'ralcku:' a lujvo for the web?

Is the web a "cukta"?

  1. maldzena reservations about the virtuality of a cukta can be overcome by considering the modern meaning of the term "document", and considering a cukta as a collection of documents.
    • I don't think this addresses either the virtuality of cukta or whether the web is a cukta. Virtuality of cukta is clearly allowed in the ma'oste and never has been in debate (the word was specifically intended to be usable for ebooks). --mi'e .djorden.
  2. The gismu definition does not refer to the cohesiveness often considered necessary for "books".
    • The gismu definition is "book". --mi'e .djorden.
  3. Is a "single website" a cukta? Can a cukta be in hypertext form and retain its status as a single cukta? Is a Wiki any sort of cukta? Beware of importing the malglico semantics of "book"!
    • The semantics of book define what cukta is. We have little else to go on. Some websites may be books (such as the online copy of the refgram); most are not (especially all these modern flash-based ones, etc), and thus are not cukta. However, this has nothing to do with whether the web as a whole is a book, and thus is beside the point. --mi'e .djorden.
  4. Different websites are often linked together, associatively and with the cohesion of meaning.
  5. The linking of different hypertext documents follows the same behavior as linking to other locations in the same file, or other files written by the same author and residing on the same server. Whereas there is a conceptual difference between flipping a page in a book, and closing its cover and opening a different book, there is no conceptual distinction between following a link to a different location in the same file, and visiting a different "website".
    • I disagree. If I go to my browser's location box (or equivalent thereof) and manually input a url to some location, it is analogous to closing and opening a new cukta. Furthermore, clicking on links which go to a different "website" aren't like turning pages at all; the only linkage which is similar to turning pages is the kind of linkage found in...online books! (Such as the Next buttons and chapter listing in the online refgram). It makes sense to assume that the definition of cukta was intended to include these, but not anything else. (And I believe Bob LeChevalier indicated that such was the intent of the word on the mailing list by saying "ralcku" would be a figurative lujvo) --mi'e .djorden.
  6. Therefore the semantic distinction between different "websites" is not always conceptually clear. Hyperlinked documents can be considered the same document, albeit not the same file. Authorship is the only difference between a single work, and a compiled, annotated work. However, a cukta can have multiple authors, and be created over time.
    • It may not always be clear, but that doesn't help your argument. You need it to *never* be clear, and the truth is that it usually is. -mi'e .djorden.
    • You discuss cukta as though its use is the sole complaint. Where is the justification for ralju? (Not that I'll agree with it, you just ought to be comprehensive)


Irrelevant, low-level discussion of hypertext protocols and TCP does not belong on this page.

  • This is not an argument, it is simply an unfair dismissal of an opposing viewpoint. HTTP (== the web) is just a datni xelbe'i which we may desire to refer to by name (whether through a proper cmene, which I favor, or a fu'ivla or a lujvo), due to its popularity. If HTTP isn't important to the web, then gopher, nntp, ftp, irc, and any other protocol for information transfer used on the internet (or even elsewhere!) must also define "webs" (and under your claims, books (cukta)). --mi'e .djorden.
    • It's not an "unfair dismissal" but an attempt to frame the limits of debate to exclude irrelevant tangents which seem relevant to those not paying attention, but in fact completely miss the essentials of the discussion. --xod
      • Merely restating that you think it is irrelevant doesn't make it any less relevant. Because HTTP defines "the web", it is certainly the heart of the issue: Can a data transfer protocol (more specifically, can *this* data transfer protocol) be considered a cukta (book) in a non-figurative sense? — mi'e .djorden.



This page grew out of a rather productive discussion between me and xod on IRC today. To me, I still can't see considering the web as a whole to be cukta. I can consider individual websites to be so, even dynamically generated ones (amazon.com is one big catalog, this wiki is an ever-changing manuscript, etc). But to me, a book does require a certain amount of cohesiveness. An encyclopedia may be a bunch of mostly unrelated articles, but they were bound together by someone for a particular reason, for the purpose of being one work. Even if you consider the hyperlinking that goes on to bind things together that way (and I don't, see further), transitivity doesn't apply, at least not that far. Xod has a point that it is not always clear where one website ends and one begins, but on the other hand it usually is. There is generally a fair concept of when you're leaving one website to go to another. A single site isn't necessarily confined to a single domain (and vice-versa), but there is still a certain cohesiveness that's there, even given hyperlinks to the outside. It seems to be related to being controlled by a single entity, but even that isn't entirely it. I would say the web is more of a library than a book. Xod disagrees, claiming that the hyperlinking makes it one large work, all annotating each other; clicking a hyperlink is as easy as turning a page in a book... and in the web, could take you anywhere. I think that hyperlinking does not make it a single work, even the web were completely topologically connected (which it isn't). Whew. I'm not even saying half of what we covered; xod probably has a log. --mi'e mark

You know, unrelated to its fitness or unfitness as a word for the WWW, ralcku would make a really excellent lujvo for the metaphorical sense of the word "bible" in English, as in "The Art of Computer Programming is the bible of Computer Science" or "Yeah, that's really the best book there is on baking; it's my bible in the kitchen." --mi'e mark

  • I would prefer vajraicku (with the expected seljvajvo place structure) if only because ralcku has already been permanently maimed by this whole www-is-a-book thing. --mi'e .djorden.