[Zope-dev] WikiDot

[Chris Withers]

Ken Manheimer wrote:
> I don't think anyone disagrees that wiki pages as they stand are
> imperfect for discussions.  I strongly feel (with lots of experience)
> that mailling lists are also flawed, sorta complementarily, for
> getting definite results out of discussions.  Both work with some
> effort, i think many of us feel that a insightful hybrid could reap
> more than the benefits of both.

Yup, spot on :-)

> > > The Wikis on the
> > > dev.zope site do a bit of this with delegating discussion to a
> > > discussion
> > > page.
> >
> > Yes, but that's only advisory, it's not enforced...
> 
> What's your point?  

Not point, just a comment ;-) As long as this as recognised it's not so
bad...

> We discussed (in a off-list discussion) a point of karls, that the
> tracker and weblog can map onto eachother, with some structural
> provisions.  I can see something very similar with wikis.

Yup, hence WikiDot, for me to work on...

> A weblog could constitute a wiki space, with the topic message being
> the FrontPage and the threads hanging off of it being nested wiki
> pages.  The discussion pages would automatically get names, per their
> nesting status - LogSub1Sub2 or something, overridable by the page
> author to have semantic significance. 

The names aren't so important to me but I think I see where you're
going...
I'm keen to have the structure of replies actually be a storage
structure, unlike in traditional Wiki.
This makes WikiName markup more difficult to handle, unfortunately...

>  - Wiki organizational features - table-of-contents view, ability to
>    adjust nesting situation in the discussion (modulo the weblogs
>    policy - often the owner may disallow any such adjustment, but in
>    some cases it would make sense).

Good point.

>  - With WikiNG's prospective notification mechanism, people could
>    "subscribe" to email notifications for any changes - additions,
>    edits, etc - within threads/subthreads, or just for additions at
>    top levels of threads.  The latter is like "executive summary"
>    monitoring, wanting to know only when the uppermost parts of the
>    discussions change, without having to worry about changes to the
>    outlying parts of the discussion tree.

Swishdot is going to have this stuff pluggable, so WikiDot could have
something to match this...

>  - With WikiNG editing policy control, the weblog *could* have a
>    policy that allows authors to amend their messages - eg, to insert
>    or append comments to their existing messages.  Or to edit their
>    messages, if that fits the task at hand.  (Eg, if what they're
>    doing is collaboratively developing a document.)  The basic case
>    would not allow this, for more classic, conventional weblog
>    conduct.

Another good point...

> Lots of good stuff.  The essential thing in this perspective is seeing
> the weblog as a structured viewing mode for the contents of the wiki -

yup...

> These are the kinds of things i'm hoping to get at with WikiNG - a
> smart content widget, with two essential features - good impedence
> matching to authoring structured, linked content (structured text plus
> wiki refs),

A lot of people I know would disagree with the Structured Text bit, but
I guess it'll have to do for now. Wysiwig editing on the web hasn't
arrived yet :-(

> and intrinsically determined and easily adjustable
> organization.

'Easily adjustable' could be difficult...

cheers,

Chris