
WikiWikiWeb is back online - delian66
http://wiki.c2.com/
======
agentgt
Sad the site is now a Javascript powered site. Its not even old SEO friendly
(I know most of the engines now run JS but it slows down indexing).

I thought for sure they did a PJAX [1] like design when I saw the spinner to
keep asset loading minimal (why c2 would need that is beyond me).

But it is even worse. A full page reload on each click and then an
XMLHTTPRequest call is made for some JSON.

I wonder who is running and why they picked such an awful design. Do people
just not know how to write old web 1.0 apps?

For now I will play devils advocate and just assume perhaps they are offering
JSON like API so that someone else can maybe write a better skin. If some one
does hopefully they will use push state.

EDIT

I clicked around to see what Ward has been up to and now I can sort of see why
c2 is the way it is. Basically Ward is working on Federated Wiki. I think the
idea is sort of cool as it is yet another attempt to continue to decentralize
the web.

I believe it is going to be based on some JSON protocol but it would be
interesting and perhaps have greater consumption if it was in Google AMP
format or supported that format or converted or whatever (not c2 but the
federated wiki stuff).

[1]: [https://github.com/defunkt/jquery-
pjax](https://github.com/defunkt/jquery-pjax)

~~~
pkd
I think that is because Ward Cunningham wanted to transition to a static site
instead of running it old style CGI way.

See also:
[https://github.com/WardCunningham/remodeling/issues/2](https://github.com/WardCunningham/remodeling/issues/2)
[http://wardcunningham.github.io/](http://wardcunningham.github.io/)

~~~
agentgt
It appears the root of his problem is an old database in a weird format. If he
just gave access (to the DB) I'm sure a fellow githuber / HNer could probably
get the database converted correctly for him to some other DB or format.

Then again I probably don't fully understand all of the problems.

~~~
imode
see my comment floating somewhere in this thread.

it took some digging but I managed to grab a dump of every page in JSON. he
hid it well but I scraped everything and put it up for people to see (it's in
its original markup form, and I'm working on converting it to HTML again.)

------
idlewords
This is a regrettable redesign. Every page loads a megabyte of crap (640 KB
"names.txt" file + 260KB jquery) and requires javascript for what could be a
static text site.

~~~
rcarmo
Yeah. This tweet summarizes it nicely:

[https://twitter.com/errstr/status/792418938881662976](https://twitter.com/errstr/status/792418938881662976)

~~~
Keverw
I wonder why they didn't use the minified version of jquery? Would of been a
lot smaller.

~~~
rcarmo
Or Zepto. I saw nothing happening that couldn't be done with it.

------
imode
so, because of the weird format that ward has gone with, and because I'm not a
fan of the federated wiki concept as he sees it, I mirrored the JSON dump of
the old c2 wiki, did a little bit of processing on it and generated a
directory for all the pages.

[https://imode.gitlab.io/projects/c2/index.html](https://imode.gitlab.io/projects/c2/index.html)

if someone wants me to, I can archive it up.

~~~
detaro
Note though that the wiki from what I can tell the wiki explicitly doesn't
grant the right to host the contents somewhere else (in contrast to many other
wikis)

~~~
imode
if they take issue with it, they can go after myself and the internet archive.

I'm not concerned.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Thank you for uploading this to the Internet Archive.

------
aaronpk
Sadly it is now invisible to the web archive
[http://web.archive.org/web/20161024110012/http://wiki.c2.com...](http://web.archive.org/web/20161024110012/http://wiki.c2.com/)

~~~
0xmohit
The current design would prompt one to guess that it is by design.

------
kpcyrd
> Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the
> remote resource at
> [http://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.1.1.js](http://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.1.1.js).
> (Reason: CORS header ‘Access-Control-Allow-Origin’ missing).

> None of the “sha256” hashes in the integrity attribute match the content of
> the subresource.

------
Falkon1313
Good that it's back but kind of sad that it has fallen victim to
[http://c2.com/cgi/wikix?JavaScriptAbuse](http://c2.com/cgi/wikix?JavaScriptAbuse)
since for so long it was one of the few sites that managed to
[http://c2.com/cgi/wikix?KeepItSimple](http://c2.com/cgi/wikix?KeepItSimple)
The wave of the future unfortunately goes even further from that.

The basic concept behind federated wiki is interesting, but it still needs to
be simple, clean, and usable. As it is, the most basic things like selecting
text or navigation do not work or work in totally unexpected ways. It
shouldn't actually need instructions for basic things like How to Follow Links
and How to View Changes ("you can view the changed page on that site by
clicking on the flag of that page. Don't expect the link to find the remote
site because it will likely be hidden behind the original page on your site."
What?)

Just trying to find the list of sites, I have no idea what's going on here:
[http://c2.fed.wiki.org/view/welcome-
visitors/view/federated-...](http://c2.fed.wiki.org/view/welcome-
visitors/view/federated-
wiki/sites.fed.wiki.org/sitesfedwikiorg/sites.fed.wiki.org/sitesfedwikiorg/sites.fed.wiki.org/sitesfedwikiorg/localhost/welcome-
visitors/fed.wiki.org/welcome-visitors/197217.c2.fed.wiki.org/welcome-
visitors)

~~~
imode
ward cunningham has a great idea with poor execution, and he's holding years
worth of commentary on various technical subjects in order to satisfy his
desire to implement his idea.

I'm not a fan. I worry for the other rabbit holes of the internet that are
still smart and able to be searched, mined, and mirrored easily.

------
shakna
One of my favourites: ChurchTuringThesis [0]

[0]
[http://wiki.c2.com/?ChurchTuringThesis](http://wiki.c2.com/?ChurchTuringThesis)

------
qwertyuiop924
Great, so now Ward Cunningham doesn't know how to write a good wiki system.
Federation is all well and good, but it doesn't excuse the absolute garbage
UI.

------
weinzierl
I'm happy that it's back. It seems to be running on a new engine. When I click
around I see a spinner sometimes, I don't remember seeing that in the past.

~~~
agumonkey
Seems like they hacked up a new system to fetch the old page quickly, nothing
more. IIUC it happened because of some hardware failure, so I'm just happy
it's still up, even though the full JS spinner thing is a bit sad.

------
Paul_S
Still the same content (and old bookmarks work fine) so I can live with the
new bizarre delivery system (could've been worse, like one of those old flash
websites). You can overwrite the css style to make it look normal.

------
dasmoth
And now just giving a loading spinner...

------
Pxtl
I didn't even know it was down. Sad that it's become forgotten, I used to
spend a lot of time there. After GoogleLovesWikiNot, contributions dropped and
now most of the articles are very dated.

~~~
weinzierl
I has not become forgotten, people care about it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12705774](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12705774)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12715560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12715560)

------
yumaikas
Most disappointing: It doesn't work in safari right now.

~~~
andreypopp
Works for me (using Safari Tech Preview 16).

~~~
yumaikas
Only on the Tech Preview. Not every person is running the bleeding edge of
everything. It's the fetch api that's causing problems.

------
lamby
Absolutely love this site; learnt so much going through this in, gosh,
2005-odd.

------
IshKebab
Best viewed on a 14" monitor?

