[20:36]  Sheve McNally: Hi

[20:37]  You: hi

[20:37]  Sheve McNally: nobody else here?

[20:37]  You: are you here for the discussion?

[20:37]  Sheve McNally: yep

[20:37]  You: it's usually a small crowd

[20:38]  Sheve McNally: Xanadu is an obscure topic

[20:38]  You: yes

[20:38]  Sheve McNally: Surprised, I thought it was long forgotten

[20:38]  You: over here is a notecard dispenser

[20:38]  Sheve McNally: Your house?

[20:38]  You: with a small summary

[20:38]  You: I bought it

[20:39]  Sheve McNally: nice place

[20:39]  You: I just uploaded a diagram I have been working on

[20:39]  Sheve McNally: the '2keys'?

[20:39]  You: http://hyperworlds.org/mindmaps/GodUniverseEverythingElse/Philosophy.html

[20:40]  Sheve McNally: can you view URLs within SL?

[20:40]  You: the only link on it so far is the "Fields of Knowledge"

[20:40]  You: so far all I have seen is the "Help" in SL

[20:41]  You: it seems to be in a browser

[20:41]  Sheve McNally: yes, but have not found any way of browsing within SL.. too bad, you think they would allow that

[20:42]  You: they are probably still working on the code to make sure it's "safe"

[20:42]  Sheve McNally: So Xanadu... I thought the web was the realization of Ted Nelson's vision

[20:43]  Sheve McNally: What remains to be done? He wanted hypertext, we have it in the web

[20:43]  You: a great deal

[20:44]  You: the links in web pages are one way, you can link to another page, but someone starting there will not see your link

[20:45]  You: there are ways to find links to a page but it is not built in

[20:45]  Sheve McNally: yes, google can show us that

[20:46]  You: and links break for a variety of reasons, file and directory name changes, deletions

[20:46]  Sheve McNally: certainly. Xanadu would have no such problems of course :)

[20:46]  You: and version comparison is not easy

[20:47]  Sheve McNally: Is anybody still working on Xanadu?

[20:47]  You: yes, links would not be based on locations in a file structure

[20:47]  You: yes, I got an email from Ted Nelson today

[20:47]  Sheve McNally: really? wow

[20:47]  You: he said he expected to have something to show by the end of the year

[20:47]  Sheve McNally: what is he doing, what is he working on

[20:47]  Sheve McNally: good for him

[20:48]  You: there is a project called Transliterature that is working on it a little at a time

[20:49]  Sheve McNally: I will look for that on the web

[20:49]  You: I have been reading about the Xanadu data structure this past week, it was fairly complicated

[20:49]  You: and the new design is simpler

[20:50]  You: so it should be easier to write front-end software for it

[20:50]  Sheve McNally: interesting. just imagine if Nelson had managed to get it up and running before TIm Berners-Lee had got the web started

[20:50]  You: yes

[20:51]  Sheve McNally: so do you write code yourself, Jack?

[20:51]  You: I have started reading "Weaving The Web" by Berners-Lee

[20:52]  You: no, I'm just an amateur reporter, trying to get the concepts out there

[20:52]  Sheve McNally: haha

[20:52]  You: Tim wanted the web to be fully editable, but the programmers didn't want to take the time to implement it in the browsers

[20:53]  You: I have started using Amaya, and editable browser

[20:54]  Sheve McNally: Yeah, but you look at Wikipedia and all the other wikis, they have had great success with user-created content, but some problems too. You need a social structure in place to encourage good editing and discourage bad editing

[20:54]  You: I'm using it to read a Rebol language tutorial

[20:54]  You: if I want to make a change to the code before copying it, I just do it, just like in a word processor

[20:55]  You: it is quite a switch

[20:55]  Sheve McNally: interesting, what did you say it is called?

[20:55]  You: Amaya

[20:55]  Sheve McNally: Amaya. Does it run under Windows?

[20:55]  You: Wikis are editable, but also have many differences from Xanadu

[20:56]  You: I think it does, I'm using it on Mac, and I know it runs on Linux

[20:58]  You: Wikis tend to publish by majority consensus, where Xanadu would allow any minority to have a version presenting it's viewpoint

[20:59]  Sheve McNally: But then you have no consistent point of view, no consensus. That's what the wikipedians fight about all the time

[20:59]  You: yes, exactly

[20:59]  Sheve McNally: For controversial topics, each group wants its view to be presented as ... normative

[21:00]  You: the emphasis in Xanadu is allowing a fair and complete presentation of all viewpoints

[21:00]  Sheve McNally: Those terms, "fair and complete" are ...

[21:01]  Sheve McNally: subject to much discussion in wikipedia.

[21:01]  Sheve McNally: The discussions are often more interesting than the articles

[21:01]  Sheve McNally: abortion, arab-israeli conflict, george bush, war in iraq, etc. etc. etc.

[21:01]  You: since everyone could create their own version of anything, they could write it to be "fair and complete" from their viewpoint

[21:02]  Sheve McNally: couldn't they edit someone else's version?

[21:02]  You: no

[21:02]  Sheve McNally: i thought that's what Xanadu was supposed to be about?

[21:03]  You: when you edit anything in Xanadu, it becomes a new version, and is automatically linked to the original

[21:03]  You: the original is set is stone, all versions are kept

[21:03]  Sheve McNally: A hall of mirrors ... hundreds of versions, each may only be different except for a comma or a typo

[21:04]  You: yes, there would be indexes created to make navagation easier

[21:04]  Sheve McNally: Then people would just argue about what makes a unique article, vs. a version of another article

[21:05]  Sheve McNally: index of a zillion versions of a single page or topic...

[21:05]  Sheve McNally: how would you differntiate them? by date, byte count.... not useful to users

[21:05]  You: that would only happen for very popular pages

[21:05]  Sheve McNally: maybe...

[21:06]  You: you would have methods to indicate versions created by the original author, and also those endorsed by him or her

[21:07]  Sheve McNally: So the original author is more authoritative than subsequent authors?

[21:07]  Sheve McNally: not necessarily so

[21:07]  You: and there would be filters to allow you to ignore people with little of value to say

[21:07]  Sheve McNally: yes, indeed. Slashdot does some of that

[21:08]  You: not necessarily more authoritive, but you should at least know who creates each version

[21:08]  Sheve McNally: yes

[21:08]  Sheve McNally: Jack, I must go

[21:08]  Sheve McNally: It has been nice talking to you about this

[21:09]  You: OK, thanks for coming, may I publish this on the website?

[21:09]  Sheve McNally: um, sure