[Wikipedia-l] Re : sanger on 'open meritocracies'

Fri Jun 2 14:05:37 UTC 2006

Andre Engels wrote:
>
> Well, as said, for Wikipedia wiki worked very well. That doesn't mean
> it works as well for other projects. A wiki means several things at
> once, and it is one of them (the wiki philosophy of free editing and
> control afterward instead of in advance) that made Wikipedia work
> where Nupedia did not. Wiktionary would I think work better in an
> environment with the same philosophy but a different technology (more
> database-like rather than marked up text). Wikiquote and Commons might
> well profit from a similar switch. For Wikisource the whole 'free
> editing' concept itself does not seem as suitable, or at least, not as
> necessary.
>
>
>   
I agree. The wiki format works very well to collaboratively create a 
text. But for other purposes it doesn't suite that perfect.
An other example is discussions. I think, it would actually be nice if 
the MediaWiki software would be changed in that way that the 
'discussion' page of each article had a more automated formatting, more 
like a forum, while still enabling the wikimedia-syntax. Outdated 
discussions could simply be hided and a rating system for comments 
(maybe similar to /.) could also work very well.
To enable more semantic and meta-data support, or a more data-base-like 
feeling for Wiktionary etc. there's being worked at the Semantic 
MediaWiki (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki). Looks 
very promising!

Mauro Bieg