[p2p-research] On Alex Rollin stated intentions to expel me from the P2P Foundation board

[M. Fioretti]

On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 16:07:10 PM +0700, Michel Bauwens
(michelsub2004 at gmail.com) wrote:

> But, Alex also brings a second set of changes, to which I strongly
> object. And this is nothing less than a vision of content as code.

This is, or so I hope, my last message in this thread, because I
absolutely must finish some other job today and will offline for at
least a week from tomorrow.

Michel,

generally speaking, the sooner you get over your refusal of what you
call "code", which in this case is mostly markup, the more productive
you'll become. If you keep insisting that you "don't want to see code
cluttering the page and burying the content" you'll burn yourself out
some day, guaranteed. REGARDLESS of Alex or this whole business. Trust
me on this.

This, however, is a different thing I hadn't realized until now:

> that code actually makes content appear in different places at the
> same time... I have to make sure that the change is consistent over
> the various parts where Alex has seeded that content.

If this really is the effect of Alex's changes, I don't recommend
it. It's a REAL NEAT idea, and I want to learn how it's done to apply
it to some content I want to edit and publish some day all by
myself. But I only plan to do it on something that would be "all by
myself". I have strong doubts that this can work scalably in real life
on text like this in this wiki.

In this case I disagree with Patrick's assertion that text is just
like code and that you can and should mix it like programmers do with
libraries and function calls to save time. What's on the wiki is
philosophy, not (like software code is, after all) plain sequences of
practical instructions and commands to build a house, fix a car or
cook a soup.

Making content appear in different places at the same time is a neat
idea on an online cooking manual, probably not here. I understand
Michel's wish to not blindly "change and propagate" pieces of this
kind of content inside OTHER pages.

It could work and scale with this kind of stuff if/when all the
content were always made by one person, that is ONE brain always
working more or less in the same way with the same words and style,
not in a collaborative environment that does philosophy instead of
software.

> Now, since Alex has generously hightlighted my own failings in the
> private letter he made public, I would like to return the favour

In my opinion, much of what you "returned" after this line isn't
really fit for a public list. Whoever is right or wrong and whoever
did it first.

Marco