Using Fedwiki for Narrative

We take a conversation between Brian Marick and Ward et al about using fedwiki to create narratives as a prompt in a chat with a large language model (LLM).

The text of the conversation is understood as a path through a graph.

The prompt was: Take the text of the conversation as the result of a journey (sequence of waypoints, slips of paper) through a multi-way system (slip box/Zettelkasten) and imagine all the slips of paper (ideas) and sequences of slips of paper that could be traversed to reproduce the following text: (and mark any inconsistencies) [...].

See Visualizing Zettelkasten Traversal for Narrative Design for the entire chat.

The model performed a segmentation based on speaker changes and wondered if Brian Marick and Brian were the same person. A second prompt indicated that they were two different persons and asked to replace the original Mermaid flow chart with Graphviz DOT code.

Here's the corrected Graphviz DOT code with proper speaker distinctions (`brianmarick` vs. `Brian`), inconsistencies flagged, and traversal paths:

digraph zettelkasten { layout=twopi; rankdir=LR; node [shape=rect, style=filled, fontname="Helvetica"]; edge [fontname="Helvetica"]; // Nodes (with speaker distinctions) 1 [label="1: brianmarick\nFirst thoughts about fedwiki narratives"]; 2 [label="2: brianmarick\nMetaphor wiki goals (reference + through-lines)"]; 3 [label="3: brianmarick\nFedwiki notes insufficient for narrative insights"]; 4 [label="4: brianmarick\nSoftware metaphors are 'impoverished' (Aha!)" fillcolor="#ffcccc"]; 5 [label="5: brianmarick\nRethinking scripts vs. wiki rework burden"]; 6 [label="6: brianmarick\n'Kill your babies' analogy (wiki as storage)"]; 7 [label="7: Ward\nChallenge: non-metaphorical computing terms"]; 8 [label="8: brianmarick\nExisting text as 'spike' (write-to-throw-away)"]; 9 [label="9: Ward\nConflicting metaphors (conveyor vs. relay)"]; 10 [label="10: Ward\nNew Relic reorganization example"]; 11 [label="11: brianmarick\nComputational metaphors lack 'oomph'" fillcolor="#ffcccc"]; 12 [label="12: Ward\nMetaphors as unspoken frameworks (Aha!)"]; 13 [label="13: Ward\nCanyon aside (unresolved analogy)" fillcolor="#ffcccc"]; 14 [label="14: brianmarick\nConfusion about canyon reference" fillcolor="#ffcccc"]; 15 [label="15: Brian\nPraise for FedWiki's sprawl + courage"]; 16 [label="16: Brian\nNew wiki for narrative + link to old"]; 17 [label="17: Brian\nParagraphs as index cards (vs. essays)"]; 18 [label="18: Brian\n'Writing to think' vs. 'writing for audience'"]; // Primary path (solid arrows) 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5 -> 6 -> 7 -> 8 -> 9 -> 10 -> 11 -> 12 -> 13 -> 14 -> 15 -> 16 -> 17 -> 18; // Alternative paths (dotted) 2 -> 4 [style=dotted]; 4 -> 7 [style=dotted]; 7 -> 9 [style=dotted]; 9 -> 11 [style=dotted]; 1 -> 16 [style=dotted]; 6 -> 15 [style=dotted]; // Inconsistencies (pink) 4 [fillcolor="#ffcccc"]; 11 [fillcolor="#ffcccc"]; 13 [fillcolor="#ffcccc"]; 14 [fillcolor="#ffcccc"]; }