On Sat, 27 Jan 2001, Clifford Adams wrote:
Hello to all of my fellow WikiPedia fanatics! :-)
I'm the author of the UseModWiki software currently running the WikiPedia.
While I was skeptical at first, I think the wiki approach could work very well
for a collaborative encyclopedia. I've decided to focus most of my near-term
efforts on new features and supporting tools for WikiPedia (most of which will
also help the other UseModWiki sites).
If any of the readers of this list have any questions about the wiki
software, I'd be glad to try to answer them. My "permanent" email address
is
caadams(a)usemod.com, but this
frontiernet.net address should work for awhile
(I'm not planning on moving).
Well, since we've got the ear of a this wiki's maintainer, I'll withdraw
my suggestion to change to TWiki. Instead, I'll describe some things I
liked about other wiki's I've used...
* In other wiki's, I've seen *bold* and _italic_ done that way, rather
than using multiple single-quotes. I dare say I prefer it that way, but
it appears that <b>this</b> and <i>this</i> seem to work, so
that's ok.
* We definitely need some way to distinguish headers. I've been making
them bold, but that's not really enough to distinguish between different
levels of headers.
* We really need an upload functionality, so that we can easily submit
images for the site. So far, I've just been including src links
pointing to places on another server.
* We may wish to consider allowing having multiple "zones" for wiki
material. I.e., separate the wiki-related material from the
encyclopedia-related material. It might also make sense to set up
special areas focused to a particular topic that is going to have a LOT
of entries. For instance, under PopMusic, it appears we're going to
have entries for all the pop musicians, which suggests having a
sub-encyclopedia just for music artists might be warranted. I'm unsure
on this one though, so take it as a loose suggestion.
* If I have a document that is in HTML already, is there a simpler way
to put it into the site, than to have to manually strip out the HTML and
put the wiki tags in it? For instance, the topic on the Photo Electric
effect had so much HTML in it that I didn't know where to start to clean
it up; it looks like a mess right now...
* Another note is that the Photo Electric effect article is in German.
How do we feel about multilingualism? What is the policy - to accept
alternate languages / translations, or to only accept english articles?
I know this opens a can of worms, but...
Btw, with all of these suggestions, I wouldn't be surprised if they
already exist - if so, then change the suggestions into "would be nice
to add mention-of to the website".