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Me (BMcC[18-11-46-503]) v. MediaWiki [fill in the blank]

MediaWiki was like my parents: Because they did bad things to me I did bad things. [fill in the blank] (BMcC[18-11-46-503])

MediaWiki: Mediocrity big time. (BMcC[18-11-46-503])

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I have been THINKing about all my complaints about MediaWiki ever since I started using it, 18 May 2020 (+2020.05.18). I now have reconsidered and maybe I have been expecting too much from the MediaWikitechies.

I write web pages which I feel have individual dignity and right-to-life. But MediaWiki is apparently a group groupie thing for producing group groupie websites suck(typo) as Wikipedia, in which all individual contributions are subordinated to the group groupie goal of producing a homogenized mass. And, so far, that is a valid endeavor: The biblical story of the Tower of Babel is wrong: The tower could not be built by a few master structural engineers (who may not even have been able to ride a chariot straight, per Alabama Governor George Wallace's assessment of intellectuals) in peer discourse, respecting each other's boundaries: they needed what I call "a mongoloid hoard" of worker bees to do the heavy lifting.

So too Wikipedia, although, there, outside experts are welcome to "contribute" if they will stay in their place as I was recently (ca. +2022.03.19) peremptorily informed I was not doing when I was misperceived as trying sneak something of historical value into Wilkipedia and one of their self-important volunteers peremptorily explained to me that I was "spam" trying to abuse Wikipedia for personal gain. Mea culpa, kid.

What I had tred to do is to insert individually self-accountable web pages that could stand on their own without the groupie group into a group groupie MediaWiki framework and expect MediaWiki to honor their unique individuality, so that my pages could easily be extracted from the group groupie herd for a different destiny outside the Wikispace, not just to be homogenous homogenized grains of sand contributing to a vast ocean of Wikistuff, going with the current as part of the destiny of the herd. As themselves likely techie zombies I should never have expected the MediaWikitechies to treat frames in a Wiki page as even potentially having the possibility of an independent existence (Who could possibly want anything to be other than the function it was originally meant to serve?).

I wasted a lot of my precious time trying to extract individual web pages from the hoard with a huge ugly script of regular expressions: WB+WB_Include+Inclusions. Why should I ever have expected MediaWikitechies who may not even realize they have individually mortal bodies (not just maybe the entire universe of Galilean physics eventually having a thermodynamic heat-death) to appreciate that? Worker bees have no selfs they value, they are always ready to die for the hive. Foolish me!

It says in the Bible:

"The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath nowhere to lay His head." (Matt 8:20)

I was hoping for a social surround which would support the individual (obviously: me), and that is folly. So I will stop bitching about MediaWikishit and bow to a reality I am stuck with. But I, like Galileo, still think:

Eppur si muove.

Just because MediaWiki is bigger than me and I am stuck using it, I do not have to like it: Every person is a judge of the whole world, even if only the opinions of a very few persons with social power matter in any group groupie social formation, and therefore guilty sentences can only be carried out in asbentia. I forget who said it: Never attribute to malice what can be explained by simple stupidity (aka: ignorance).

+2022.10.16. Yesterday I made a change to my HTML files which seemed to me innocuous: removing some "ID" and "TITLE" attributes. The result was tha the spacing between the date+version stamps and the "Return to TOC" blocks at the bottom of each of my pages disappeared. When I restored these attributes, the problem reverted. It seemed repeatabele. I am not going to try it yet again becaue it's not worth it.

The HTML I originally had (From my MediaWiki days...) I did not understand, so I have implemented changes which while not good, I fail to understand somewhat less. It's like if you took some clothes out of the closet in your bedroom and the dishwasher in the kitchen stopped working but if you put them back the dishwasher worked again. This does not make sense to me but, as I hae long accepted: The computer is bigger than I am. It is disgusting and discouraging. Is it more of what I got stuck with from having originally to use MediaWiki for these pages, or is ita HTML and/or CSS bug or what? I have no idea. but either it is wrong or I am wrong and haven't been able to figure it out, and I am stuck with it.

So my website is yet another way not as I would like it to be. Please, my reader, cut me some slack. Thank you. bradmcc@bmccedd.org

+2023.03.18 v051
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Unfortunate for themself, the person who lacks one; unfortunate for others, the person that is one. Don't be an a**hole!