Topic: [DVC]DevCoin - Official Thread - Moderated - page 302. (Read 1058949 times)

Once upon a time that Matt something guy who seemed to be one of the top free open source perl-CGI authors at the time (at least I think it was him, this was like way back in the 1990s) had a system that seems like it would be a great fit with the "distributed everything" philosophy folks around here are so fond of.

It was called Hypernews, and it was pretty much just a distributed forum.

It created a "tree" of sections with subsections with subsections etc, but you could also tell it the URLs of other instances of the system located on other people's sites (or other sites of your own of course) and it would subsume them into the tree.

The catch of course with all such hierarchies is you always end up with two places to look for content, so you'd have to keep asking yourself whether a particular item/post best belongs in, for example, a devcoin section of an altcoin section of a bitcoin forum or one of the bitcoin-forum sections of an other-coin section of a devcoin forum.

But across the entire Hypernews network all the posts in the devcoin section of the other-coins section of a coin-forum would all appear, if that forum's admin chose to include such subsections into their tree/hierarchy.

Possibly http://sourceforge.net/projects/hypernews/ might be the hypernews I am thinking of.

I notice that http://sourceforge.net/projects/hypernews/ has two way email gateways too, which causes me to wonder how married Unthinkingbit is to Simple Machines Forum in his bounties for an email-enabled forum.

Maybe an alternate approach would be to add bounties for "subsuming other instances of the forum on other people's sites" functionality to Simple Machines Forum?

Because wouldn't it be nice if our own forum somewhere could simply subsume this whole alternative currencies section of this forum into itself?

So all the many coins' own forums could all share the same "other coins" section across them all, maybe even with an ability to redirect/link the parts of it that pertain directly to their own main/top topic into the main body of their forum so their own users need not go look in the "other coins" section to find any posts from there that actually belong (on their site) in their own this-coin section?

-MarkM-

+1 for initiative

People of Devcoin.

I hereby happily announce that I have registered

devmusic.org (for compositions, melodies, jingles, etc..)

and

devsound.org (for sounds, noises, voices, etc)

and will work as the serveradmin and manager of these two sites.

I will now create websites similar to the design of devcoin.org and will additionaly experiment with a frontend and backend for uploading, reviewing and distribution of music files.

I have been an ambitioned hobby musician for over 30 years, and will create and upload a few pieces of music and sound that will be free for everyone to use.
My dayjob is a flash, php and javascript programmer, and I have been working as selfemployed programmer since 2005.

Please stay tuned. I will post progress here first.

Thanks for your attention.

George

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Yes exactly, that is my definition too.
My music is free for sharing and "tweaking" even for commercial products, as long as proper attribution is given. (e.g a link to some devcoin sound repository wherever that would be)
What is NOT allowed is that someone just takes my piece of work and sells it as his.
He must do enough transformation so as it is not anymore an exact clone of my work.

PS: posting a reply on bitcointalk is incredibly frustrating today... I had to retry 10 times...

With CC BY-SA wouldn't that just mean that whatever music the artist posted could be remixed under those terms however someone wanted? And if the artist felt really inspired they could also post the ingredients to the track, such as samples, separate vocal tracks, transcripts, etc? I think some Jamendo (http://www.jamendo.com/en) artists release under CC BY-SA.

I would like to propose a bounty for qt images and new icons.  8 shares for the images and icons used in the qt, 4 shares for the second best set of icons.

Any objections, or should anything be changed??

I think this is a perfect example of it being buried. It's *there*, but it's still hard to find. Under the Business section there's a link to Where To Spend Your Altcoins article, which is probably how I found it originally. It's buried under a lot of information, though, and the label 'business' could be misleading, since that's a term typically aimed toward people who want to sell things, rather than people who want to buy things.

'Shopping' exists as a category (http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=category:shopping&s[]=shopping), but it's not listed under any of the topics on the mainpage. It's not under commerce, devcoin, or devtome. Even searching simply for 'shopping,' it's the eighth search result. If there's a prominent page where it's linked, I haven't been able to find it, though that's not to say I didn't miss it.

The topic tree is also inconsistent. Some of the links lead to category pages, some directly to articles. This can also be confusing for people trying to categorize their articles who find that a 'category' doesn't exist.

More interlinking will help (I'm trying to add pertinent links to sections as I find them).

Another thing I start wondering:

I have seen that the devcoin wallet looks different than most other coin wallets, because the creator of the devcoin wallet deliberately ommited the usage of the QT library, because it is proprietary.
Well, atleast that's my reasoning why the wallet looks the way it does, or am I just paranoid?

Now let's analyze how incredibly self sabotaging this would be if I was to create free music without using any proprietary  piece of hardware or software.  

Because then I can surrender and abandon my ambition for creating free music for devcoin-network immediately.

Are my fears justified?  

The music I create will be free, because I decide so. But the means to create my music are certainly not free. (over the years I spend a few thousand dollars on music software alone, how much money I put in music hardware and instruments I will not tell you because you would cry.)

if I create free music, it means I provide the sample materials (WAV files), the midi files, and descriptions about the devices (hardware, software) I used to create that specific sound.
How I distributed the sound on say 8 channels, and what panning, eq and dynamics I used in the mixing. Now THAT does make sense and can be considered open source.

But how do I describe the 10'000 hours I spend training my skills to be able to create the music in the first place?

If "open source" means a person can learn how to reproduce my work, doesn't this mean that he has to learn how to be a professional musician first?
So there is a line that can't be crossed. Open source with music means I explain every step I did, but how do I transmit an explanation for how I moved my vocal chords to create the sound?

Yes ok, but wait a minute. If I were to be a voice artist, willing to create copyright free (creative commons) voice samples , does open source in the broader sense mean that I have to give the world access to my vocal chords, so they can tweak my voice the way they like?

At what point does this argument sound completely ridiculous?

I think a devtome for musicians would have to be about free music, meaning the artist has agreed to give the music away for free (well not really, he hopes to earn some DVC) and if available free transcriptions of the notes played (if composition, etc) but open source is not really valid at all with an artform like music, because the musician himself is the source, and he is not going to be able to share his body and spirit not even if he wanted to.

So maybe we shouldn't be so fixed on this definition of open source, because some artforms will simply not work with that definition anyway.

It's not just that. For art and music in particular, free is not the same as open-source or at least the scale of licensing matters a lot. Open-source means being willing to relinquish the 'source'. Markm wrote about this in the past, that such forms might amount to the core or stepped design process as well as the finished article. So yes that requires people and expertise, but is also requires artists being willing to release the model, layers, components - source. To be able to broadly utilise open-source people have to be ablt to tweak it, change it, adjust it without necessarily going back to the originator. You can't do that with a complied or locked finality without having all the constituent bits that make up the ends. Music and art, musicians and artists, face this challenge. One step at a time...

Here's the full devcoin business link: http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=where_to_spend_your_devcoins

@georgem: No site exists like devtome for music, so nobody has earned DVC from it.    There are not enough admins for a music site.

so, can someone answer me this question:

to this date, has anyone ever earned DVC by creating free music or sound?

With free music I mean a composition, and with free sound I mean stuff like noises, voices, etc..

One of the tasks I perform is to spot check articles and grammar, not to "catch" people like some sort of DevNazi, but to make sure the content is either original or belongs to the writer.

For example, I noticed one person's content was originally posted elsewhere. One solution: 1. On the Devtome page, identify the location of the original post. 2. Go to the location where it was first posted and add a statement "This article is also on Devtome." 3. Take a screenshot of that original post with the Devtome statement in case your Devtome article is ever reviewed or comes under scrutiny. You will now be prepared to give a defense for your Devtome entry. This is not a 100% rule, it's just one route to make sure that folks are using their own content and that the writer is ready to demonstrate it belongs to them.

If an article is clearly your own and it is easily identified that you are the owner with the source clearly pointing to the original material, it really shouldn't be a problem.

GCW, you make a good point about prior ownership of a piece. A few of my own articles are copyrighted and in print. I had to demonstrate that I owned the copyright, which, of course, wasn't difficult. But some people will get frenzied if they find duplicate material out there. If you own it, then just be prepared. On at least two occasions, people have fired off notes to UTB: "AAGGH. He's a plagiarist! His material is in print already." The funny thing is that the material I put up here is even more recent than the print material. And then they wanted proof that I'm the same Ethan Harris as the books. But once that is established with your admin, you do gain a level of trust and it becomes less of a burden if the issue comes up again. If you're a published author, even self-published, you know how long it takes to get a revision to process. On Devtome, you just edit the page. I like the idea that for people who are willing to search, a lot of my content is available open source. It's kind of like an Easter Egg for your audience. And once they are here, they tend to click around. Something like 10% of the people who pop on to my articles click through to other content.

And while I'm thinking about it, there are some writers here who I think should really think of bundling their material to promote Devtome by using Smashwords. Include a front-piece that says something like "This material is freely available on Devtome, the home of content covering a host of genres." Or something like that. My first step in creating accessible, carry-out versions of Devtome content is at the bottom of http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=custer_survivors_101_preface. I want people to take the content, send it to others, pass it around and always know that Devtome is where they got it. Everytime they open the article they should see Devtome as the source. So if anyone has ideas on how to help me track downloads, please let me know. I tried Google Analytics, but it doesn't like the page extensions.

Points and questions are good. As I said, Devtome is a work in progress. I’m not the best person to be answering this, so this is all my own take:

Devtome is about building an open-source repository of information, building a revenue generation source to re-invest into Devcoin and projects, and a way to incorporate a much wider interest, audience and user base for cryptos to date and the idea of open-source specifically. For Devcoin that means an underlying support via funding development, but as you note devtome and devcoin are not actually Devcoin exclusive. That’s the point.

I agree that Devtome organisation could be better, but at the same time there’s little point having nicely organised garbage or plagiarised work. I’d assume with time some more plugins could be added to pretty the site and make navigation simpler. I work on categorising articles and organising Devtome, so I’m particularly interested in your perspective on finding articles. Although I appreciate the frontpage could be more simply categorised, to date I’ve just focused on putting it all there to browse.

On translators, that link is on the front page. I assumed people would just look at the tree on the front page - see 'Devtome' - 'Translators' - and go there: http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=start#topics Or alternatively just select 'Devtome' and access a list of relevant devtome articles. Similarly with 'Philosophy' or 'E-Currency' etc. That doesn’t seem to be the case, so I’m interested in why that is?

I also agree that a separate concise summary is necessary to break down core topics - why I’m suggesting a FAQ to be incorporated into Devcoin.org. Devtome isn’t just a wiki as you point out. It’s effectively an amalgamation of a wiki, blog and editorial opinion piece because there's generally no censorship. In terms of ‘earning’ dvc for writing particular articles, compensation is increasingly related to quality and readership, implying the reward for writing an article of little value will over time trend towards that broad consensus as more people get involved and so the incentive to submit them diminishes. I concede that will take time. Many articles are sourced and referenced, many are not. Referencing is now a factor in ratings devtome.com/doku.php?id=devtome_rater so should improve where appropriate.

Separation of content style - there's been discussion previously on this. It comes down to similar issues to other language sites - resources. Adding a new site or blog that focuses on a particular topic or style requires a whole new set of people and time to do it, and do it properly. I’m somebody who thinks it would be a good idea for a limited target focus, but can also understand the challenging practicalities and potential cost of fragmenting content and resources before enough of a foundation has been laid to get people interested and onboard.

giftculturewriting - The article you mention, it’s listed under ‘devcoin links’, ‘shopping’, ‘business’ etc, but maybe I’m just assuming people know where to look? Ideas are very welcome

eeh - I agree

For prevention in the future:

I know there are people who search content for plagiarism, since right after I put this up http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=the_trap I got a PM about how I needed to take it down because it was also uploaded to Smashwords, which has a copyright notice. I explained that authors retain copyright at Smashwords and it was already licensed under CC BY-SA, so everything was fine.

Is each and every article run through a web-based plagiarism checker, or do new writers get checked and then there are periodic spot checks? It might be helpful to post this information on the main 'get set up with Devtome' pages so that people can be aware of the process, and it might help discourage people intending the work the system.

As for the penance, I'm a little confused about the 'all but 5 million' part. Notabot later said they would send all earnings and holding nothing back. It does seem better to be held accountable instead of quitting, but I'll leave it to the admins to figure out the particulars. Notabot sounded sincere in their explanation, and I like to believe there will be follow-through, but I also wonder if there is some kind of guarantee that can be placed.

On a note not pertaining directly to Notabot/Fheenix, but plagiarism relating to open-source in general: The good-faith nature of free culture licenses relies on the fact that if someone claims someone else's work as their own, they get called on it and it also depreciates their reputation. This disincentive is less powerful when someone doesn't have a solid, unified web presence (the pseudo-anonymity of screen names). I suppose the only answer I can think of is that if a community acts in integrity in general, and acts in integrity and fairness when cases like this arise, it encourages those who act in good-faith to stick around, and those who don't to drop out.

It sounds very reasonable. Instead of just dismissing Notabot, it holds him accountable. I think this action also strengthens the community by maintaining its membership instead of just casting out the "unwanted."

I have made a recent error with my articles and instead of just throwing me to the curb, the error was pointed out and, even though it was an honest oversight on my part, I felt better for having the chance to correct it. And as a result of that, there is a possibility of a new category resulting from that issue.

I'm in favor of the atonement of Notabot being proposed by UTB.

I run into this, too. The search function also has limits. The other day I spent at least half an hour looking for this article (http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=where_to_spend_your_cryptocurrencies) with search terms like 'where to spend devcoin,' 'spend devcoin', 'buy with devcoin,' etc. NOTHING. I couldn't remember how I found it, couldn't find a link to it... I finally had to remember one of the names of the actual businesses to get a hit in the top twenty search results.

I think something that would help with this is interlinking articles more when they are relevant. If you see another author's article that you like and is relevant to yours, put a link in the body of your text or 'see more' section ala Wikipedia.

Another thing that could be done is to create new categories for 'opinion pieces,' 'informative articles,' et cetera.

I think this is the main issue, and it had pretty much the same reasoning as why visual art and photography are not yet supported. The project is young and the admin base is small and doing the best they can on a skeleton crew. I think that if openness is demonstrated through portal translations into a couple of other major languages that focus on specific markets (like German), with the caveat that for now only English is accepted because of staff limitations, that could be the seed of a bunch of Germans getting on board with the project and heading up a German branch/version that has its own checks and balances and way to check for plagiarism in the native language.

Thanks for trying to clarify.

I still don't understand it 100%, but new (more general and not necessarily related) questions arise, since I consider myself still a devcoin-noob.

For example this link you gave : http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=devtome_translators

I have no idea how I could have ever found this link on my own. What other devtome-site does link to this specific subsite?

That is one of the big problems I have with devtome. I understand there is a lot of knowledge hidden in it, but I really struggle to find all the right articles and lists, because there seems to be no suitable structure behind it, to make it easy for me to find the information I am looking for.

For example I can't even make out on devtome where the separation line is between the wiki-style articles and all the devtome-related articles and discussions that are going on.

Also when is something true content (like a wiki article) , and when is it more like a news-piece / opinion of somebody (like for example http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=what_does_dogecoin_teach_us)
I can't imagine to see http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=what_does_dogecoin_teach_us ever on wikipedia, because it wouldn't meet the criteria, it is not a descriptive article, but rather an opinion.
Seriously? "What does dogecoin teach us?" could never be in an encyclopedia, but it can sure be a blogpost or a small slant in a newspaper...
So does devtome just lump all the content together in one place? Encyclopedia-articles mixed with slants, blogposts and poems? Is there a structure to separate inbetween those categories?

Also why does no article at all mention any source whatsoever? No links, no referalls, no sources. Is this the basic rule? To NOT post anything?
I understand that a poem I write does not need any citation. But an article about the WW2 sure does.

I still haven't grasped what devtome tries to achieve (other then distributing DVC to the participants)... is it more a wiki (encyclopedia) or more just text-submits of all sorts (for example I could write a poem or fiction)

If devtome wants to have both, it really should separate those content styles.

I will need more time, I admit I am a little confused. But it's quite a struggle...

(sorry for this messy deranged post, I am just reflecting my state of mind, lol)