If we are going to try to Refactor Faster Delete More, maybe we need to have a place to put borderline material, concerns or debates about current refactoring. My picture as I create this page is that anything on it for more than a week should either be deleted or moved elsewhere. But we're in Blackadders Map country here. --Richard Drake
Nature Of Order and stuff
A whole lot of duplication and incorrect page references were corrected in this and related pages. You can tell some good has been done with this kind of refactoring when there are some simple redirect or very small pages left, like The Nature Of Order, Fifteen Principles Of Noo and Fifteen Properties In Noo in this case. Correcting all the references to pages like this can be time consuming but I find it very therapeutic, especially after the trauma of a Wiki Stroke.
Nature Of Order Talk At Chicago is a new page which helped me to get nearer Once And Only Once and improve on the confusing old name The Nature Of Order which was still advertising this event from 1997!
How Nature Of Order Applies To Software is the other new one that allowed me to clean up and present as a single page what I found to be a very helpful summary of the pro-Alexander viewpoint by Ralph Johnson. The rewards of the Humble Refactorer!
Those who are expert in these areas, please forgive any ineptness in naming of these two pages. See also Refactoring And Reconciliation.
A quick job separating the discussion into Diversity Is Smothered On Wiki, Wiki Consensus, Voice Of Wiki, deleting a few pieces that usefully fell between those pages, and tidying up the older spin off, Wiki As Xp Training Course.
Clifford Adams' very helpful summary of pre-1998 discussions in the very same areas, now in Wiki Consensus, is a warning and reminder of how much repetition we've got to attend to around here, before the Humble Refactorer can rest easy.
Question for advanced refactorers: should the first sentence of the second paragraph of Voice Of Wiki refer as it does to Wiki Success Can Inhibit New Writers, where the deleted piece was in history posted or to Diversity Is Smothered On Wiki, where the empty space left is now commemorated (in the second section) after Refactor By Extracting To Page?
The italic signed explanation by Jeff Shelby was refactored and reduced to make allowance for the fact that the comment containing the original link to the page had been deleted (thank you Anonymous Hero). The paragraph is now much tidier and therefore (in my view) easier to read.
Question: Jeff Shelby didn't write these exact words. In particular he never said (now sadly no more). My strong preference though (for simplicity and naturalness) is to "put these words in his mouth". Anyone disagree? Should this paragraph now be anonymous?
Yes, it should be anonymous. Leaving the signature implies a sort of "pure authorship" that is removed by what's known on wiki as an element of "refactoring" and Everywhere Else as "paraphrasing." Unless, of course, we can use the same conventions to highlight a paraphrase as Everywhere Else. -- Kevin Kinnell
You're entirely right Kevin that I would sometimes keep such paraphrases signed. I don't want to lose the "signal" that the original thought was from that person. But I also want a tidy end result. I believe that hard and fast rules aren't as easy to apply as they sound. Or they just lead to such mediocre results, in terms of readability, that nobody bothers to refactor much of Wiki at all. Which is the reality all around us.
Oh, and talking of Everywhere Else, let's take the Wiki Newspaper Analogy for a spin.
Dialogue in the refactoring and deletion process should be encouraged.
See Deletion Conventions for some emerging dialogue [April 2002]
See Wiki Refactoring
See original on c2.com 