[Wikide-l] spreading distributed wiki technology

Mi Nov 16 12:07:47 UTC 2005

Hallo Matthias, Hallo Liste,

(Antworte ausnahmsweise auf englisch, da ich den Text gleich als Artikel
veröffentlichen wollte, siehe: http://intelligentdesigns.net/Distributed_Wiki )

The OLPC, also called the 100$ Laptop seems to be really popular already.
Apparently, Wikipedia might become an application integrated into the device,
which will otherwise run a simplified Linux Operating System. Embracing the
principles of free software, it will not create new dependencies but give those
countries and local IT personel the opportunity to develop software and
infrastructure around those notebooks to their need.

The use of Mesh Networking makes it easy to connect a local group of noteboks
and will probably go further by connecting local groups with their neighbors
using cheap wireless technology. This is quite impressive, if you remember, that
it's possible to link up distances with pretty cheap self-built antennas.

Integrating Wikipedia or Wikis in general in this environment there is one
crucial point to think about: Wikipedia makes online connection to the server
necessary. Wikipedia isn't just a webserver, if you want to edit an article it
turns into a simple application server. It's an always online application, and
if you only have modem link to the net and edit wikis a lot you'll wish to have
a constant decent-speeded uplink.

Creating a local wiki on every notebook isn't a problem there is packages like
didiwiki which you can apt-get and they're up and running. If you're looking at
synchronisation of your notebook-wiki with a central server let's say, the
cambodian village school's wiki server, this is already a bit harder, at least
there is no out-of-the-box solution for this.

As Ward Cunningham mentioned in his talk at Wikimania the next step in
WikiTechnology in his Point of View is to make Wikis work in a mesh-kind-of-way.

I imagine that would work like this: People can have their WikiPages on their
notebooks, maybe divided into a private wiki for personal notes and public
wikipages. Whenever users meet each others, they can compare their public wikis
content, and find out what changes have been made. If a user had been connected
to someone who wrote new public articles they fetch those articles into their
device. Changes would automagically been discovered and synchronised, so that
information is distributed whenever people meet. Remember the usenet. Could
Wiki-articles be distributed from one node to another similarly to the usenet?
Instead of threads of argumentation, in that case let's think of articles and
their history. Every new version will be distributed in the channel and
differing versions visualized in a specialised local Browser. "Newsserver Nodes"
might be based in a school and exchange information with remote locations every
now and then or they might be integrated into the single OLDP device.

This might make it into a new culture. An Information Commons or even a ritual
of exchanging information: Whenever you meet someone - no matter if you've been
aquainted before or not. And don't forget.. this might not only apply to
developing Nations, but could also spread on handheld device like the recent
Nokia770.

If the Wikimedia foundation gets involved into the 100$ Notebook, I'd like to
encourage it to make a call for the development of such a distributed Wiki
technology.

This article is licenced under the CC attribution licence

http://intelligentdesigns.net/Distributed_Wiki

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