Anecdotes: Ward (My dad) and I recently moved c2 off a server in a colo where it had lived for over a decade because the colo was closing. Now it lives in a cloud provider. It will live on. Eventually I envision It will get moved like the Agile Manifesto to a static site for long lived prosperity as a relic of the early internet.
Can I suggest making it a torrent? Good Internet relics deserve to live duplicated in random computers all over the place, just like the Internet itself.
I'm linking to a bit earlier in time because on web.archive.org every hyperlink takes you a bit further to the future, eventually (sometime in 2016) ending up on a redirect to the JS version.
Shameless plug. I'm working on a service to solve this very problem. I hate 404s, they're so frequent even my mum knows what a 404 Page Not Found error is.
Right now I'm focusing on simple, automated link checking in a closed free alpha with a few users, but the killer feature I want to implement by the end of this month is notifying users if they redesign their website and forget to set redirects to old content. [1]
I would love to have more alpha testers, and the plan is to make it available for free to open-source projects and documentation sites, like c2.com. If you join the waitlist, I'll let you straight in.
1: I am redoing my personal website, trying different static generators, and I cringe at the thought that I am completely unaware if I break someone's bookmarks, or the RSS feed URL changes and I lose the couple followers I have. Bernard exists first and foremost to solve this problem for me, and I hope it might be useful to others that care about this issue.
the portland pattern repository was an invaluable resource for me when I was searching out programming material on the web in the early 2000s. hopefully whatever this is is just a hiccup in their service
<noscript>
<center>
<b>notice</b>
<p>javascript required to view this site</p>
<b>why</b>
<p>measured improvement in server performance</p>
<p>awesome incremental search</p>
</center>
</noscript>
Indeed, that was a relatively recent change that I never understood. It had been working without JS for a long time before that. And page loads became slower, not faster, for me.
> It is an interesting change, to a more federated style.
what does "federated" mean in this context? do you mean decentralized segmented "peer to peer" storage, or something?
unfederated wikipedia is not helpful in defining federated:
Federated content is digital media content that is designed to be self-managing to support reporting and rights management in a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. Ex: Audio stored in a digital rights management (DRM) file format.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_content
I really love(..d?) the "stream of consciousness" nature of the c2 discussions. It is easily among the greatest intellectual rabbit holes of oldschool internet. The extremely minimal, kind of robust formatting probably also contributed to why it was such a compelling read at times. Content over form, for sure.
It's the original wiki, by Ward Cunningham. It has a lot of interesting discussions about software topics. I noticed the site was down because it has a page about the "Cobol Fallacy": that it is a misconception that software would be easier to create in natural language. I wanted to see how the (old) discussion on the topic compares with the present LLM mania/break-through.
There are people saying it was the original wiki, but let me spell out what that actually means.
Before the C2 WikiWikiWeb, few web sites had experimented with making it possible for its users to alter the site's contents. Granted, there were many sites with messaging forums you could post to, and there were places where you could add review or contribute new content entries, but not anything I can remember where you could edit the fabric of the site itself. Sites back then were 'published' by someone who owned them, and any contributions would go through a moderation process before they would be accepted and published, so there was no immediacy to such edits.
The C2 wiki wiki web allowed any user to immediately make an edit or create a new page, and it the site relied upon its persistent history to roll back changes that the community deemed destructive. I remember feeling quite excited by the concept because it was so alien at the time -- that someone was willing to allow anonymous users to put stuff on a site they were ultimately publishing.
The C2 WikiWikiWeb experiment is what ultimately lead to the creation of Wikipedia: an encyclopaedia that could be edited by the end users, hence the name. (In turn, the WikiWikiWeb was named from the Hawaiian word 'wikiwiki' meaning 'quick', which alluded to the lack of any moderation steps in its edits.)
<center>
<b>notice</b>
<p>javascript required to view this site</p>
<b>why</b>
<p>measured improvement in server performance</p>
<p>awesome incremental search</p>
</center>
It does load faster now that it doesn't display anything.
There was a mirror at https://kidneybone.com/c2/wiki/ without the SPA stuff, but that seems to be 503'd right now. (And even if it wasn't, I don't think it has a root page; you'd need to type in one of the page URLs manually.)
Huh, my other pages don't have the same issue. I guess the search indexer must've died - I'll restart it in an hour or two.
FWIW, the snapshot of c2 that this runs off of is somewhat dated (https://archive.org/details/c2.com-wiki_201501), so the last ~7 years of updates after the move to the federated wiki aren't present.
Does anyone know where these original pages ended up in fedwiki after the migration?
C2 was an incredible place at its peak - I was lucky to have started my career while the community was still (only just) functional. Looking back, it's hard to over-state how formative my time on C2 was - not only did I learn a lot about pattern languages, and coding, but the Wiki idea and the way the community operated is something I still think about today.
C2 was a utopian vision of well-informed, kind, co-operative people working together in a radically open and egalitarian way. And it really did work, for a while. Unfortunately, the reasons why C2 ultimately died have been obscured by a well-meaning process of pruning that I think is meant to remove the "bad stuff" and leave only the "good stuff" for posterity. This is a shame, because the truth really is instructive - a few very prolific, toxic, borderline delusional people started dominating the wiki to the extent that more reasonable contributors just moved on. The C2 community started with an assumption that everyone could be reasoned with, and tried to handle the situation kindly and rationally. It was amazing to see the damage a very small number of people - basically just two - could do to a whole community of hundreds of well-meaning but naive people. It got to the point where there were pages dedicated to trying to think about the problems these people posed, with endless discussions about the paradox of tolerance and handling things through openness and kindness, and small factions arguing for permanent bans. Ultimately I think both badd actors _were_ banned, but by then it was too late - all the air was sucked out of the community. Watching the death of C2 unfold really darkened my view about the prospects of truly open societies, and deeply informed work that I've done on building communities since.
Today, nearly all signs of the way this devastation played out have been erased from history. If you search for the names of the malignant characters there are a few mentions here and there, but there's no way to piece together the true sequence of events. I think an important part of C2's story, and one that is more relevant today than ever, has been lost as a consequence. I'm sure Ward has the full edit history of the wiki around, and I think he should publish it, complete and unvarnished, so we can study it and learn from it.
[+] [-] pcunning|2 years ago|reply
Anecdotes: Ward (My dad) and I recently moved c2 off a server in a colo where it had lived for over a decade because the colo was closing. Now it lives in a cloud provider. It will live on. Eventually I envision It will get moved like the Agile Manifesto to a static site for long lived prosperity as a relic of the early internet.
[+] [-] javcasas|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshuanapoli|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wahnfrieden|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sunir|2 years ago|reply
I owe Ward stuff.
[+] [-] layer8|2 years ago|reply
I'm linking to a bit earlier in time because on web.archive.org every hyperlink takes you a bit further to the future, eventually (sometime in 2016) ending up on a redirect to the JS version.
Edit: Here is a mirror that is now functional again: https://kidneybone.com/c2/wiki/WelcomeVisitors. In particular, it has a working search page: https://kidneybone.com/c2/wiki/FindPage
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35952055 if you want to create your own mirror.
[+] [-] patal|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amiga386|2 years ago|reply
https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI
If you simply must redesign a site, make sure all the existing URLs still work and take someone visiting to the same equivalent in your new site.
If you're going to drop a site before its redesign is ready... what the hell are you doing?
[+] [-] sph|2 years ago|reply
Right now I'm focusing on simple, automated link checking in a closed free alpha with a few users, but the killer feature I want to implement by the end of this month is notifying users if they redesign their website and forget to set redirects to old content. [1]
I would love to have more alpha testers, and the plan is to make it available for free to open-source projects and documentation sites, like c2.com. If you join the waitlist, I'll let you straight in.
https://bernard.app
--
1: I am redoing my personal website, trying different static generators, and I cringe at the thought that I am completely unaware if I break someone's bookmarks, or the RSS feed URL changes and I lose the couple followers I have. Bernard exists first and foremost to solve this problem for me, and I hope it might be useful to others that care about this issue.
[+] [-] PcChip|2 years ago|reply
looking at you, vmware
[+] [-] kalium-xyz|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shagie|2 years ago|reply
Here's a copy of the entirety of C2 from https://archive.org/details/c2.com-wiki_201501
And an implementation of a server to run it (search indexing and such) https://github.com/adamnew123456/wiki-server
[+] [-] knome|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] psnehanshu|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tolciho|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] psnehanshu|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tempodox|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] insulanus|2 years ago|reply
Much easier to do that supporting both HTTP and JS for both read and write.
[+] [-] skrebbel|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dexen|2 years ago|reply
It is an interesting change, to a more federated style.
I ended up doing a small project inspired by this change, at https://github.com/dexen/tlb
[+] [-] ricardobeat|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fsckboy|2 years ago|reply
what does "federated" mean in this context? do you mean decentralized segmented "peer to peer" storage, or something?
unfederated wikipedia is not helpful in defining federated:
Federated content is digital media content that is designed to be self-managing to support reporting and rights management in a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. Ex: Audio stored in a digital rights management (DRM) file format. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_content
[+] [-] marttt|2 years ago|reply
Links to the JSON-formatted pages (thanks, fellow HNers!) don't seem to work either:
https://c2.com/wiki/remodel/pages/EgolessProgramming
https://proxy.c2.com/wiki/remodel/pages/
I really love(..d?) the "stream of consciousness" nature of the c2 discussions. It is easily among the greatest intellectual rabbit holes of oldschool internet. The extremely minimal, kind of robust formatting probably also contributed to why it was such a compelling read at times. Content over form, for sure.
[+] [-] bhouston|2 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham
[+] [-] gpderetta|2 years ago|reply
The C2 wiki is on of the foundational relics of the old web that need to be preserved for the future.
[+] [-] TheRealPomax|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshuanapoli|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oniony|2 years ago|reply
Before the C2 WikiWikiWeb, few web sites had experimented with making it possible for its users to alter the site's contents. Granted, there were many sites with messaging forums you could post to, and there were places where you could add review or contribute new content entries, but not anything I can remember where you could edit the fabric of the site itself. Sites back then were 'published' by someone who owned them, and any contributions would go through a moderation process before they would be accepted and published, so there was no immediacy to such edits.
The C2 wiki wiki web allowed any user to immediately make an edit or create a new page, and it the site relied upon its persistent history to roll back changes that the community deemed destructive. I remember feeling quite excited by the concept because it was so alien at the time -- that someone was willing to allow anonymous users to put stuff on a site they were ultimately publishing.
The C2 WikiWikiWeb experiment is what ultimately lead to the creation of Wikipedia: an encyclopaedia that could be edited by the end users, hence the name. (In turn, the WikiWikiWeb was named from the Hawaiian word 'wikiwiki' meaning 'quick', which alluded to the lack of any moderation steps in its edits.)
[+] [-] Scarblac|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jwilk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lammy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rileyphone|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mistrial9|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kelamir|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anononaut|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] psychoslave|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danparsonson|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shagie|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] InvisibleUp|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamnew123456|2 years ago|reply
FWIW, the snapshot of c2 that this runs off of is somewhat dated (https://archive.org/details/c2.com-wiki_201501), so the last ~7 years of updates after the move to the federated wiki aren't present.
Does anyone know where these original pages ended up in fedwiki after the migration?
[+] [-] akritrime|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shagie|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aigoochamna|2 years ago|reply
I'm more upset with the new design choices than the architecture choice. The old site was ugly in a retro-cool way. The new site is just ugly.
[+] [-] waynecochran|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thagsimmons|2 years ago|reply
C2 was a utopian vision of well-informed, kind, co-operative people working together in a radically open and egalitarian way. And it really did work, for a while. Unfortunately, the reasons why C2 ultimately died have been obscured by a well-meaning process of pruning that I think is meant to remove the "bad stuff" and leave only the "good stuff" for posterity. This is a shame, because the truth really is instructive - a few very prolific, toxic, borderline delusional people started dominating the wiki to the extent that more reasonable contributors just moved on. The C2 community started with an assumption that everyone could be reasoned with, and tried to handle the situation kindly and rationally. It was amazing to see the damage a very small number of people - basically just two - could do to a whole community of hundreds of well-meaning but naive people. It got to the point where there were pages dedicated to trying to think about the problems these people posed, with endless discussions about the paradox of tolerance and handling things through openness and kindness, and small factions arguing for permanent bans. Ultimately I think both badd actors _were_ banned, but by then it was too late - all the air was sucked out of the community. Watching the death of C2 unfold really darkened my view about the prospects of truly open societies, and deeply informed work that I've done on building communities since.
Today, nearly all signs of the way this devastation played out have been erased from history. If you search for the names of the malignant characters there are a few mentions here and there, but there's no way to piece together the true sequence of events. I think an important part of C2's story, and one that is more relevant today than ever, has been lost as a consequence. I'm sure Ward has the full edit history of the wiki around, and I think he should publish it, complete and unvarnished, so we can study it and learn from it.
[+] [-] tempodox|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gjvc|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevinmgranger|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exabrial|2 years ago|reply
What an abomination. JavaScript is ruining the internet.
[+] [-] kevinmgranger|2 years ago|reply