What I'd like to see in everything
I've tentatively brought this up in the
ChatterBox a few times now and I think my thoughts have reached a point where it's warranted to commit them to a
node. Seeing as this is
personal stuff I'm putting it in here, the
Day Log, the 31
st of March, 2001.
In general I
agree with the way
this site is set up. There are
improvements possible in a number of
areas, granted, but my guess is that
certain individuals (to name one) are working on most of the
gripes and
problems right now. What I'm referring to is the
grand scheme, the
big picture behind Everything
2.
Ooohhh, here come the nasty
soft links,
downvotes and angry
/msg's. But hear me out for a minute, will you?
What I'd like to see is a rather restricted form of direct linking
1, namely direct linking to
- and only to - wu's in the Log sections
2 of the
database.
They're there for a reason
Now, that reason may not be the one I perceive, but I'm not too picky when I can mold something to better match my own views...
How I see it, the Logs are there for
noders to add stuff to the
database that is
personal and, therefore, does not belong in the database proper even though it is often
interesting.
I can think of quite a few instances where personal experiences, thoughts or actions can
illustrate3 a
factual writeup and give it more
depth for the reader. Flesh it out, if you will.
At the moment the only truly feasible way to add such a personal part to a writeup is to add it to the writeup in the database itself. Because if you
link it to a writeup in the Day Log as it stands now, it gets drowned out by the
number of other writeups in the Log that are completely
irrelevant to your factual writeup. So it doesn't at the moment make
sense to link between factual nodes and writeups in the Log sections
4.
The reason direct linking is not
implemented in the everything
2 structure is - probably - that it's not
in line with the big idea behind E2. When you're
searching for
something, you want to be able to type a few words in the
search box and get taken to a
place where you can learn about what you want to learn about. But the
beauty of the
no-direct linking implementation is that you see
all the other possible
meanings of the
word or
phrase you were looking for. That's one of the strong points of E2 in my opinion.
But that
reasoning breaks down when applied to the Log sections, now, doesn't it?
If you link to one of the Log sections, the
person following your link gets taken to the
complete node, with all the writeups added to the Log for that day, ranging from
Fencing practice,
XP woes, tired convictions, birthdays, the
South Pole,
ER,
smoking alone,
sleep,
lesbian moms, ... I could go on forever.
Not what you want now is it?
Enter my proposition and it all makes sense again!
Implementation?
Well, okay... Not too clear on that point yet. Which is also the reason for me not having written an
e-mail regarding this to
dem bones or any of the
other developers yet. Or maybe I should, regardless. They might be a lot
smarter than I imagine... heh.
1 With "direct linking" I mean the ability to hard link directly to one single writeup
2 i.e. Day Log and Dream Log
3 For example, my own solo writeup and my addition to the Day Log of March 8, 2001
4 Even so, I've done it and probably will keep on doing it for lack of a better solution at the moment