Hubzilla as multi-author playground: seeking volunteers!

#1

Folks,

I’ve taken up the invitation by @session to create a hubzilla account, and begin experimenting with the collaborative editing potential there. It seems promising for web-facing projects authored by a small team of trusted people who can coordinate informally.

POSITIVES:

  • The experience of editing and saving over https, through a browser connection, is just as seamless as on TiddlyHost. So, between trusted users who can take basic precautions not to step on each others’ toes, it might be a convenient platform for collaboration.
  • Unlike with sharing a single TiddlyHost account (something TiddlyHost is not designed for, but which desperate remote collaborators might try “off-label”), hubzilla facilitates interaction between authors by offering a messaging channel. Logging in at your hub then connects you to a natural place to have conversations about the collaboration — notes about what’s done or not done, whether any conflict-based problems have occurred, etc.

NEGATIVES:

  • Conflict-detection and edit-permission lock-out features are NOT there. So, this is an experiment in seeing how multi-user conflicts actually unfold (so that we might then begin to troubleshoot them, come up with best practices, etc.).
  • Saving over a totally unauthenticated connection seems as if it were possible. That is, a web visitor does not get any error notification. On the contrary, as a web visitor to the links below, you can edit and hit the “save” button and then get a “saved” confirmation! :face_with_monocle:
    … Note, that confirmation is actually an ERROR! You can’t overwrite the wiki over a random web-browsing connection (which is good)! :nerd_face: But it’s troubling, since this means that (until we solve this problem) our familiar save confirmation message — even for authenticated users who really are saving! — can’t really be trusted. :grimacing:

With all that said, if you’re interested, here’s what I think you need to try:

  1. Find a hub to join (if you haven’t already joined one). People who understand the fediverse will know lots of important variables here. But I just used this link to look for a local option, and registered for an account at commonworlds.org
  2. Next, send me or @session a message here specifying your account name (like an email connecting your handle and the server name, as in spandrel@commonworlds.org), and we can initiate a connection through hubzilla messaging system. (Probably @session is better as an initial admin contact, since I’m a total newbie to hubzilla.)
  3. Then, log in, check out a wiki-in-progress, and help discover where things break, and how. :slight_smile: We can then play around with protocols for mitigating the multi-user risks.

You can see the two projects set up by @session here:

4 Likes
Collaboratively editing a Tiddlywiki?
#2

I want to add that access and editing permissions can be granted across servers without the need of exchanging any login credentials - just an other Hubzilla Fediverse Account is need - on any Hubzilla or Friendica server you like to choose.

In addition Hubzilla has also a Token function which can provide access and editing permissions by a link to anybody in the Internet - no need of a Fedi Account at all.

#3

Following up to confirm that the token-edit approach is stunningly straightforward to use. (Thanks @session!)

So if any of you all chime in that you’d like to add some edits to the hubzilla wiki, there’s no account-creation needed. An edit-access token can be shared quite directly.

So far, Hubzilla does face exactly the expected challenges around single-html-file editing conflicts. So collaboration here requires some balance of communication and risk-taking.

I’m wondering if @simon is in the building — paging @simon! :wink: — to consult a bit: How hard was it to get TiddlyHost to check and warn against “more recent version on server” during the save process?

I have no idea what goes on at the hubzilla server side, but if something like the TiddlyHost-style overwrite protection can be installed there, it would go a long way toward making this a nimble collaboration platform.

1 Like
#4

yes this would be nice to have… maybe this function could be implemented in to Hubzilla as well

an other option would be to record the history of edits… that way chances could be reconstructed…

Hubzilla has also a native wiki app - this app has such a record of the history of edits

1 Like