The Myth of Merula Philosophy Wiki has gone through many incarnations since I impulsively created it, but each time, it has never really gelled for me. Now I finally know what I will do with it. Its purpose in life is to be a work of community science fiction. It will be an encyclopedia of alien philosophies that Blackbird has encountered. That is, a bunch of people will have fun making up alien philosophies. Soon I will begin to put some content in place, as well as some guidelines for contributing.

Today I took the plunge and made the philosophy wiki a fictional extension of The Myth of Merula. I will be writing in it as Alice Mountolive. This blog will be the only non-fictional part of the Dreamfishery.com Web Site. It’s very liberating. It’s not the first time I’ve considered doing this, but for some reason, something always held me back. Maybe it was only narrative conventions holding me back. I’m not sure what it was. I can think of no good reason not to make the whole Web Site fictional. But I can think of a lot of good reasons in favor of it. It’s more fun that way, it allows more freedom and possibility, and it enhances the story of The Myth of Merula. Anyway, being me is so dull and restricting sometimes.

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Two days ago, I accidentally wiped out all of my philosophy wiki content and users. As I was trying to troubleshoot some issuues people brought to my attention about the roundedblue skin, I realized I could not change the skin in my wiki. When I would try to change the skin in my preferences, I would get an error page. Some googling brought up three hits about other people reporting the same error, all of them experiencing the error for the first time after upgrading MediaWiki to version 1.9.3, as I had recently done. I could only find one response to these public pleas for help. This response was the suggestion to delete or rename LocalSettings.php and then go to the wiki’s index.php page and go through the same steps as if installing MediaWiki for the first time. After following these steps, it appears I’ve lost all my data. I did not write down the exact error message that started this whole mess, and I can’t find it again, even after over twenty minutes of googling for it. continue reading »

Wikis Go Web 2.0 with OpenServing

I just learned a couple days ago that Wikia is launching Openserving, which will freely host wikis and will allow each wiki owner to keep 100% of advertising revenue. These freely hosted wikis will not be plain vanilla MediaWiki wikis. They will be wikis that have been souped up to incorporate elements of social web communities like Digg. An example of what I’m talking about can be viewed at the ArmchairGM website. Wikia, which is a for-profit organization started by the Wikipedia founders, has purchased ArmchairGM for $2 million in cach and Wikia stock.

Could the Living Philosophy Wiki Find a Better Home in the Openserving Community?

As soon as I learned about Openserving, my first thought was that the Openserving community may be a more appropriate location for the Living Philosophy Wiki. I had several reasons in mind. continue reading »

I’ve finally gotten around to creating a custom skin for the Living Philosophy Wiki. Now it has the same look and feel as the Squirrel Tao blog. Like the Squirrel Tao theme, it is based upon a customization of the Rounded V2 WordPress theme by Ghyslain Armand. In the process of customizing my wiki skin, I’ve also integrated the blog with the wiki, so that both share a navigation bar in common.

The First Stumbling Block – A Broken Stylesheet Link

I had started to create a custom skin several times in the past, using the instructions that can be found on the Jnana Base wiki, only to encounter a problem after Step 8. That is, I would make a copy of the default monobook skin and rename it. I would change “monobook” to my own skin name, everywhere the word “monobook” appeared within my own skin php file. I would upload my new skin and set my personal preference to use this skin. Voila, I would excitedly preview my work only to see completely unstyled HTML, all laid out in one single column, in Times New Roman, with huge H1 headings and the whole bit. It turned out that the link to the stylesheet was broken. continue reading »

It has been over four months since I started the Living Philosophy Wiki. I don’t regret starting it and leaving it wide open. That didn’t hurt anything. I have come to the realization, though, that nobody much will be attracted to the wiki until it has more content. It will not have more content until I add more content. The only content I can add to it will be my own personal philosophy. Well, that’s not the only content I can add to it. I can add my summaries of other philosophers, but that would be a wasted effort. That already exists. I want to start something new.

Because of that chain of thought, I feel freed to be personal. In being freed to be personal, I will be able to write. I have been frozen all this time, ever since I started the wiki. I never got beyond creating a framework consisting of the biggest questions. My own questions, along with the blank pages, then proceeded to intimidate me! continue reading »

It’s a good thing that philosophy has been a lifelong interest of mine and that I intend to be an administrator of, as well as a contributor to, the Living Philosophy Wiki for the rest of my life. I could easily write just a little bit of philosophy in the wiki almost every day, until the end of my days. Even if I ended up being the only person who ever contributed anything to it, it would still end up being a big online book. If not for that thought, and if not for reading an article in the Guardian about the 1% rule, I might be feeling a little bit discouraged, right about now. Nobody besides me has yet created or edited any content in the wiki. Of course, I’ve only announced it in two places – here in this blog and in one forum to which I belong. It’s only about a week old.

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Today I started a wiki about philosophy. I’ve decided to call it the Living Philosophy Wiki. This is what I wrote about it today, on its About page. continue reading »