Two Tales of Two Forks

I am not suggesting that there is one way to fork

Note: This is not based on the history of a particular post but is sparked by some observations of forking at fedwikihappening. No doubt the tales contain inaccuracies but are intended to open up discussion of the social and technical practices around forking. These tales are two different interpretations of the development of the post shown in the diagram.

Shilpa posted about bug-eyed monsters on Monday morning. Siobhan noticed the post as she was very interested in bug-eyed monsters and immediately tweeted Shilpa (whom she knew from the Bug-Eyed Monster Society) to let her know she was forking her post and adding to it. On Tuesday morning Rajesh noticed Siobhan’s edit of the post . He forked it and contacted his mate Tom via Twitter as they had a mutual interest in bug-eyed monsters. They tweeted back and forth, then met for coffee on Wednesday morning. On Wednesday afternoon, Tom forked the post and made substantial edits. Tom and Rajesh felt that they had really built on the original ideas from Shilpa and Siobhan. Meanwhile Shilpa saw Siobhan’s post (as she but not Rajesh was in her neighbourhood), forked it and added to it, letting Siobhan know what she had done, and Siobhan responded by forking and editing on Wednesday morning. On Wednesday afternoon, Shilpa checked the Conversation Club, rather than her usual approach of Recent Changes in her neighbourhood. She was really surprised that the new and improved version seemed to be missing Siobhan’s and her recent additions. Kurt scratched his head.

Shilpa posted about bug-eyed monsters on Monday morning. Siobhan noticed the post as she was very interested in bug-eyed monsters and immediately tweeted Shilpa (whom she knew from the Bug-Eyed Monster Society) to let her know she was forking her post and adding to it. On Tuesday morning Rajesh noticed Siobhan’s edit of the post . He forked it and contacted his mate Tom via Twitter as they had a mutual interest in bug-eyed monsters. They had already decided not to join the Bug-Eyed Monster Society as they really disagreed with their hypotheses on the reasons for the bugginess of the monsters’ eyes. They tweeted back and forth, then met for coffee on Wednesday morning. On Wednesday afternoon, Tom forked the post and made substantial edits to correct what they saw as the mistakes that Shilpa and Siobhan had made. Meanwhile Shilpa saw Siobhan’s post (as she but not Rajesh was in her neighbourhood), forked it and added to it, letting Siobhan know what she had done, and Siobhan responded by forking and editing. On Wednesday afternoon, Shilpa checked the Conversation Club, rather than her usual approach of Recent Changes in her neighbourhood. She was really surprised that the newest version of the post was so radically different from the one she had been working. She wondered what to do next. Kurt sighed.

We could write another version of this tale where Kurt invited Shilpa, Siobhan, Rajesh and Tom to a Google Hangout , and they came up with ideas on how to restructure the post into a series of linked posts that displayed the alternative theories on bug-eyed monsters. But, but, but … Kurt was an old hand, the others were new and were still learning about forking, journal and the implicaions of neighbourhoods. Also, the technology is quite new, operating across servers in different continents and time zones. In a context where there is socio-technical unpredictability, maybe we need Repair Strategies.

Please comment here or on Twitter #fedwiki or on the blog post I am writing link .

Catherine Cronin I have commented in the blog, Frances (link above).

Maha Bali thanks for writing this, Frances. I'm not sure exactly what the Conversation Clubs hide that Recent Changes would not. I assume that Recent Changes show only changes to people in our neighborhoods (and as such, I could load different neighborhoods to get a different set of Recent changes?) whereas Conversation Clubs includes all edits by anyone Mike added to that page, right?

The questions are: if I write a page, do I *need* to know if others have forked it? (CC licenses that allow remixing do NOT ask for people to notify the creator, although some people on Flickr ask that you do notify them even though they're using CC-BY-NC for example).

To be honest, I get kind of annoyed when two different people fork a page differently and then I have to do merge their changes together. HOWEVER, I also see the value in it - the Rajeesh and Tom are interested in taking the page in a different direction than Siobhan and Shilpa, and that as long as everyone realizes what's going on, they can keep doing that. Isn't that the point?

Frances Bell Regarding the difference netween neighbourhoods and Conversation Clubs, I guess that depends on the way you construct and operate your neighbourhood.

I just tried out 2 approaches in my own space (number of pages that load at each click).

1. Welcome Visitors 151 pages, Conversation Clubs 422 pages.

2. (Starting afresh) Welcome Visitors, Happening Folks (noone edited out of mine ie max neighbourhood within our happening group) 1905 pages.

Interesting point about CCL. I have found that it's a good idea to contact Flickr people to let them know you are using their image, as sometimes people are thrown by a lot of visits and make the image private.

I don't really understand your point about the forking. I think you are saying that you merge pages together when you think the forking is accidental (I did that myself recently). I wasn't making a value judgement about deliberate separate forks, I was raising it for discussion. I am not at all sure that Siobhan and Shilpa would have realised - it depends on their neighbourhood and other practices I think. You may be confident about knowing what changes are taking place but I am not sure that everyone is (me for example :) Anyway time will tell.

Ward Cunningham Say I arrive late from another community and decide I want to bring the bug-eyed monster tale to my community. My community won't know any of the original authors. They trust me to make sense of the tales and bring them something easy to read. So I set to work assembling a definitive copy.

I find the two four-part versions and like them both. To make one of them I drag the journal from Tom's and drop it on Siobhan's. This merges the two forks based on recognizing what is and what isn't original in both versions.

Maybe this doesn't flow very well. That's not surprising because I've made a version that nobody but me has ever seen before. I try dragging journals the other direction which give priority to the second fork's placement of paragraphs. That's better but still not good enough to take to my other friends.

I start reading carefully. I notice that Tom's contribution was really tangential and isn't going to fit in no matter what. I click into his journal to get the revision he started with. I wish I had merged this one with the other fork. But wait, I can.

I drag the historical journal (Rajesh's last edit) and merge that with Siobhan's recent work. That's it. I fork this version onto my server which is participating in two communities.

Everyone ends up happy. My other community sees some interesting work and will get around to exploring eventually. More importantly, Tom sees that my merge missed his work and drags his journal on top of my version which puts his tangent back in place, the way he likes it.

See Merge Changes