StandardPages

Standard pages are pages that are “standard” across multiple wiki. FrontPage and RecentChanges are two prominant examples. If you have seen the MeatBall:WikiTourBus, then you may know of the MeatBall:BusStop standard page as well.

Wiki tend to support StandardPages of one sort or another. To date, no formal named standards exist for page names, though they may likely exist in the future.

StandardPages are nice because they are quickly found.

Examples

The following are standard pages implemented on multiple WikiEngines today:

• FrontPage - the entrance to a wiki people receive with a raw URL.
• TourBusStop - used by the MeatBall:TourBus.
• RecentChanges - where you find the latest changes to a wiki.
• WikiSandBox - where you are encouraged to make changes to try out the wiki.

Present Actions

See WikiFutures:StandardPages (Futures:StandardPages ?) to discuss possible StandardPages of the future. List immediate work on standardization here.

MoinMoin

• WikiLicense - MoinMoin is adopting “WikiLicense” as the page to describe your site’s license on.
• InterWiki - Used by MoinMoin to list known InterWiki links.

Do any other WikiEngines do the same?

MappersProcess & WikiNodes

I, LionKimbro, am working on establishing WikiNodes:WikiNodes and the MappersProcess:MappersProcess.

WikiNodes:WikiNodes suggests:

• WikiNode - A page designating the topic of a wiki, and [wiki:WikiNodes/UnderstandingDelegations delegations to neighboring wiki.]

MappersProcess:MappersProcess suggests:

• IdeasToPlace - A collection bin for MappersProcess:RapidIdeaEntry. (See MappersProcess:IdeasToPlacePolicy.)
• SiteTutorial - A tutorial for first timers, bringing them up to speed on local WikiKM:WikiProcess, local site norms, and some history.

StartHere, CopyRights, and PressRelease

I (MattBowen) realize these aren’t standards, but I’m using them on my two wiki WriteHere.net and The Society of Lies and Stolen Ideas.

• StartHere was added after testing the design and organization with several novice users. The FrontPage content should be brief and geared toward a general audience (not just beginners), so we wanted to give beginners specifically a good place to go. StartHere also gives the site a stronger feel of organization.
• CopyRights appears to be the same as WikiLicense, excpet we link our Terms of Use, the License which users contribute under and the License which content is available under there – the content on WriteHere is licensed strangely.
• PressRelease is, as one might expect, our press release for bloggers, website owners, other wikis, and other announcement channels to distribute. KDE.org always does press releases for new software, and it just seemed like a good idea. It’s been picked up by a blog and gone out in a few emails now.

I’m not sure if these could get standardized, but they seem helpful to me. Feel free to use the ideas as you see fit. Since they aren’t standard, right now StartHere is linked in bold on the FrontPage, and CopyRights is linked at the bottom of every page.

Needed StandardPages

It seems to me that the need for maps of the contents of a WikiKM:PageDatabase is becomming obvious to the greater wiki community.

On C2, it’s called Wiki:StartingPoints. On CommunityWiki:CommunityWiki, it’s called Wiki:SiteMap. I feel there needs to be some sort of standard, so that we don’t have to keep guessing when we get to a new wiki.

Most wiki have several “category” pages. Many of them have a single page to list and discuss all known categories. On the original wiki, that page is Wiki:CategoryCategory. On World Wide Wiki, that page is WorldWideWiki:CategoryTag.

CategoryStandard