Some people are very adamant about certain features, options, or use cases. Sometimes I listen, sometimes I ignore them entirely.

It’s nothing personal. I have opinions about certain applications that should be ignored as well.  Features, options, and experiences that are important to me aren’t important to the overall process or the product’s actual end user.

Am you entitled to have an opinion of my work?  Yes.  But I’m just as entitled to disqualify it for the following two reasons:

1. Lack of Standing
2. No Credibility

Want to know why I disqualify opinions in these two categories?  Then read the latest post on Seth Godin’s blog:

Is everyone entitled to their opinion?

Perhaps, but that doesn’t mean we need to pay the slightest bit of attention.

There are two things that disqualify someone from being listened to:

1. Lack of Standing. If you are not a customer, a stakeholder or someone with significant leverage in spreading the word, we will ignore you. And we should.

When you walk up to an artist and tell her you don’t like her painting style, you should probably be ignored. If you’ve never purchased expensive original art, don’t own a gallery and don’t write an influential column in ArtNews, then by all means, you must be ignored.

If you’re working in Accounts Payable and you hate the company’s new logo, the people who created it should and must ignore your opinion. It just doesn’t matter to anyone but you.

Continue reading on Seth Godin’s site …

Most of the sites I read on a daily basis are littered with links to this site or that site.  Many of them are written quickly to get news stories out promptly and, as a result, are published with typos.

It’s one thing when I catch a typo in body content – most of us can read English words if the characters are in any order – but a typo in a link can be catastrophic.

The other day, for example, a friend posted a link to Twitter. Twitter immediately tried to parse the link to auto-shorten it … and broke the link in the process (apparently their tool doesn’t like quotes in URLs):

“But The Client Wants IE 6 Support!” smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/03/“but-the-client-wants-ie-6-support”/

— Irv Briscoe (@irvbriscoe) April 4, 2012

Similar mistakes make blogs and news posts difficult to follow.  A simple entry error can turn an otherwise useful link (i.e. http://google.com) into a broken one that results in a 404 Not Found error (i.e http://mindsharestrategy.com/htpt://google.com).

Not checking for broken links can lead to a poor user experience.  WordPress is all about creating a great user experience, so I think it should do a certain amount of checking for authors to protect us from our own proofreading laziness.

An Alternative

I’m a big fan of optimistic UI feedback.  Essentially, you assume that whatever action the user invoked is successful and only display messages when things fail or when unexpected behavior occurs.

Rather than prompting the user with a JavaScript alert every time a blog post is saved, you sound the sirens when something goes wrong.  The user expects the post to save, so you save it, give some subtle feedback (like the “post saved” message at the top of the screen) and move on.

Background processes should be even more subtle.

My suggestion is that the insert/edit link dialog check in the background to see if the entered URL is valid.

Technical Details

When the URL field loses focus, the UI submits the URL back to WordPress via AJAX.  WordPress then does a quick header check on the URL using the HTTP API.  All we really need is the response headers from the server to make sure it’s not a 404, any other response (200 OK or a 30X redirect) are fine.

If the link 404s, add some visual indication to the UI that the link might be bad.  If the link succeeds, and some indication that is passes.  For example, the two screenshots below show one way this feedback could be conveyed to the user:

Placing the mouse cursor over the indicator icon or the highlighted URL field would prompt the user to explain that the URL as typed returned an error and might be invalid.

This would in no way prevent the user from adding the link anyway. It’s merely intended to be a quick check to help prevent broken links from making their way into the field.

What are your thoughts? Do you see any value in this feature? Do you think your customers would see any value?

Drama. Action. Romantic comedy. Tragedy.  Fiction or non-fiction.  It doesn’t really matter.

We communicate through stories, and the best stories can connect perfect strangers in ways conversation or common ground never could.

Last night I had the opportunity to attend the midnight release of The Hunger Games.  I’ve read the series, and I have been looking forward to the movie since I first saw the preview several weeks ago.

There were seven nearly-sold-out screens at the local theater.  I was surrounded by teenagers and adults alike.  The majority of us had read the books, and several people were even wearing t-shirts and costumes in honor of the film.

These were people I’d never met – some of whom I’ll never see again – yet we shared something last night.

We all watched the same film.  We all cried at the same heart-moving scenes.  We all jumped when the muttations sprang out of the woods.  For two hours last night, I was in a room with several of my closest friends.  And there’s nothing like it.

A well-told story introduces you to a part of a character.  A fragment of their personality, thoughts, and passions.  It’s left to the reader (or watcher) of the story to fill in the blanks with pieces of their own personality, thoughts, and passions.  You’re left with a creation made in part by you and in part by the storyteller.

Their trials and victories become your trials and victories.  You feel their pain.  You cheer their accomplishments.  You understand their basest determinations in such an intimate way as cannot be described.

And when you share that story with someone else – and they connect with the same characters on such a level – you share a part of yourself with them as well.

The Hunger Games is an amazing story of adventure, determination to survive, self sacrifice, and love.  Not just romantic love, but the love one shows when offering to lay down their life for another.  The darker parts of the story challenge even the strongest sense of morality – what exactly would you do in order to survive?  What would you do so that you could ensure the survival of a loved one?

I read the books and fell in love with all of the characters.  Watching the film is no less entrancing – the film compliments the novel in a way I never though possible.  And now, I’ve had the opportunity to share that moment – cheering for a beloved character who is part fiction and part me – with a hundred complete strangers.  Strangers who, through the telling of an incredible story, are now as much a part of me as the characters we all love.

I loved drawing, enjoyed visiting cool buildings, and had the odd drive to be a part of something bigger.  I checked books out from the library, talked up the idea with adults, and even took a crack at drawing up blueprints for the first house I’d build.

Needless to say, that didn’t quite work out.

As I grew up, my interests changed.  I tried my hand at CAD in middle school, but couldn’t figure out the complex interfaces.  Since everyone told me using a CAD system was essential for architecture, I gave up on that dream and grabbed hold of others.

My favorite high school teachers taught science, so I spent all of my time trying to figure out how the world worked.  Much to my parents’ dismay, I even brought experiments home from time to time ¹.

Originally I wanted to work in the space program for NASA. I even applied for internships and chose a physics major in college for that purpose.  Eventually, I changed gears and wanted to teach.  Then I wanted to work in a lab.  Then I gave up on that entirely and went back to school for a second degree in political science.

I found I liked telling stories more than anything, so I studied marketing in business school and walked away with a masters degree in international management.

Right Now

At the moment, though, I’m not using any of my degrees.

I work full-time writing web software for the insurance industry.  I also freelance on the side, writing open source software for WordPress.  But while I enjoy both, neither is really my “dream job.”

I come away from work somewhat burned out at the end of the day, only to keep working late into the night on the plethora of unfinished side-projects I have on my plate.  Client work.  My WordPress plugins.  My marketing/publishing business.  My Kickstarter campaign.

Like I said, I enjoy my work, I just don’t necessarily feel this is where I’m supposed to be. ²

So I’ve decided to make a list.  A list of the abstract things I love doing.  The things I’d love to do full-time if someone would pay me to do them.

My List

Reading

I’m a prolific reader.  So far in 2012 I’ve finished 16 separate books.  Novels, business books, technical guides.  You name it.  Every piece tells some kind of story, and I live for the story.

The best books, though, tell peoples’ stories.  Fiction or non-fiction, studying a character and the circumstances that shape their personality, perceptions, and actions is exciting to me.  I actually cry a little inside when I finish a book because it means I have nothing left to learn from that particular character.  I read the entire Twilight series in a week. ³ I just finished all three books of The Hunger Games in about 4 days.  I’m halfway through A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) and the Left Behind series as well.

Nothing is as captivating as studying a person’s – real or fictitious – story.

Writing

Most of my writing is done on the computer. I can’t write by hand at a speed anywhere near keeping up with my thoughts, and can only barely type fast enough to keep up.  Unfortunately, sitting in front of a computer all day saps me of my will to do so again recreationally.

I’ve won awards for my poetry and I’ve written several short stories (a few published under pseudonyms).  I keep a writing blog, but neglect it so much it pains me to even let you see it now.  I also have 4 unfinished novels sitting around my desk begging me to take a year off work and just finish.

Most of the writing I do get to publish is stream-of-consciousness and published online.  Like this post.  Sadly, I rarely even have time (or energy) to proofread.

Camping

I know. Who wouldn’t want to spend all their time on vacation?  But I don’t just camp in the summer.

Is it raining? Great, let’s go!

Is it snowing? Great, let’s go!

It will only be 15 degrees this weekend? Great, let’s go!

There won’t be any plumbing or running water? Great, let’s go!

My love for camping is the primary reason I keep working with the Boy Scouts.  I love the idea of the program, but the parent organization frustrates me enough with their policy that, if I had a way to be outdoors as often and still work with kids, I would.

Volunteering

When I was unemployed ⁴ I spent every possible day working with Habitat for Humanity.  Going to sleep with a sore back knowing that some family would have a clean, dry, affordable place to live as a result … well … there’s no better feeling in the world.

As I mentioned before, I also work with the Boy Scouts.  I serve as an Assistant Scoutmaster for a troop of about 30 youth.  I supervise camping trips, teach merit badges, and even advised on Scout working on his Religious Emblem last year.

I also volunteer in the community.  I’m mentoring a middle schooler who wants to be a writer, and I used to serve on my church’s finance and worship teams. ⁵

Where Does This Leave Me?

I honestly don’t know.  I can think of a hundred jobs that might satisfy one or more of these passions I have, but none that cover everything.  Even the jobs I’ve found that cover some of them won’t quite work.  Remember how I mentioned I went to grad school?  Yeah.  Still need to pay that off.  So online teacher writing books from a cabin in the woods won’t really work out.

Instead, I try to carve time out of my day – each day – to focus on each of my passions.  Sadly, as time wears on and I continue to become an “older, wiser, more experienced” version of myself, I begin to doubt when – if ever – I’ll find that miracle “dream job” that makes me happy beyond measure.

Is it out there?  Hopefully.  I just don’t quite know what it is …

I know. Embarassing.

In grad school I finally took the time to research what other tools were available.  I discovered WordPress.  I was somewhat ecstatic.

Unfortunately, WP didn’t do everything I wanted it to do.  Certain features I needed were missing, others were buggy.  I somewhat despise traditional forums as a means of support, so I was grasping at straws for months trying to figure out how to make things work the way I wanted.

I started teaching myself PHP by hacking core files directly.  I didn’t understand actions and filters at the time, so this was the only way I knew how to make WordPress “behave.”  Those of you active in the community now know my opinion of people who hack core …

I discovered Trac and the WP Hackers list and eventually got over my disdain for the forums.  My first year with WordPress was pretty active.  But just about none of my activity in the community was on the positive side.

As an outsider, I saw all of the experienced WP devs as a bit elitist.  Different developers would contribute hundreds of patches to core … immediately … without much discussion.  Meanwhile, my patches would sit in Trac for months, only to be declined later because they weren’t up-to-date with core by the time a committer got around to it.

I desperately wanted to be a part of the WP community.  I wrote plugins.  I worked from home supporting WP-related businesses (and charged far too much).  I spent at least 3 hours a day on the forums and IRC offering support.  But I still wasn’t able to break in to what I viewed as an “exclusive inner circle.”

My frustration eventually boiled over.  I left a few inflammatory posts in the forums.  I flamed a few core team members in email.  I even took my anger to my first ever WordCamp and said things I shouldn’t behind the backs of various members of the core team.

When I got started with WordPress, I was not a nice person.

Fast forward a few years.  I now have several patches in core.  I have several plugins in the repository.  I’ve been a speaker at a WordCamp.  And I’m a moderator for the WordPress Stack Exchange.

Much of my earlier, less savory behavior has been swept under the rug.  But last night, it came back to slap me in the face.

I was cleanup up some questions on the WPSE and locked one due to some abuse in the comments.  Usually I lock threads that consist of “why won’t you help” because they’re not constructive to the site.  The response tonight was a longer post accusing me of sitting in an “elitist tower” and refusing to live up to my own standards to help newcomers.  I was accused of using “weak reasoning” and reactively closing a topic because I didn’t care enough to help.

It hurt.  Not just because it was personal, but because I clearly remember saying the exact same things to and about people I now consider friends.

So to everyone in the WordPress community, I owe you an apology.  I’m not calling out any names because I don’t want to rehash old arguments, but if I’ve ever said something even remotely along the lines of a personal attack, I am sorry.

Sorry not just for saying it, but also sorry for taking so long to recognize the need for an apology.

I hold you all in the highest regard, and this kind of behavior – from me or any member of the community – is just not OK.

I also write software as a hobby.  Different languages and platforms – working with a diverse set of tools makes me a better developer.  I also give away most of the software I write in my free time.

Why?

Releasing software helps me find bugs, contribute to a growing community of developers, and raise my own name recognition in the market.  Increased name recognition means more consulting contracts.  It’s a win-win.

When I do give my software away, I try to pick the most permissive terms possible under which it’s distributed.  So long as my name and copyright stays on the code, I don’t care what you do with it.

A great deal of the code I write in my free time is for WordPress.  WordPress is distributed under the terms of the GPL (version 2, specifically), so my code has to licensed under GPL-compatible terms.

And that is a can of worms that irritates me.

In my opinion, the GPL is the enemy of software freedom.

Let me say that again – the most commonly used license for “free” software is the enemy of free software.

Here are a number of reasons why:

• Various versions of the GPL are incompatible. WordPress uses GPLv2. The current “standard” is GPLv3.  GPLv2 code can be included in GPLv3 projects, but not the other way around. So for WordPress plugins to be GPLv2 compatible (a requirement for distribution via WordPress.org), they must also use the older version of the license.
• The license is viral. I build websites. A client wishes exclusive rights and a restrictive license on the code they’ve bought from me (which is fine because they bought that right). But they also want to add a feature to the site to make it easier for their end users to interact with. That one feature on one page of the site could use a library licensed under the AGPL … but incorporating that library (for one button on one page in a rich web application) would require the entire project to be GPL-compatible.
• The terms of the license are ambiguous. Developers go blue in the face debating what is and is not compliant with their beloved license. If we spent half the time we spent debating actually writing new code, we might already have flying cars.
• It’s unproven in court. Everyone is tying their code to a license that has yet to be defended and upheld by any legal body.  The terms of the license are ambiguous at best, so we debate the spirit of the GPL and just pray that a judge will back us up should anyone ever contest it.

The purpose of a free software license is to protect users.  If Microsoft were to go belly up tomorrow, we’d lose Word, Windows, Internet Explorer, and every other program they sell.  We don’t have the code, we don’t have a right to the code, and no one can step in and make changes to the code without the defunct company’s permission.

Open source software, however, gives the end user the right to have a copy of the code, a right to change the code, and a right to redistribute their changes to someone else.  If Automattic were to go belly up tomorrow, we’d still have the source code for WordPress, After the Deadline, and every other open source project they’ve distributed.  We have the code, we have a right to the code, and anyone can step in to take over development.

WordPress itself began as a fork of another software project that stalled its development.

But, once again, WordPress is bound to the GPL.

The GPL was designed (allegedly) to protect the little guy.  The aim was to keep software behemoths like Microsoft and Apple from snatching libraries out of the open source community and locking them behind restrictive, proprietary licenses.

Unfortunately, it also hurts the little guy.

Let’s say I write an application.  I distribute it under the terms of the GPL and post it on my website for free.  Now, anyone can download it, anyone can use it, and anyone can redistribute the code.  Great!  Then, a larger company comes along, grabs my code, refactors it to slap their own branding all over the place, and puts it on their website for $50/copy.

So long as my original copyright is in place (inline in the code where no one but a developer would ever see it), they are 100% in the clear.  Legally.  Their site with more traffic than mind starts to pull in revenue from work I gave away for free.

Yes, this has happened before.  Not just to me, either.

Does it bother me?  Not really.  I was giving my stuff away for free in the first place.

But look at this same situation a different way.

I write a library.  I want as many people to use it as possible so I can build up my resume with a list of projects implementing my code.  I naively distribute it under the terms of the GPL and post it on my site for free.  Great!  Then a larger company comes along, but refuses to touch my code because they distribute software in an industry that, for regulatory reasons, is not permitted to be GPL.

A developer’s choice of license matters.

It can be the difference between distributing software for free and making a political statement that all software should be free.  Depending on who you are, that will mean very different things.

I’m a capitalist, and I aim to benefit from every line of code I write.  Sometimes I do that by selling closed-source software.  Sometimes I do that by selling open-sourced software.  Sometimes I do that by giving my software way for free.

But many new developers are so worried about getting out a 1.0 release that they gloss over licensing terms.  Who could blame them?  Licensing is a messy, opinionated topic.  Choosing the wrong license, though, can set you up for a lot of problems.

When I first started writing code for WordPress, I copy-pasted my license block from an “official” tutorial on how to license your plugins.  That tutorial has since been removed, and I was informed yesterday that all of my plugins are violating the requirements of the WordPress.org plugin repository.  My plugins are all licensed as GPLv3 or greater … the repository requires GPLv2-compatible.

I’ll be carving time out of my weekend to walk through all of my open source projects and relicense them under the terms of the X11 open source license.  It’s more permissive than the GPL, but still meets the repository’s requirements.

1. A strong desire to contribute more to the open source software community (beyond WordPress)
2. The desire to complete and publish a fiction novel

I want to combine the creative aspects of my life with the technical, putting together a novel in a new medium for people to enjoy.

My proposed project would have three parts:

The Novel

I’m a fan of antiheroes.  Particularly the antihero who wants to be a hero – the bad guy who wants nothing more than to turn over a new leaf and be celebrated.

I’ve been toying for a while with a story around a demon – a fallen angel – who seeks to redeem himself in the eyes of God.

Essentially, he would go from being a powerful manipulator who can have anything he wants on Earth, to giving this all up to experience life as a human – since humans are forgiven and can enter heaven where demons cannot.

The crux of the story will occur when a certain bad guy (worse than the demon) enters and basically wreaks havoc.  The main character has the power to abandon his new-found humanity and thwart the bad guy … but would give up his one and only chance at redemption.

So rather than Good versus Evil, it’s more of an Evil-that-wants-to-be-Good versus Evil story.

The Platform

The more I read, the more I’ve come to realize that a story is more than the words on the page.  It’s also the way it’s read.

For simplicity’s sake, imagine you’re watching a woman painting a picture.  She starts by painting the sky in right colors, with the sun reflecting against and refracting through a thin layer of clouds.  She moves on to the water beneath the sky, leading you to realize it’s a seascape.  The waves are still and gentle.  There’s an overwhelming sense of peace emanating from her brush strokes.  Then she starts painting a boat adrift on the water.  Small, maybe with a 3-person crew.  But the lighting around the boat seems off. Shadows against the waves are coming from the wrong direction.  As she completes the painting, you gradually realize that the boat is on fire and sinking, in the middle of nowhere on the ocean on a clear day.

The painting tells a story – but the way you read the story influences what you take away from it.

Imagine again, the same woman painting the same picture.  Only this time, she starts with the boat.

How would that impact your perception of the finished piece?  The whole pieces are identical, but the way you experience them is drastically different and will lead to different interpretations of the overall landscape.

Books are very much the same, but when a story is put in a website we lose that.

Sometimes the entire book is dumped in a single text or blob field in a database.  Or maybe it’s broken up by page.  Either way, the intricate relationships between sentences, paragraphs, thoughts, similar phrases, rhymed passages – the brush strokes that make up the masterpiece – are lost.

My proposal wouldn’t be to merely use an existing tool and try to shoehorn a story inside it.  Instead, I’ll build the tool around the story.  You – the reader – will be able to clearly see and navigate the different threads, themes, and arcs that make up the story.  You won’t need to jump a page or two (or a chapter or two) back in the story to recover details about a character or plot point – since relations are maintained through the platform, it would be as simple as clicking a word with the mouse to see how the story developed to that point.

The best example I can come up with using current, live technology is Telescopic Text.  And still, that’s not quite the interface or experience I have in mind.

A better illustration would be the breaks between chapters versus the breaks between volumes of a series.

When you move from chapter 3 to chapter 4, characters and situations are still fresh in your mind so there’s no reason to revisit any expository sections.  But when you move from book 2 to book 3 in a series, authors are all but required to reintroduce the characters for whom you returned to the story.

Imagine if you didn’t need to do that because the two parts of the series are as intricately linked as the two chapters of the same book.

As a result, this publishing platform would allow you to dynamically reflow the narrative of a story without losing value.  Relationships between events, character traits, conversations, etc. are maintained.  But sequences of the book that can happen in any order can happen in any order.

You could read through the book once, hit a scramble button, and read through the same book but with sections/phrases/thoughts in a different order.

Like the paining above, you’d be reading the exact same story, but experiencing it in a drastically different way.

Publication

After the platform is complete and the novel written, proofread, and dissected to be hosted on the “platform,” I’ll publish everything.  It will be live for reading on the website, but you can export any particular version or remix to whatever eBook system you like.  This will allow you to capture the novel whenever you want for reading elsewhere.

I’d also like to run a short promotional campaign to drive traffic to the site.  Even if it’s not a best-seller, I’d like to see how much traction the concept as a whole might get in the market.

Finally, the entire platform would be open-sourced and made available to other writers.  Hopefully by the time NaNoWriMo rolls around, but that might prove too ambitious a schedule.

Does this make sense?

Now’s your chance to sound off.  Does this make sense as a Kickstarter project?  Does it make sense as a project altogether?

If I were to start working on this, considering I’d be doing all of the development and writing on my own, how much should I budget to finance this endeavor?  I’ll obviously need to replace revenue from forsaken consulting clients, pay for hosting, pay for promotions, etc.

If you were to back such a project through Kickstarter, how much would you contribute?  What kind of goodies would you expect in return?

NOTE: I was made aware after this was posted that there were further off-forums discussions between the poster in question and forum moderators that warranted this kind of immediate behavior. As there was no way I could know this beforehand, my opinions were based entirely on what I observed in the forums.

I get it. Sometimes a person posts something that gets on our nerves and we just want them to go away.

Trust me, it’s a common response.  Remember, I moderate a few forums myself, so I know how it feels to be on the defensive against a to-aggressive community member.

Still, that’s no reason to abandon your own decorum and go on the offensive yourself.

A few days ago, I was pointed to a thread in a forum featuring a poster with a particularly abrasive personality. ¹  He didn’t like the way a certain programming practice was documented, tried to change it, and had his changes removed.

Understandably, he wanted an explanation.  This is where things went down hill.

The disconnect is rooted in the fact that the online documentation was written for people who use the command line to interact with a particular tool. The forum poster wanted better GUI instructions because he doesn’t use command line tools.

Various language barriers became involved at this point, including a debate on the differences between “developers” and “programmers.”

In the end, it all devolved into a yelling match and the forum thread was closed.

So he opened a new one and started again.  The problem was big enough in his mind that it needed to be addressed in some way.

Again, his thread was closed.

At this point, I felt a bit bad for the guy.  Keep in mind, I’m a marketer and writer at heart, not a developer.  And I faced the exact same problems he’s facing when I started in development.  I avoided open source contributions all together for a couple of years because I didn’t understand the command line tools or instructions on how to use them.

So I wanted to help out a bit. I clicked on his username to find some of his other forum threads.  Luckily, I found one fast.

It was much more subdued. No longer a “this is wrong, fix it” demand, but an “I don’t understand, so where can I go to get help” plea.

I responded and offered a few suggestions:

• Write up a set of instructions that would help you solve the problem at hand
• Solicit feedback from others in the community to polish those instructions and make them apply to a larger audience
• Create a user wiki page in the docs section outlining your changes to the “official” documentation
• Ask the site maintainers to take a look and approve it before forcing it to be merged in

This is the same workflow followed by others in the community (and every other open source/documentation community of which I’ve been a part).

He seemed excited, but wanted some further advice on where to host the discussion, since the forums are apparently not the right place.

But before I could respond, the thread was again closed.  Not for his tone. Not for off-topic remarks. Not for personal attacks.

These forums are not the place for a vote call. Personally, I think this subject has been well and truly exhausted.

From my perspective, the forum thread was closed because the moderators were tired of listening to him.  Rather than trying to help once he calmed down, they reacted on instinct.

The moderator’s closing line was followed to links to the poster’s previous threads. Ironically, they’re different topics.  The linked threads were along the lines of “this tool doesn’t work, fix it.”  The final thread was along the lines of “OK, where do I go to discuss something.”

Different subjects entirely; while the first might have been “truly exhausted” the second is perfectly valid.

Like I said in the beginning, I moderate a few forums too, so I understand the frustration moderators feel when abrasive personalities seem to refuse to go away.  But still, that frustration doesn’t warrant this kind of over-aggressive moderation.

If another member of the community is willing to pitch in and answer a question for someone you don’t want to deal with, let them.  I can’t emphasize that enough.

We’re a team here, even if you have a title and I don’t.  If I want to take over a conversation you’re fed up with, feel free to walk away.  Don’t shut it down because you don’t want to listen.

If you make the center of your world data, then everything else becomes easy.

This got me thinking.  From a computer-centric viewpoint it all makes sense.  Our machines are built specifically to store data, crunch data, and present that data to the user.

But I don’t just work with computers.  I also read a lot.  And I write a lot.  And I publish books.  And even in the computer world I spend a great deal of time working on WordPress – a tool used primarily for writing.

From the media-centric viewpoint, this argument stops making sense.  The most important piece of this blog, for example, is the content.  And that content is stored, essentially, as blobs in the database.  The data on my server consists of titles, keywords, post dates, views, comments, and other meta information that adds little value to the content itself.

This meta doesn’t provide any meaning to the data/content it’s meant to represent.  And that, is a huge failure on our part as developers.

Carlos

My freshman year in college, I took Poetry 101.  It was a great class, filled with roundtable discussions, interesting reading assignments, and daily tear-your-work-apart sessions intended to help us become better writers.

One of the best poets in our class was an older student named Carlos.  He and I shared a couple of classes, actually, so we got to know one another’s work fairly well.  He was a huge Shakespeare fan, but avoided allusions to the Bard’s work in his own. He thought it was too cliche.

His final poem for the class was particularly interesting.  It was an artistic rant against the rules of writing.  It called out the authors of the various writing guides we’d studied and criticized their narrow views of art.

One of these authors was named Mary Oliver – I checked, I still have her book on the mechanics of poetry.

In Carlos’ poem, he lays out great arguments both for and against using Shakespeare references in modern poetry – and slams Oliver pretty hard for how she claimed all poems were somehow a reference to Shakespeare.  At the closing of that stanza, it almost looked like Carlos made a mistake.

On a single line he wrote: “Marry Oliver.”

Then went on to give up on respecting outside opinions and went on to his next artistic target.

Most of the class – including the professor – missed the reference.  ”Marry” was an often used curse in Shakespeare’s writing.  Using it as part of Oliver’s name was a sideways jab at her, and quite artistic in a sense.  Berating someone for overusing Shakespearean references using a Shakespearean reference.

But if you didn’t know Carlos, you would have seen a typo.  I guarantee that I took away a completely different reading of that poem than the rest of the class because I understood the context from which it was written.

Context

How do you store this kind of data about a story?  With a typical WordPress/Tumblr/MovableType/etc website, you’d put the poem in as a content string, Carlos in as the author, and 2002 as the year of publication.  You might throw in a few keywords – Shakespeare, Mary Oliver, art critique.  You might even tag it with the name of the class and professor.

Where is the context stored?

Where is Carlos’ backstory?

So much of the poem’s meaning was not actually in the poem itself, but in the story of the author who penned it and the circumstances surrounding its writing.  None of that can be categorized as meta information in a data-centric database, though.

The Problem

I can’t say I have a solution to this problem.  At least, not yet.  But I can characterize the problem fairly well at this point.

Every story is made of discrete parts.  A logical idea would be to split it up into its relative parts – each sentence then becomes a piece of data.  But sentences alone are not sufficient vehicles to convey meaning.  For example, look at the sentence “Jesus wept.”  Now look at these two possible contexts:

When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked.

“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.

Jesus wept.

Compare that with this:

Jesus Torez was an energetic child. He loved to ride his bike around the neighborhood and play make believe in the alleyways down the street from his school.

One day, Jesus found the door open to the abandon building he liked to think of as his “Intergalactic Headquarters.”  He didn’t even hesitate when the idea occurred that it would be more fun indoors that outside.

He crept inside and surveyed the rundown plank flooring.  There was a light on upstairs, so Jesus tiptoed in that direction to investigate.

Just as he shifted his weight to the first step, the plank broke and dropped him through the floor into the basement.

His leg was broken.  Jesus wept.

Different contexts, different characters, different stories.  In one, you’re dealing with Christ and the phrase “Jesus wept” brings up questions of his humanity, his relationship to the deceased in the story, and how these events fit in with the rest of his story.  In the other, you’re dealing with a young boy in an awkward – albeit self-induced – horrific situation.  The phrase “Jesus wept” conveys a different kind of pain, and possibly even some panic.

You can’t separate stories into mere sentences and work with those building blocks as discrete items – in isolation a sentence means nothing.

A story is, at best, compared to a woven cloth.  Hundreds and thousands of discrete threads are woven together to create a large picture.  It might be a tapestry, a mono-color sheet on a bed, or even a random smattering of color in a carpet block.  In each case, the cloth is greater than the sum of its parts.

And a story is greater than the collection of sentences that comprise it.

The problem is that it can’t be properly understood as just a story.

Data structures today give us one world or another – either a story is one, monolithic data element or it’s a set of discrete, related, but independent data points.  I say it’s more, and current data structures fail to properly catalog stories, articles, news feeds, blog posts, and the like.

Distilling any piece of art into the data we catalog today robs us of its meaning.  I think we should take this as a challenge and see if we can do better.