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Wiki of Shadows

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14:21 / 17.06.03

This is a spin off from the Time for new Magickal systems thread. and also relates to the RPG Hypersigil Project thread.

I have an active interest in communication. Especially scholarly communication.

I think that new methods of communicating and representing information can lead to new ideas and new ways of working. This applies both to scientific and esoteric work.

Wiki's are a website which ANYBODY can edit. They shouldn't work, but yet they do. Ocassionally you get people causing hassle, but on the whole it's not very much fun to break something which doesn't try to stop you. (one university installed on it's mainframe computer a command called "crash" which crashed the entire system and anybody could run, thus removing the sport of trying to crash it).

Also blogs, online tarot readings, email, forums, googlemancy etc. Could you build the magickal community version of sourceforge?

You can do things with a PC/website which you just can't do by hand, for example picking 10000 tarot cards and creating statistics of which were most/least common

I'm an experienced web programmer, and would be interested in
setting up systems and services for people to experiement with.

14:37 / 17.06.03

A wiki inviting magicians would be like a virtual psychic fayre, that would be great. You would probably have to create some rules for them to break though :-) or else let them make their own to break.

You could have nodes based on styles (a wicca node, a voodoo node) or perhaps based on methods of magic (a Tarot node, a Qabalah node, a Sigil node etc) akin to fora, with subnodes off them as people wished.

You could have an oracle node...

15:00 / 17.06.03

Here's a project using this that I won't have the time to actually do: WikiCrowley. Reading Crowley, he constantly references his other works, using codes and formulae he explains in other places which can send the reader about in circles trying to follow him, unless you've already read the lot and know what he's referencing. Magick In Theory And Practice is one example that would make a great hypertext. I have an annotated version of it that would be tremendously easier to deal with were it hyperlinked rather than footnoted. This is something that could be built on a wiki, as a project many people could chip in on. I don't think I would really bother, honestly, but its a fine example of the sort of thing you can do with this medium.

19:23 / 17.06.03

I'd certainly be into a CrowleyWiki just to see the interpretations that others have. It'd be a great resource as well. Check out the PhilKDicksExegesis Wiki as an example.

Another thought would be a practicing wiki where mage's could write out thier invocations/evocations etc and then comment on their efeects. Others could then follow the same spells and add their two bits, expanding the workings ala GEK & Peace Mango.

I believe we could start a Wiki on the Barb site - Nietzsch E. do we need permission from Barb admins, or do we just start another area in the global barb wiki?

Spyder Todd 2008

23:15 / 17.06.03

Quantum, I'm a big fan of an Oracle node. And it would be more interesting if you let everyone come up with their own rules and then figure out how to break them.
Mind you, I know nothing about programming, but I would diffenitely use it if it existed.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

23:39 / 17.06.03

Now this is what I'm talking about. Magick wiki! I hope that one day my futre self will take an interest in something like this in order to aid my past self. Or maybe that my past self will take an interest etc. etc.

It'd take a wee while to settle down, becuase there's always someone wanting to wade in claiming to be the Lordly High Kick-ass Jedi Master Vampire Knight Ipsisisisisissssmusness of Something Or The Other, and enough people with limited critical facalties to buy into their nonsense. But there's also a lot of people with solid info to disseminate and their hearts in the right place, so I guess it would work. Eventually. And if it did... if only it did... then, well, yowsa.

01:06 / 18.06.03

I don't think we need to burden Tom with additional traffic - I think I've got all sorts of space on my ISP for a web-page etc that I'd be willing to donate to this sort of wiki. I know shit about HTML, so I'd want assistance/tutoring in setting it up, but that shouldn't be too hard to arrange...

Inevitable? yes.
Inspired? absolutely.
Pointless? ??I don't understand the question.
Dangerous? ummmm.... qualified maybe. To whom?? What are the risks?

Nietzsch E. Coyote

02:35 / 18.06.03

Well I have never asked permission but that is because I have just thrown up small wiki's. This wiki of shadows will only be fun if it is huge. How much space does a wiki take up?

How would we structure this?

08:13 / 18.06.03

What I was thinking of was kind of a suite of interconnected services: Wiki, blog, forum, cgi gizmos.

So for example | (or other people with accounts) can build a tarot spread generator. But it can link into wiki nodes for a card in a given position, or relationships between any two cards.

What I'm considering registering is a dreamhost account with MySQL, shell access and subdomains too if needed. At the very least I'd want PHP, CGI & MySQL.

Suggestion of policy #1: nothing is secret. If you want something kept secret, don't put it on the site. This way we don't have to worry about security so much.

suggestion of policy #2: no workings on the main site (like barbelith). It's for info, not effect. We can make a subdomain if people want an area to "do" stuff.

I mentioned SourceForge earlier. For people who aren't familiar with it: it provides services for running software projects; CVS (versioning system), bug tracking, forums, websites, downloads, mirrors etc.

I like the idea of being able to set up "correspondances" between nodes. Eg. Tarot/Pentacles <=> Elements/Earth and then even make the correspendance a node with comments.

I'm considering tikiwiki.

Heh. I'm currently considering sourceryforge.org :-)

08:56 / 18.06.03

sourceryforge has a nice ring to it ;-) what does tiki mean?

Let's do it, let's do it, we've got the people and the knowledge and the motivation- magickalwikipatrolgo!

On the invading ipssissi-mississippi-minima, bring 'em on- if we're importing a swathe of hardheaded barbeloids and experienced occult types they won't get very far. Pretentious powermongers don't prosper in an environment populated by informed critical pragmatists dead set against heirarchy. Damn, re-reading that I sound pretentious myself, arse. But you know what I mean- troll-"I am grand magister xxxx..." wiki-"So what?"

I like those policies Elseware, and I'd like a node containing codes of practice (note the plural) where people can put their magickal moralities (do what thou wilt, the principles developed for the Barbelith and Global Workings thread etc.). That way they are not explicit rules but if someone is being an arse you could point them to the node.

I'd love to help develop an Oracle node, encompassing all the divination methods to be found (up to and including Phyllorhodomancy, the Roman divination by rose petals!).
When it reaches a sufficient stage you could have a first level of divination that randomly chose a method for you, took you to that node and then did the divination as well- metawikimancy. So one time you might get an I-Ching reading, next a googlemancy, etc.

13:16 / 18.06.03

If there is enough interest then I'll get a domain registered and buy an account. I don't really want to attach it to the rest totl.net as it might bother some of the other totl people so I'll probably register an all-new account. ~100quid/year. Which is not *too* expensive, but I'll wait until I get some more +ive interest.

domain name suggestions? Should be short as possible and phonetically spelt, so that if someone mentions it in a pub the person can correctly guess how to spell it.

I'll try and start setting up a DEMO in the next few days. This is to try out the technology, not to start building a resource...

13:23 / 18.06.03

Ask people to spread the word to gauge interest. What do you reckon the critical mass for success would be?

13:55 / 18.06.03

On the subject of "security" - do we want to keep the wiki to 'lithers to start with so as to set the tone and amass a certain amount of information/template?

14:15 / 18.06.03

I'd say 100 would be enough, it could probably start with about 30. We should just keep it open to everyone, only people that come in contact with 'lithers or who visit this website would know about it anyway until word got around.

15:17 / 18.06.03

OK. I've been playing with TikiWiki which offers lots of neat
toys like blogs, forums etc.

A *test* server is running at:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/gizmos/tiki/tiki-index.php

feel free to have a play around. It's a bit daunting as I've turned on every single feature to see what they all do.

I wonder if I can hack the inline smiley code to do the Tarot card thing again?

17:58 / 18.06.03

I'm excited about this project and will definitely help add as much info & content as possible.

go wiki go

*

18:13 / 18.06.03

This is a brilliant idea; I'm all for it. I really like sourceryforge.org as a domain name, if we can get it. This has the potential to get really big, I feel. Is there a certain point at which "big enough to sustain" becomes "too big to sustain"?

I'll pass the word around my arcanologist friends; they're even lazier than me if you can imagine that but I'm sure once the ball is rolling they'll be interested.

Hm. Perhaps one could develop helper scripts which would assist in the maintenance of the wiki, and treat them as servitor entities housed in programming; I know very little about programming but it might help keep down trolls and manage the project as it grows.

Something that might keep the costs for space down might be for people to donate spare server space that they have available, making it sort of like a wiki-webring. I'm not sure how feasible this is but then we only need enough space for a portal and the core topics/sections. People can add their pages on their own servers and maybe allocate a certain amount of space beyond that.

18:32 / 18.06.03

sourceryforge.org is currently available, if someone wants to register it. This does sound terribly cool, with one of the big possible features being archives of web accessible magick materials. I've got most of Crowley and the various Libers archived on my PC, along with numerous other docs looted from public archives. I can throw all that up, certainly. I've been meaning to do that anyway somewhere.

18:33 / 18.06.03

Incidently, don't forget that Wikis link nicely to other wikis. UseMod for instance includes an InterWiki link for exactly this sort of thing. So, in growth, there could be some distributed work here as well.

*

19:26 / 18.06.03

I'd be interested in seeing an ongoing list of servitors and egregores collected from all conceivable sources, with correspondences and other details as fits. Maintenance of a huge database of links to various magically inclined websites, with the aforementioned servitorscripts to report dead links, seems like a must-have.

Learning that is paid for only by sharing other learning, and with the effort it takes to learn? Yeah! Count me in.

Makes my arcanological academy idea look like kindergarten. That was an attempt to go to the opposite side of the spectrum-- a high level of exclusivity and research scrutiny to prevent trolls and other ignorami, rather than ignoring the ignorami and causing them to vanish. I also wanted the academy to eventually gain respect as a legitimate academic research organization. It appeals to my ordered side. The wiki appeals to my chaotic side much more, though, and that's the side I usually listen to.

20:11 / 18.06.03

I know jack-all about wikis... but, might this hypothetical wiki be the place to put the indices to our various rune threads, tarot threads, and my own personal favorite, the Useful Techniques for a Well Rounded Sorceror thread? 'Cause it always bums me out that extraordinarily useful and complete threads fall into obscurity because of their very completeness.

Presumably to avoid Speaking From Upon High, it would be noted that this is Barbelith's take on the subject. I mean, if authors even get mentioned on wikis.

20:53 / 18.06.03

Tommy, there's already a place for that sort of thing on Barbelith's Wiki. Though it could certainly use some love. Feel free to work on it if you're so inclined and inspired.

Spyder Todd 2008

23:14 / 18.06.03

I just thought of something. It probably will be no big deal, but what's to keep all the "Harry Potter is the Devil!" and "Magic isn't real, it's the spawn of Satan!" and "Damn all magicians to eternal suffering!" yutzos out there from interfereing with this baby once it's running? Am I being overly paranoid, or does anyone think they could be a threat?

03:11 / 19.06.03

I'm a little uncomfortable with that, as well. And I have no idea how one would protect a wiki from that sort of mischief.

Mirror sites? Regular backups? (done by whom?)

Nietzsch E. Coyote

03:43 / 19.06.03

wikis can be set to near infinite back ups

10:04 / 19.06.03

How do you add to it? There needs to be a 'wiki101' page I reckon.

19:58 / 19.06.03

OK. I've learned how to admin it a bit better. I've set it so that you have to register an account to edit pages.

I'm not sure how easy making plug-ins like "generate a tarot reading" would be. Make that should be seperate to the main code...

Spyder Todd 2008

23:55 / 19.06.03

Diffinitly agree with Quantum. Something has to explain it to us non-technowizards.

Hmmm... I guess this site would give a whole new meaning to the word "techno-wizard", wouldn't it?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

20:29 / 20.06.03

As to wind-up merchants of the "Harry Potter Ate My Baby" sort: I figure that kind of thing's inevitable. It needn't be a disaster, however. Wikipedia copes pretty well, and they're a much bigger target. They cope partly by corraling dodgy posts into a seperate section; these posts don't interfere with the rest of the wiki but they're still readable, thus avoiding accusations of censorship from the frea speach contingent. (And some of 'em are quite funny.)

*

15:32 / 23.06.03

"The museum of pointless grafitti." I definitely like that idea.

22:48 / 23.06.03

OK. Some more instructions.

To play go to the demo site and register an account using the box on the top right.

A wiki node (aka page) can be created and edited by any registered user (except the homepage and a few other special pages).

You can create a new page using the "Quick edit a Wiki page" box. Just type in the name of the page you want to create. To link to another page just use ((NameOfNode)).

Feel free to email me or message me on barbelith: elseware AT totl.net

14:49 / 14.08.03

Another update on this. I decided to ditch the tikiwiki software as it's pretty but a bit tricky to use. I'm going to use the software developed by the people at WikiPedia.

I've gone as far as registering a domain and setting it up! Go and have a look... here. All readers of this forum invited (read encouraged) to contribute.

14:53 / 14.08.03

"> sorry about that. I cocked up the html. The URL is
http://www.sourceryforge.org

15:48 / 14.08.03

as to the idea of an "oracle node" I had mused over using Personality Forge... a website where you can create and let lose chatbots as an experiment to chat with each other and carbon-based people... and making a chatbot divinating servitor.

this I have not yet done. I have to learn the programming language and so on and other things keep getting in the way.

15:49 / 14.08.03

also, you can chat with the 'bots away from the Personality Forge site.

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