pcplantdb

[Richard Archer <pcplantdb@juggernaut.com.au>]

Since I'm not formally part of this "group" it doesn't matter much
if I burn a few bridges, so let me spell out some things that someone
who wants to be part of this group in the long term probably can't.


At 7:00 PM -0500 29/8/04, Chad Knepp wrote:

>  o I switched horses at the point when it seemed like you would be
>    easier to get to move on this than Lawrence.  I also am pretty
>    against the idea of committing a lot of resources toward getting
>    ibiblio a server for all of the previously mentioned reasons.
>    Going this way obviates the need to even have that conversation
>    (something I was dreading).

This is a poor reason to choose what you consider to be a technically
inferior platform which will take more work to produce a lesser result.

Even though it wouldn't be my platform of choice, if it's what you're
most comfortable with I say stick to your guns and go with Zope.
The two lead technical people in the group want Zope... and Rich M
has indicated his willingness to proceed with this platform.
Even old dogs can learn new tricks :)


>  o I also think it would be pretty sad to fork the project before a
>    line of code was written.  I'm ok if we go our seperate ways
>    at the end of this development cycle or even midway, but I really
>    think it's important to give it a good effort to work together.  I
>    am also nervous about forking the project in the sense that I'm
>    afraid two separate projects will not add up to as much as one
>    with everyone participating.

Two projects?

As far as I can see, a fork at this point would involve Lawrence
leaving. And what would the two groups consist of then?

In the red corner: The PIW project.
In the blue corner: Lawrence's wiki.

Personally I can't see that a wiki adds any value whatsoever to
the PIW project. In fact, the two are completely incompatible.

The goal of PIW is to create an extremely rigidly structured dataset
so that it can be analysed in a variety of ways. With this goal in
mind, free-form data is a wasted resource since it can't easily be
searched or analysed.

The goal of a wiki is to allow people to enter and edit free-form
text and the only searching/analysis which is feasible is a full
text search.

I feel Lawrence's proposal that the PIW project suck data out of
something as nebulous as his wiki would be a frustrating nightmare
of coding and ultimately doomed to failure.

I think that what Lawrence wants from this group is almost in
direct opposition to the original goals of the PIW project.

As another example, the goals of the PIW are to store and analyse data
about plants and relationships between them. I would go so far as to say
that images are unnecessary to meet this goal, although it would be nice
to have them available as a reference. But Lawrence's burning desire for
streaming video is simply nonsensical. Wanting to add video to a dataset
of structured information is incomprehensible and I suspect nothing more
than a red herring plucked out of the ocean of FUD to support Lawrence's
spurious assertion that the benevolence of ibiblio is necessary for
this project to be hosted in the long term.

But it's red herrings like these two examples that make Lawrence's
participation in this project destructive and ultimately dooms the
PIW to a future of being nothing more than a glorified wiki when it
has the potential to be orders of magnitude more functional and
useful than that.

I think the other members of this group have an obligation to stand
up to Lawrence so that the PIW can achieve it's full potential for
the benefit of the whole pc community.

 ...R.