WIFLbog suggests:

RadioGridDirectories-

For Shared Collective WebIntelligence

Dave's Directory Lesson:

I think I'm going to have to do something radical to bootstrap the distributed directories idea. Here's what I may just do. I could turn Scripting News into a directory. Forget the weblog. We already have enough of those. My directory would be the top of the tree of knowledge, like Yahoo used to be. You guys could send me links. I'd ignore you, because I'm so cool, I'd only point to people I like and people who pay me lots of money, or kiss my ass. I wouldn't point to any of your sites or your friends sites, and you'd get pissed off. "I'll show him," you'd say. "I'll do a kickass directory that's a billion times better than his! A trillion times better. I'll make him look like a total idiot. And I won't link to any of his sites" And then we'd have two directories. Someone else will think you're a total idiot and make one that's a trillion times better than yours. And so on. [Scripting News]

WIFLblog comment:

I think I get the message, but would like more construtive information on how to set up directories, and how we can create a community of blog directories, regardless of their authoring environment.

Heck, I would be happy if there were some concise understandable tutorials on how to make Userland Directories sharable within Radio communities, for example, I post to Salon, how could we create sharable topic specific directories via Salon, or on the Userland home site for example, or between Salon and Userland.

From my exploration of Userland, I know they are sincere about this, but I think to have broader impact on all but the real power technogeek type users, it has to be a lot easier to understand and explained in a non-techie way to have broader impact.

But if there are great tutorials, then sign me up.

Also lets coin a phrase to empower the sharable directory thing, OK, here is my submission RadioGridDirectories-For Shared Collective Intelligence

Dave's Suggested Approach

a quick search of Scripting News yielded this article:

Decentralized and distributed Web directories

Mon, Oct 20, 2003; by Dave Winer.

Dear friends..

The idea of decentralized and distributed Web directories has been at the top of my to-do list for several years.

I have gotten nowhere with it, so far, but I am absolutely sure it's the biggest thing to come along since the Web itself. Bigger than weblogs, bigger than RSS, bigger than search engines, bigger than SOAP and XML-RPC.

I stake my reputation on this. I've been having so much trouble explaining it. But when people get it, they end up agreeing with me.

Today a perfect use-case showed up. I was reading a tutorial for starting a weblog and they pointed to Google's directory (actually a repurposed DMOZ) of weblog tools. I was appalled to see that neither of my tools were on the list. How could that happen? It's because DMOZ is a centralized directory. One person has exclusive authority over a domain of knowledge. Here's the bug, no one is so wise to be the exclusive authority over any domain of knowledge, no matter how small, no matter how smart the person. You always need a second or third (or 18th or 281st) source.

A search engine would never make that mistake, it can't have the kinds of selfish biases a human being has. It reflects the average of what everyone thinks and therefore has the property of the Internet itself, it routes around outages. The way Internet directories are done today, emphatically, is not like this. They create outages that we must route around.

I know how to do the decentralized directories. It's not hard. In fact its beauty is that it is so simple there's almost nothing to it. It's why it's so confusing. Basically, we just have to decide to do it.

I wrote up a hype-free recipe for this, here.

http://scriptingnews.userland.com/2003/10/20#howToDecentralizeDirectories

This why I came to a university -- because here we have people who love knowledge for its own sake. This kind of project can't make money. But it can revolutionize knowledge. Please help, let's start a new kind of directory.

Dave Winer

PS: I'm sure you've heard me rant about this before. Sorry for being repetitive. It's important. ;->

Here is Dave's recipe:

How to decentralize directories 

1. Decide on a format for a directory. It should be XML-based so people can use any text tool to edit them. I designed OPML for this purpose, but if you want to use another format, I won't fight you on it. This is too important to have the usual fight over the bits on the wire.

2. Build software that renders data in this format as if it were a Yahoo or DMOZ directory. All environments should have well-tested efficient renderers, commercial and open source.

3. When this software encounters a node that includes another directory, include its hierarchy in that directory. These inclusions are what determine page rank, just like links in HTML pages.

4. If you run a search engine, index these files. Use page rank to determine which is shown first. Don't segregate these files, include them in the returns for HTML and all other formats you support.

5. Evangelize. Get academics, librarians, researchers, etc to produce data in this this format. Link and organize.

WIFLblog Comment:

OK, why don't we start with Radio and Manilla users that Useland creates tools for, and if OPML is bult in then what we need is a user friendly application that makes creating directories a lot easier.

Years ago I used Dave's former application, More the outlining software for the Mac, it was the real deal back then, and it simply worked intuitively, and allowed lots of professionals to organize their expertise in ways that made them more understandable, and helped organize work.

The same need is present in the shared directories idea, but I recommend you start with your own software that has OPML bult in, and make it a lot easier and more intuitive for the owners of the expertise.

Once that is done, that the collective shared knowledge approach can spread like wildfire through the Userland communities firstly, and then assuming this is done in a non-proprietary way through other compatible blogging software approaches.

Seems like a great idea that needs some nurturing.

8:48:00 AM