01085: ___The WiKi NetWork___
Description:
___The WiKi NetWork___
The problem
Seeing how Wikipedia works from the inside,
I've come to completely distrust her,
and hate what it stands for.
Creating an alternative to Wikipedia,
with different founders and administrators isn't enough.
Because these are only half of the causes of the problem.
The other half is its structure.
So we need a different structure as well.
Possible solution
A true alternative would be a wiki network.
Thus sharing the power and the workload,
to smaller groups or even individuals.
But an open, multidirectional (not centralised),free network,
consisting of independent wikis, that trust each other,
and not an exclusive, or elitist network.
Practical stuff
For example,
let's say that we have
the Chemistry Wiki (eg. www.chem-wik.com)
the Politics Wiki (eg. www.worldpoliticswiki.org)
the Military wiki (eg. www.worldatwar.com/wiki)
An editor in the chemistry wiki writes about a drug use.
"During the First Boer War blah blah..."
He would like to link the phrase "First Boer War",
to an article in the politics wiki,
so that the readers can find more about that war.
Nowadays, he has to find that article,
and create a full external link.
He would have to write something like...
[[http://www.worldpoliticswiki.org/Africa/First_Boer_War First Boer War]]
In a wiki network he would simply write...
[[p@First Boer War]]
This would mean
« the article/internal-link 'First Boer War', in www.worldpoliticswiki.org ».
How would the Chemistry wiki know this?
How would it know where to redirect the user?
There are many options.
a. The administrator of the chemistry wiki,
would have set proper configurations in his wiki,
where he would write something like this (in a configuration file):
| p@ | [(approve links) edit diff] | |
| waw@ | [(approve links) edit diff] | |
| ak47@ | [(approve links) edit diff] |
b. The chemistry wiki would have a special WiKi-NetWork page,
where all the individual editors could ad their own links,
to other wikis.
These links would, then, work for all pages in chemistry wiki.
This special page would be nothing more,
than a list of abbreviations followed by links,
like the one above.
c. The editor that I mention in our example,
would write in the end of his page something like
[[p@=>http://www.worldpoliticswiki.org/]]
c_option1.
This link would work only for this specific page.
c_option2.
This link, would instantly work for the entire chemistry wiki.
And would be automatically added to the special WiKi-NetWork page,
so that the administrators could review these links
(check for conflicts, etc).
After the Chemistry Wiki has directed the reader to the Politics Wiki,
it would be the job of the Politics Wiki
to direct the reader in the specific "First Boer War" page,
like it would do with any of its internal links
(if the page didn't exist, for example,
it could ask the user to create it).
All of these wikis, in the virtual WiKi NetWork,
would not have to use the same wiki engine/software.
They would just have wiki applications, that accept these links,
or any other "network feature",
that other people, might come up with, in the future...
Hello. I am closing this request as PmWiki already has this interwiki/intermap feature. Only instead of using ak47@Artice we would have Ak47:Artice. It is easy to map new interwiki prefixes, by editing the wiki page [[Site.InterMap]]. Please see PmWiki:InterMap to learn more about the feature. Thanks. --Petko March 23, 2009, at 04:19 AM