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Wikiality

I’ve been working on a wiki project as an experiment for the next generation of SWiK.

The concept is that the web isn’t just a lot of static webpages anymore, it’s Ajax widgetry, Flash videos, fancy stylesheets, etc. Wikis however are dragging behind, stuck in static webpage land, there either isn’t a model for extending the wiki, or if there is it’s too complicated to really be ‘wiki’.

The wikiality concept tries to play a balance between these worlds. It’s a very experimental concept, but I’ve started using it personally and I think it’s started to be interesting. The way it works is via two types of pages: wiki pages and wiki templates.

The templating language is straight JavaScript. Templates are wiki pages that contain an eponymous Javascript class. When templates are embedded in a wiki page, the page then incorporates any referenced templates.

I like building applications in wiki form because:
  • It’s faster to develop, about two times as fast as a regular application
  • More customization. If I don’t like how something works in a widget, I can clone the widget, change it subtley, and now I have it working both ways. You can also build your own interface from top to bottom, there’s no constraints of the standard application ui.

I’ve written some applications in wikiality:

I’m still thinking about how the concept works and it’s very experimental and in flux, but I thought I’d share just the basic idea: I think wikis and widgets can work together.

PS. I’ve been looking more into how Digg works, and how the user ecology is evolving, I posted this on my other blog, but I think it might be interesting to people who just read this one, It’s called “The Prisoner’s Dilemma In Digg Story Promotion”. It talks about a theory I’m working on that there might be a weakness in Digg’s story promotion scheme wherein you can get your stories front-paged by entering into a cooperative game with other people trying for the same thing.

User:alex: Alex Bosworth's Weblog