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IrcInclusion

IRC conversations can be easily included in a wiki.


Possibilities

From IRC to a Wiki

Client support: users select interesting bits of a conversation, mark lines, and their client uploads it to a Wiki. This is similar to cut and paste, but easier.

Bots: logging bots could write to wiki instead of a file (or the wiki could slurp the logs from a file). PageClusters and NameSpaces could help reduce RecentChanges clutter.

Storage

If users just upload parts of conversations as needed, no special software support is necessary.

On the other hand, if entire channels are logged to Wiki, some other features might be useful. Without going into detail about how it might be done, wikizens would probably want to quote individual messages, quote marked blocks of messages, and ensure that conversations are not modified. Possible parts of a solution: ComplexWikiObjects, TransClusion, and VersionControl. Features similar to StretchText and FadingText could be used to summarize discussions and to make unimportant conversations less visible by default.

IRC Logs and ForgiveAndForget

One possible problem with IRC logging, and the reason that #wiki on freenode doesn’t have logging, is that permanent IRC logs go against Meatball:ForgiveAndForget. This is a problem with 24/7 channel logging, not with uploading parts of conversations. IRC logs should be relatively permanent. However, there should perhaps be a way to delete some messages. Solutions include having a sympathetic GodKing/BenevolentDictator, ImmutableText (where text is deletable but not editable), and some kind of process whereby one may delete one’s own messages, but not messages from other people.

Of course, if IRC logs were editable, none of that would be necessary. OTOH, currently IRC channels are logged by a bot that dumps messages to non-wiki text files, so if there aren’t any problems now maybe ForgiveAndForget isn’t necessary for IRC logs. OT-Other-Other-H, currently IRC logs are dense masses of nearly-unstructured text; StretchText and FadingText for summarization could made them more navigable, and therefore more dangerous. …

Implementations

Activity

Terminology

Problems

See Also

Contributors

BrianTempleton


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