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Three Issues, on the table right now:
This wiki is a “Hard Wiki,” as described in CommunityWiki:DegreesOfEditorialControl.
Basically, I watch this site veeeerry carefully, and, like a Fascist Overlord Dictator, make everything fit into a particular format.
The cool thing about this, is that presentation is pretty consistent.
The bad thing about this, is that it’s pretty hard for other people to contribute. We’re losing stuff.
So, I think we need a “Scratch Wiki,” also as defined in CommunityWiki:DegreesOfEditorialControl, to go along with this particular Hard Wiki.
However, this Scratch Wiki need not be confined to just Wiki Features. Scratch Wiki tend to have a lot of Wiki:OffTopic, after all, just like Wiki:WardsWiki. Scratch Wiki explode outward. So trying to make a Scratch Wiki with such a narrow focus (“Wiki Features”) seems counter-productive.
So, I think we’ll make it into an “Internet Technologies Scratch Wiki.”
Next up, is a series of questions:
This is not a decision I take lightly; If you look through IdeasToPlace, you’ll see a bunch of “Meta” ideas where, basically, I wonder about the issue.
It sounds like we’re going to keep this wiki about Wiki Features, but we may support a WikiEngine page for listing some of the major features of different Wiki.
Because there is now [wiki:IntComm/FrontPage IntComm], which is a good place to discuss ideas connected to wiki feature ideas, there is less pressure to include them here. We will keep this as a catalog of wiki features, now, and refer to Int``Comm, or whatever other site is appropriate, when we need to talk about those other, related, ideas.
However, things like a table of “What Engines implement what features” are within the boundaries of this wiki, which means to help coordinate implementers of ideas into engines. Locating engines with ideas in them is an important part of that.
I feel that we need a Scoop Site for general wiki coordination. Hell, not just wiki- all Internet Communications technologies.
See my note on CommunityWiki:AlexSchroeder’s page. He hasn’t responded, I think that he thinks it’s a dumb idea. But it seems important to me. Not just wiki, but all Internet communications developers, actually, I think.
I have renewed interest, because I just saw Wiki:WikiConsortium, which sort of scares me, because I don’t have a spare $1,000. So, I’d like to beat Wiki:WardCunningham to the punch. It’d be terrible if “they” made a wiki consortiom, and we couldn’t participate, because we didn’t have a spare thousand bucks.
So, what d’yall think? – LionKimbro
MarioSalzer: As this Wiki is called the FeatureWiki it should stay on topic for the moment. Obviously it is always tempting to merry interesting technologies (or just discus about this), but often this only leads to FeatureOverload (prominent examples being PhpNuke or the Emacs text editor with its web browsing, email, irc and rss feed reading capabilities and HTCPCP support).
However as one of the FeatureWiki goals also seems about collecting ideas it may be necessary to sometimes even accept notes on “related technologies” or even features that do not yet exist in any WikiWare. However it shouldn’t go so far to compare OddMuse features to PhpNuke extensions (except that extension was a Wiki).
Cataloguing [“WikiEngine”]s: I wouldn’t go so far to speak about “cataloguing”. Mantaining the Wiki:WikiEngines list is probably hard enough (a lot of broken links over there), so we shouldn’t reach for the link list award 2004 here. However trying to summarize and compare features (by simply placing everything in a well defined table structure) seems possible and on-topic as well. And we didn’t have to care, if an engine or link to them deceased, because the primary goal shouldn’t be helping people to find the right WikiEngine, but simply to collect an almost complete list of feature ideas.
LionKimbro: (Heh- “Link List Award 2004.”)
You are quite right. I agree with your reasoning. The primary goal of the WikiFeatures wiki is to collect and coordinate wiki features.
I have written it up above, under “Domain.”
However, I believe that there is still a gap, that needs to be addressed in some way. That gap is: Conversation about Wiki Engines, conversation about tie-ins with other technologies (such as IRC,) and conversation about other Internet communications technologies by themselves.
What do you think about the idea of a [wiki:CommunityWiki/DegreesOfEditorialControl scratch wiki] for all of those subjects together? Would that be something that would interest you?
MarioSalzer: Yo, but wasn’t your reasoning for creating the FeatureWiki that such things are already discussed here and there and from time to time. If you fear the temporary nature of such a list, we could well start them on MeatBall and copy it to here first when it consolidated. However that temporary and uncategorized feature ideas would probably only take place on two pages (the list of engines, and the list of feature abbreviations with their FeatureWiki page references).
Or do you plan a ScratchWiki only for doing discussions and conversations (like this one), which cannot met the editorial (book style) rules of the FeatureWiki at large? Good idea, but will initially gain little attraction again, and only few such conversations. Maybe an internet technology merge discussions mailing list was more interesting. And maybe such a thing already exists, but suddenly nobody knows about…
LionKimbro: Yes: People already discuss wiki features all over the place, and this wiki serves to locate those discussions. But a Scratch Wiki on Internet Communications Technologies would be a place where it was explicitely on-topic.
The scratch wiki would also be a place for discussions and conversations like this one.
Again, I don’t know if this is really a good idea or not. I think I’m just going to do it, and if it was a bad move, it was a bad move.
I don’t think a mailing list is such a good idea, because you only have one channel for discussion. (CommunityWiki:WhatCommunicationSoftwareToUse.)
MarioSalzer: While the ScratchWiki on “(mixing of?) internet technology” sounds quite interesting, it also works towards MetaWiki:WikiSaturation, and interest may thus be small.
However I’d also like to express my concerns with your editorial requirements. Avoiding discussions is a bit Contra``Wiki. In the long term the FeatureWiki cannot only collect ideas - there must be discussions on them also, else the FeatureWiki may fail to reach its goal (which I understood as central feature discussion and coordination headquarter).
There is always the need to purge TemporaryContent and finished discussions, especially if it was placed at wrong places and in unreadable fashion. But for the initial collection phase you’ll simply need it.
Not that I was entitled to bless anything 
- but I’d say, just start your ScratchWiki - and we’ll see how fast and well it serves its purpose; and how it will connect to the FeatureWiki then.
But now, what about the AnotherWikiEngineList documenting each implementations features? Can I just start it (I guess it only is about two pages) here, and we simply move it away if it lacks a consistent style or gets too bloated and fluffy.
Well, yes. You are entitled to bless anything. Maybe you just haven’t received your pope card in the mail. 
I very much value your thoughts and endorsements.
OK, I just went and created [wiki:IntComm/FrontPage “IntComm wiki” - Internet Public Communications.]
As for the editorial policy- I am very interested in your thoughts.
My primary concern, is that I want to keep the FeatureTemplate based pages nice. Not just now, but for a long time- I want people to trust that they can link to them, and they won’t be replaced by a bunch of permanent ThreadMode.
We can host discussions for a time, but I want to make sure that they are turned back into relatively nice pages in short order.
Can you think of ways to do this?
I was thinking- there’s so many discussions elsewhere about features, that we could just point to them. If in doubt, we could just point to [wiki:IntComm/FrontPage the new “IntComm” wiki.]
But maybe we need to use subpages, with /Talk, or something like that. It’s easy to do; Just add /Talk at the bottom of the FeatureTemplate.
What do you think? Do you have other ideas?
Do you agree with my goal, of having stable pages here, based on the FeatureTemplate? Note that- we can change the FeatureTemplate. It’s just- the concept of having stable, well formated pages- do you agree with that?
Or- do you believe this should all be ScratchWiki?
What do you think?
Oh- and- yes- you can certainly make AnotherWikiEngineList. That’d be totally awesome. We can talk about relocating it someday, if a better place for it appears.
MarioSalzer: Editorial requirements are a good thing, and it will work out well, in that people are likely to reference all pages here.
The separation of the real content and discussions now really seems like it could be achieved by some technical thing or an convention. The most simplest thing is of course to move discussions to a separate page, like WhateverFeatureDiscussion or /Talk respectively. The same thing could be achieved by a NearWiki and automatic NearLinks from each FeaturePage to there. I’d personally favour the /Talk subpages then, which would ensure consistency in the content pages, but always links to the discussions about it, which often reveal more details about a particular thing - may it be implementation problems or recently added and unedited extension ideas.
Second, I then just start YetAnotherWikiEngineList (better name to come too) to present my initial idea of what it could contain (making it too detailed would of course hurt the whole thing again).
Btw, if you like maintaining a large amount of Wiki installations (sounds like much work), what about a ProposedStandardsWiki for computer related (not only internet and IETF-less) standardization efforts?
That’s exactly what we’ll do, then: /Talk subpages.
As for the EngineList, I’d just build it straight into WikiEngine. I can’t think of anything else particularly enlightening in there.
Wow. Hm. What would people put there?
Tell you what- I’ll create it, maintain it, if you tend to it. I can’t really think of what things to put there, though, that there isn’t already another place for.
I wish I understood the IETF concept. They sound like they’re open, if you have the time to figure it all out. I’ve never accidentally run across their stuff while googling, or anything like that, so I really don’t know much about them. I think they operate in Stealth mode, or something like that. <shrug> I don’t know.
I need to make WikiFeaturesResolutions, to store decisions on, for reference.
MarioSalzer: Hmm, but ‘ComputerStandardsWiki’ is not a good name, as this always implied hardware stuff. I’d only thought about software and internet protocol standards, it’s otherwise to wide. If you’d setup it, that would be great. Eventually it would initially only host links to standards development pages (like Atom), but I could initially also contribute some of my more or less stupid ideas for what needs standardization.
For the IETF you’re right. They really operate in stealth mode, or at least they do not actively promote their existence (MenInBlue). However, they’re an important (not to say the) base of Internet development. It are those guys (IETF, IRTF, IESG, IANA, IAB, ISOC or more explicit: the InternetEngineringTaskForce, InternetResearchTaskForce, InternetEngineringSteeringGroup, IntAssignedNumbersAndNames, InternetArchitectureBoard and the good old InternetSociety) that make all those RFCs, including for example the HTTP protocol RFC:2616. They on the other hand are only a loseley knit of techies, and communication and development of standards almost only happens over their mailing lists (most of which look really dead, except for the http://imc.org/ and http://w3c.org/ ones). But the great thing about them, is that they really are open, in that everybody can take part in discussions, and anybody may write an RFC (called “InternetDraft” while it’s worked on, the IESG ratifies it as standard). - For the WikiMarkupStandard that’s the way to go I think, because it also blessed the whole Wiki idea as an official Internet standard (which is justified IMHO).
Mario- let’s move this dicussion to [wiki:IntComm/InternetSociety IntComm:InternetSociety,] because it has much broader implications than just Wiki Features. I think it’s an awesome conversation. I’d like to personally diagram the relationship between IETF, IRTF, IESG, IANA, IAB, ISOC, and write plain talk about what they are and what they do.
I have always wondered; I find it easy to learn about things and teach at the same time by converting tech-ese or legal-ese into plain talk.
So, let’s do that over on Int``Comm. You can either grant permission here, and I’ll do it, or, you can move it over yourself. Both are okay with me.
So, I see a few use cases for WikiFeatures, which I wanted to kind of document here. Or somewhere.
Use case list elided to UseCases.
I wonder if we haven’t concentrated too much on the last case, making lots of “Wouldn’t it be nice if…?” pages on theoretical features, without really covering the more mundane features that we already see in a lot of engines (recent changes? page history? user identification?).
Also, I wonder if it would be useful to put a stake in the ground and say that WikiFeatures is about “hard” features – features that are implemented in software by the Wiki engine. This would be in contradistinction to “soft” features – features implemented by a community as part of their process for collaboration. For example: on a (I dunno) Simpsons wiki, having a page called PopularCharacters where members can edit the page and put a signature next to characters they like would be a “soft” feature. You can have this kind of informal poll without changing the Wiki engine. But having a radio button array on each character page (“Do you like this character? Yes
| No”) and showing a read-only statistics page ranking characters by the results of these polls… that’d be a “hard” feature that would need to be implemented in software. |
I think dealing with “soft” features crosses a dangerous line where we’re duplicating the work of e.g. CommunityWiki, MeatBall, or FermentWiki.
Anyways, ideas, thoughts, comments, etc. --EvanProdromou
MarioSalzer: Evan, I think you’re too hard with your analyzation here. While there are also a lot of feature desires in the IdeasToPlace list, the actual FeaturePages then however are for actually listing, which WikiEngine implemented which feature (or at least is about to).
Featuritis is a thing almost every other WikiEngine development site shows up sooner or later. If you for example have a look at PhpWiki:CategoryNextWikiSuggestions you’ll find a large list of things that someone somewhen requested for. However some of those ideas are too complicated to get implemented (for an only occasionally working project like PhpWiki at least) or are simply too stupid to get implemented by anyone. There is always the risk, that an idea is simply unimplementable (may be I should reference Wiki:InterWiki now, *laugh*); but in the IdeasToPlace list I see far less of such ideas (currently).
Though there are some rants (I’ve itself written at least three of them) and things that just were cool to have, the rest of it is nevertheless about things that are (mostly) Wiki related and effortable.
But you’re absolutely right in respect to duplication of content that may already be mentioned and discussed in other Wikis. But here lies just a problem with editors of the WikiFeatures wiki - there are still too few links to feature discussions in other places. Though I would suggest that’s a MoinMoin problem (lack of nearlinks and metadb integration).
If there are any feature ideas, that merely only rediscribe things that are not all that Wiki dependend, then we could of course move that content/body away (into a IntComm:IdeaPage) and only leave a link to there then (“EmailAddressProtection” to name an example).
Btw, I think our upcoming WikiEngine list will help in separating soft features from hard features, in that it will only document current state of engine development (no feature desires will be noted there). This will also enhance the WikiFeatures wiki at whole.
You are both saying good things. My time is very finite, though. So, I can address these one at a time.
If you really want to move ahead on something fast, please put a question to me very simply, and very directly, with a minimum of going into other directions. I trust y’all, so you don’t have to explain a lot.
Mario- you can make your list of wiki engines and their supported features- I’m fine with that. Also, be sure you read my response to what you were saying about ISOC & what not.
Evan- I think use cases are a great starting point. If you want to move that discussion to UseCases, that’d be awesome. As for locking down the topical domain, giving explanations for discriminations, that’s fine to. I haven’t seen a real need, yet, so I don’t know that we need to formalize it that much. But I’m fine with it.
Done! --EvanProdromou