TCMpedia - misc responses & topics

[Guest guest]

>>>Wed, 27 Dec 2006 13:31:24 -0000 " David Botton " <david wrote:

<answering my questions about adding and taxonomical flexibility>

 

Thanks David. Well done. (Reminds me of the first

sentence I learned in German I: " Alle Anfange

sind schwierig. " All beginnings are difficult.)

 

I'll just start adding some stuff in the near

future. As Ze'v reminded us (me), TCM is the

starting point for our profession. Given the

nature of wiki, if my/our ideas of " real " ,

classical, or whatever CM are really worth their

salt, they can be planted in the same flowerbed

(wiki), and, overtime, prove themselves by

producing beautiful blossoms that significantly enhance the scenery.

 

Actually, observing my own initial reaction, and

that of others as to predetermining the taxonomy

or categorization, I see/agree that it should/will just evolve as it will.

 

>>>Wed, 27 Dec 2006 16:43:18 +0000 (GMT) Hugo

Ramiro <subincor wrote:

>>…really important to have at least two areas

that are UNeditable: 1. Authoritative /

" Scholarly " writing / data, and 2. Clinical case studies.

 

One thing one can doe to shield content from

change (aka " lockdown " ) is enter it into some

other website that you can control, and link to

it from the wiki. Either it's a wiki (not locked

down) or it's not. Doing a wiki is in fact a

challenge to the participants, a medium where

they can become aware of exactly what they have

in common and how they can grow into cooperative behavior.

(In fact, there are places gotten to/linked

through Wikipedia but actually external, where my

own name is misspelled. I wanted to edit there,

so the references would show up in google

searches of my (correctly spelled) name, but

couldn't. The example there is under " Community

Memory " , a project I participated in back in the

early 1970s, an early attempt at participatory computer access.)

What I orginally had in mind when referring to

having a wiki was NOT an encyclopa[e]dia per se,

and just used Wikipedia as an available and

pre-eminent example of wikiness. My impetus was

some sort of repository to retain and make

accessible / cross index, etc tidbits that arise

off and on in our forum discussions here, and

which I wish I could easily dig out to review or refer to.

>>>Wed, 27 Dec 2006 17:22:39 0500 Pete Theisen

<petetheisen wrote:

>>… It is a bit much for the users to be

determining the database's structure, however.

I would imagine that quite a few of the users

will not know what tables, fields and records are

and are just looking to submit a " paper " ….

Wiki is a superstructure of some (hidden) layer

of database. It's distinctive feature is the

nature of participation. But very important also

is the hyperlinking capability, as an

intermediate implementation layer ( " html " Hyper Text Markup Language).

>>>Thu, 28 Dec 2006 02:25:32 0000 " David Botton " <david wrote:

>>… an article about the origins of 'TCM' its

relationship to CM in general and add it to the

site. That would help to introduce students and

others to the richness of CM that goes beyond that one school of thought.

Starters could include precis/review of the three

books (PhD theses/ethnographic studies) from

Cambridge: Kim Taylor on the political history of

TCM; Volker Scheid on the synthesis/plurality of

CM as it exists now; and Elizabeth Hsu on the

three modes of transmission of CM knowledge. I

could do this, but have other, briefer/easier things to try to add first.

Also, nice move, David, to preempt the com/org trap. What about .net too?

>>>Fri, 29 Dec 2006 21:38:36 +0000 (GMT) Hugo

Ramiro <subincor wrote:

>>… I'm pretty sure it means locking it down.

Can you imagine what we would all think of

medline if anyone could go in and " edit " entries?

MedLine is not a wiki, it's an organ of the US

government to democratize access to medical

research data. Creation of research papers

(medline entries) is freely participatory. And

metastudies and analyses (also medline entries)

are quasi commentaries. MedLine is simply an open

access (except for the proprietary full-text

papers) search tool. And a wonderful thing, at that.

As above, create a lockbox externally and link to

it. For instance, one can link to medline in

commentaries / discussions. That's the beauty of

having the various internet mechanisms. They can

be combined by linking explicitly, or linking

indirectly explored by search engine usage, e.g. googling.

----------

Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.16.0/610 - Release 12/30/2006 2:59

PM

[Guest guest]

> Thanks David. Well done.

 

Thank you.

 

> I see/agree that it should/will just evolve as it will.

 

and it will, things like locking down parts of the system will also be a natural

growth once

a section has matured and an editor chosen for that section. Then changes can be

made

based on peoples comments.

 

> One thing one can doe to shield content from

> change (aka " lockdown " ) is enter it into some

> other website that you can control, and link to

> it from the wiki. Either it's a wiki (not locked

> down) or it's not. Doing a wiki is in fact a

> challenge to the participants, a medium where

> they can become aware of exactly what they have

> in common and how they can grow into cooperative behavior.

Funny, I was actually looking in to that. As part of locking down a section once

ready to

move it to a more formal software framework for collaborative books. In this

case it can all

run on the same domain name / server with out problem.

The idea is to have open collaboration available at different levels of the

development.

> could do this, but have other, briefer/easier things to try to add first.

Great.

> Also, nice move, David, to preempt the com/org trap. What about .net too?

No one mistakenly goes to a .net over a .org :-)

So mostly not worth it.

David Botton