WikiForm


 * WikiForm** -- This page is to __discuss the Theory and Form the Wiki should take to achieve its objectives__ of representing as comprehensively as possible the thoughts and Cognitive Space that defines C. S. Lewis -- I've suggested some kind of adaptation of the Patterns Idea and I've set forth on a trial demonstration using Miracles as the basic content following a Title/Chapter/Paragraph/Idea kind of format with double linking, i.e. the system trees down to the Ideas and the Ideas contain links that go back into the source tree. This may be overly simplistic. I'm open to suggestions.



The symbol # stands for 'number' and it is also used as a sentinel for end of line comments, ex. # //this is a comment// (#) = generally a number in parentheses is a page number [#] after a chapter title is the number of paragraphs in the chapter { e } = curly braces around an element indicate a set of the kind of the element as { idea } means a set of ideas. Example Format Definition: Format: [ ] [ ]  (see Bacon and Works) Note: Square brackets around an element indicate that it is optional. So in the example above is optional but  is not.
 * Notation**
 * 1) .# after a source title or abbreviation is the chapter # followed by a dot followed by a paragraph number. If the paragraph is long then you can append small letters to distinguish the part of the paragraph as 3.1a 3.1b 3.1c -- even long paragraphs should require only a few letters.

I am working on Miracles so you can look at the Miracles page for examples. ROTP (an abbreviation of Reflections On The Psalms) is also an example. Entry strategies can be 1. Work through a book, like I'm doing with Miracles, or 2. Add an idea, find where it is mentioned in Lewis's works and then put up the Source Page, and a TOC (Table of Contents) and annotate the location of the idea with the name of idea and location as I did with ROTP. Purgatory is found in the Introduction at I.13. Either strategy will work. If you are work oriented, pick a work and work on it. As the Ideas page gets very long it may be necessary to turn it into a set of letter pages -- I'm not sure how difficult that would be.[Actually it seemed like it might be easy so I did it this evening. See AlphaIndex page on left. It turns out to be rather easy to Cut and Paste an alpha range from the overall Ideas page to the particular Letter page which is linked from AlphaIndex.]

But the point of the Wiki is different. The point and motivation of the Wiki is to illustrate the thoughts in Jack's mind using concepts extracted from his works. The best illustrations would be those where he repeats arguments for an idea from different points of view so that in bringing together the extracts one gets a more rounded or fully insightful view of his thought.
 * Motivation and Philosophy of the Wiki from SpareOom message #25266**

The Wiki is distinctly NOT a forum for fighting attribution wars or having petty arguments. If there is evidence against the authenticity of "The Dark Tower" then fine. But it has to be evidence not mere conjecture.

On the whole it is important to make the atmosphere friendly to scholarship. So I have no problem at all with controversial ideas, only with personal attacks that amount to ad hominem. An idea is not a bad idea because a bad person advances it and an idea is not a good idea because a good person advances it. So let's leave personalities out of all discussion of ideas shall we!