There has been grief and lamentation over the recent dive in signal on wiki. Some fear the imminent End Of Wiki. Some blame certain others for futzing it all up. Some believe this is one of the necessary reverberations of Wiki Mind Wipe. Some fear Ward will wade in and pull the plug. Many of the comments on most of the pages are flip throw-aways - natural conversations, but drivel to the reader looking for rational discussion.
Therefore,
Another way is to split each page into thesis and threads. This way no one needs to get worried about deleting other's snappy comebacks, and in fact large sections of text can be moved into the slushpile without tears. Yes, it still requires refactoring, but not a lot. This page demonstrates the form.
The point is that no one seeking signal needs to read below the Double Lines.
Threads:
If you want to argue Thread Mode Considered Harmful, then do so. A Threads Considered Drivel (q.v) page may be a good idea. The original "drivel" labels were an abuse of refactoring - the label expresses the Threads Considered Drivel idea everywhere it is used. The dislike of threads is far from universal, and while Ward may disparage threads, he has not forbidden them.
Sometimes the page doesn't achieve synthesis. Then you've got to be objective and fairly present both sides of the argument. This is rarely possible if you tend to write page long essays about how you should write page long essays about the topic at hand. The various pontificators on the topic are rarely the best to present the opposing viewpoint. Instead, just clean up your own words.
Whatever you do, though, don't flood Recent Changes with dozens of quick edits so that no one has the patience to correct all your "refactoring." This is an bad thing [because...]
Sometimes it is necessary to flood Recent Changes e.g. when fixing backlinks in a lot of pages or merging two categories. -- John Fletcher
Solution Pattern:
Separate discourse from dissertation. But how far should they be separated ?
For instance, a page like FooSolutionPattern needs to have its Document Mode content spelled out as bullet points, both advantages and disadvantages.
Some wiki, such as Wiki Pedia, use software that automatically creates a separate discussion page to each content page. The Original Wiki doesn't have that feature, so sometimes people manually emulate it by creating a parallel FooSolutionPatternDiscussion page.
Other people simply add Double Lines and the word "Discussion" (if none exist), and add their Thread Mode comments below, on the same FooSolutionPattern page. It is easier to "promote" comments into an integrated part of the Document Mode, when both are on the same page, rather than separated into a Discussion Page.
... (any other way of separating the two ?) ...
Please don't interject comments in the middle of the Document Mode text. If the text is wrong, fix it. Otherwise put your comments with the rest of the comments (on the FooSolutionPatternDiscussion page, if it exists, otherwise below the Double Lines), perhaps quoting a line from the Document Mode text.
See: Tentative Summary, Summaries On Top Discussion Below, Threads Considered Drivel, Discussion Vs Consensus
See original on c2.com 