, I have a very simple question for you, and it isn't why you think compsci is gendered, why social science and you/compsci don't mix, or why you/compsci and politics don't mix (although please answer those if you like):

What was your first experience with the Myth of Geek, and how did you escape it? (and if you haven't, how do you react to what I wrote?)

I think it's sad that people paint all software developers with this picture of antagonistic, anti-social, misogynistic, arrogant bastard, but that's partially a compsci cultural myth I think (a la Slashdot, and the engineering "meritocracy"). I want to understand how software developers mature past the "larval" stage. All I know is my own experience, post-graduation, wandering the earth.

I suppose it would make most sense to reply there if you don't mind, given the convenience of LiveJournal's format over Advogato's.

It's been a while since I've posted here. After "retiring" after graduation, I've found that coding has become less interesting than writing and thinking. This comes as a shock to me as I was a massive code nerd. I'm now at the University of Toronto in their Knowledge Media Design Institute and the Faculty of Information studies, and that is all sociology, political science, psychology, literary theory, philosophy, you name it.

MeatballWiki continues to grow despite my best efforts to keep it level, and so it has experienced some massive growing pains of late due to excessive energy and latent tensions. This has taken a lot of time out of my life that I should be spending on my Masters degree, not to mention my personal life.

I occsasionally peek at Advogato; once a month or so. I am always impressed by the strength and longevity of the community here.

For those who were wondering, the <wiki/> tag works. The default action is a link to the original wiki at c2.com. So, writing <wiki>RecentChanges</wiki> gives us RecentChanges. If you provide a valid intermap prefix, you make an InterWiki link. So, writing <wiki>MeatBall:RecentChanges</wiki> gives us MeatBall:RecentChanges. However, the intermap isn't very large, so don't get your hopes up that your favourite wiki is listed.

Frankly, I think it's simpler and cleaner to just use the <a/> tag.