Wikipediocracy

Suppose Mediawiki exploded tomorrow, whether it be from a bad line of code, too many features that clog the servers, or otherwise. And Wikipedia needs a new software, and it needs it fast. Never mind the how. I am well aware that Wikimedia would shove their own software down our throats even if it was unusable.

But if we did have to change, what would be best?

I edited a lot at Tvtropes for about 2 years before getting bored with their circlejerk and coming here where all opinions count, even if you lie about them.

I thought that pmwiki was pretty ugly aesthetics wise, but it had some features that I think WP could take advantage of. First, its subpages. All the subpages are listed on the side. In its current form Wikipedia wouldn't be able to make much use of this, but I think it could be used to store things like maintenance tags, references, and extra external links, things that most people do not look for in an article. This would give articles a more polished appearance, like they'd been written by someone who knew what he was doing.

Never mind the content. If the placebo effect is all it takes to draw viewers, then that's all that needs to be done. Here I am focusing largely on readers.

Categories are much better too. They appear as boxes down at the bottom, and they actually show other pages in the category. There are no category pages in TvTropes, making things muddled, but we can certainly make them if we want to, with full documentation and separation of links within categories like a normal page. Because category pages are regular pages with a list on them, it gives us more freedom on what we can do with them. We could embed images, or give short explanations of each.

The talk pages are ok. Not the best, but better than ours and far better than Flow or LiquidThreads.

Images, however, are directly embedded in a page with no File: page. This could provide a legal problem, but we could use one of the handy subpages for that, each image stated with its own licenses and fair use reasons.

Pmwiki does not have some of the features of Mediawiki like Categories or a Wikipedia: namespace, but maybe that's for the better, as it would allow us a greater customization over everything.

I don't know about any of the other wiki softwares. Maybe one of you could shine some light on this.

Konveyor Belt wrote:I don't know about any of the other wiki softwares. Maybe one of you could shine some light on this.

Discussed this occasionally before -- general consensus was that the Wiki software world was generally small, backwards, and that MediaWiki was the best available, at least in no-charge or open-source form. But you're taking a risk by using it, because so many people are familiar with its inner workings and with "hacking" into it somehow.

EricBarbour wrote:

Konveyor Belt wrote:I don't know about any of the other wiki softwares. Maybe one of you could shine some light on this.

Discussed this occasionally before -- general consensus was that the Wiki software world was generally small, backwards, and that MediaWiki was the best available, at least in no-charge or open-source form. But you're taking a risk by using it, because so many people are familiar with its inner workings and with "hacking" into it somehow.

The main "risk" with using MediaWiki (aside from the fact that it's a resource hog, thanks to its idiotically slow Wikitext parser) is that there are hundreds of spambots out there, constantly looking for MediaWiki wikis that they can fill with spam. A default installation of MediaWiki will be fairly quickly found by these spambots (at least if it gets any Google juice at all). It's fairly trivial to lock MediaWiki down to prevent this, but many people don't, at least at first....

But, yeah, MediaWiki is the "best" of a fairly sorry lot. Although I'm a bit partial to gitit, a wiki implemented in Haskell and backed by a version control repository (current options are git, darcs, or mercurial). The Haskell front end means the implementation is fast and clean, and the use of a VCS for the backend means that all the issues with "edit conflicts" and other problems caused by MediaWiki's lack of effective version control are abated, and maintenance can be done from the backside with ease.

Kelly Martin wrote:

EricBarbour wrote:

Konveyor Belt wrote:I don't know about any of the other wiki softwares. Maybe one of you could shine some light on this.

Discussed this occasionally before -- general consensus was that the Wiki software world was generally small, backwards, and that MediaWiki was the best available, at least in no-charge or open-source form. But you're taking a risk by using it, because so many people are familiar with its inner workings and with "hacking" into it somehow.

The main "risk" with using MediaWiki (aside from the fact that it's a resource hog, thanks to its idiotically slow Wikitext parser) is that there are hundreds of spambots out there, constantly looking for MediaWiki wikis that they can fill with spam. A default installation of MediaWiki will be fairly quickly found by these spambots (at least if it gets any Google juice at all). It's fairly trivial to lock MediaWiki down to prevent this, but many people don't, at least at first....

But, yeah, MediaWiki is the "best" of a fairly sorry lot. Although I'm a bit partial to gitit, a wiki implemented in Haskell and backed by a version control repository (current options are git, darcs, or mercurial). The Haskell front end means the implementation is fast and clean, and the use of a VCS for the backend means that all the issues with "edit conflicts" and other problems caused by MediaWiki's lack of effective version control are abated, and maintenance can be done from the backside with ease.

Add a UI skin and you've got something good.

For a feature comparison of many, many wiki engines, take a look at WikiMatrix.

EricBarbour wrote: Discussed this occasionally before -- general consensus was that the Wiki software world was generally small, backwards, and that MediaWiki was the best available...

The thing is that the notion of a wiki has been stretched out far beyond what it was originally meant to be.

Hex wrote:

EricBarbour wrote: Discussed this occasionally before -- general consensus was that the Wiki software world was generally small, backwards, and that MediaWiki was the best available...

The thing is that the notion of a wiki has been stretched out far beyond what it was originally meant to be.

Showing the utter lack of anything vaguely resembling a software architect at the WMF.
They have a few "programmers" amidst the sea of imbeciles, but no software engineers or architects.

Hex wrote:For a feature comparison of many, many wiki engines, take a look at WikiMatrix.

http://www.wikimatrix.org/show/MediaWiki

Mobile Friendly | No

Hitting the nail on the head.

Konveyor Belt wrote:Suppose Mediawiki exploded tomorrow, whether it be from a bad line of code, too many features that clog the servers, or otherwise. And Wikipedia needs a new software, and it needs it fast. Never mind the how. I am well aware that Wikimedia would shove their own software down our throats even if it was unusable.

But if we did have to change, what would be best?

I edited a lot at Tvtropes for about 2 years before getting bored with their circlejerk and coming here where all opinions count, even if you lie about them.

I thought that pmwiki was pretty ugly aesthetics wise, but it had some features that I think WP could take advantage of. First, its subpages. All the subpages are listed on the side. In its current form Wikipedia wouldn't be able to make much use of this, but I think it could be used to store things like maintenance tags, references, and extra external links, things that most people do not look for in an article. This would give articles a more polished appearance, like they'd been written by someone who knew what he was doing.

Never mind the content. If the placebo effect is all it takes to draw viewers, then that's all that needs to be done. Here I am focusing largely on readers.

Categories are much better too. They appear as boxes down at the bottom, and they actually show other pages in the category. There are no category pages in TvTropes, making things muddled, but we can certainly make them if we want to, with full documentation and separation of links within categories like a normal page. Because category pages are regular pages with a list on them, it gives us more freedom on what we can do with them. We could embed images, or give short explanations of each.

The talk pages are ok. Not the best, but better than ours and far better than Flow or LiquidThreads.

Images, however, are directly embedded in a page with no File: page. This could provide a legal problem, but we could use one of the handy subpages for that, each image stated with its own licenses and fair use reasons.

Pmwiki does not have some of the features of Mediawiki like Categories or a Wikipedia: namespace, but maybe that's for the better, as it would allow us a greater customization over everything.

I don't know about any of the other wiki softwares. Maybe one of you could shine some light on this.

PmWiki is absolutely terrible. It would work horribly on WP.

Wikia's software isn't amazing, but I like it better than WP's.

Konveyor Belt wrote:

Hex wrote:For a feature comparison of many, many wiki engines, take a look at WikiMatrix.

http://www.wikimatrix.org/show/MediaWiki

Mobile Friendly | No

Hitting the nail on the head.

For goodness sake, don't tell WMF that.
They already think designing primarily for mobile is the thing to do, because we should all be editing encyclopedia pages from iphones on the train.

KendriaP wrote:

Konveyor Belt wrote:Suppose Mediawiki exploded tomorrow, whether it be from a bad line of code, too many features that clog the servers, or otherwise. And Wikipedia needs a new software, and it needs it fast. Never mind the how. I am well aware that Wikimedia would shove their own software down our throats even if it was unusable.

But if we did have to change, what would be best?

I edited a lot at Tvtropes for about 2 years before getting bored with their circlejerk and coming here where all opinions count, even if you lie about them.

I thought that pmwiki was pretty ugly aesthetics wise, but it had some features that I think WP could take advantage of. First, its subpages. All the subpages are listed on the side. In its current form Wikipedia wouldn't be able to make much use of this, but I think it could be used to store things like maintenance tags, references, and extra external links, things that most people do not look for in an article. This would give articles a more polished appearance, like they'd been written by someone who knew what he was doing.

Never mind the content. If the placebo effect is all it takes to draw viewers, then that's all that needs to be done. Here I am focusing largely on readers.

Categories are much better too. They appear as boxes down at the bottom, and they actually show other pages in the category. There are no category pages in TvTropes, making things muddled, but we can certainly make them if we want to, with full documentation and separation of links within categories like a normal page. Because category pages are regular pages with a list on them, it gives us more freedom on what we can do with them. We could embed images, or give short explanations of each.

The talk pages are ok. Not the best, but better than ours and far better than Flow or LiquidThreads.

Images, however, are directly embedded in a page with no File: page. This could provide a legal problem, but we could use one of the handy subpages for that, each image stated with its own licenses and fair use reasons.

Pmwiki does not have some of the features of Mediawiki like Categories or a Wikipedia: namespace, but maybe that's for the better, as it would allow us a greater customization over everything.

I don't know about any of the other wiki softwares. Maybe one of you could shine some light on this.

PmWiki is absolutely terrible. It would work horribly on WP.

Wikia's software isn't amazing, but I like it better than WP's.

I think it's ok, except for the fact that it is designed to maximize ad space.

I used TikiWiki on a website for a little while in 2005 and 2006. At the time, I preferred it over MediaWiki because it was more easily customizable. I'm not sure how it compares to MediaWiki in the present, though.

KendriaP wrote:Wikia's software isn't amazing, but I like it better than WP's.

What do you think is at the core of Wikia's software? I'll give you a hint.

thekohser wrote:

KendriaP wrote:Wikia's software isn't amazing, but I like it better than WP's.

What do you think is at the core of Wikia's software? I'll give you a hint.

Wikia Wiki: 30637

So many fanboys and their stupid shit.

Ward Cunningham, creator of the Wiki, has long believed that the centralized wiki model is not a good one. His latest project, release this past summer, is called "World's Smallest Federated Wiki". This is a distributed system without any central controller. You host the pages you create, and control them. More about it (from 2012) here, and an implementation can be found here: http://fed.wiki.org/view/welcome-visitors.

Bear in mind, however, that while Ward is brilliant, his released code is hardly ever up to mass-production (nor should it be). He's trying to popularize the idea of the decentralized wiki. I haven't tried the code yet myself.

greybeard wrote:Ward Cunningham, creator of the Wiki, has long believed that the centralized wiki model is not a good one. His latest project, release this past summer, is called "World's Smallest Federated Wiki". This is a distributed system without any central controller. You host the pages you create, and control them. More about it (from 2012) here, and an implementation can be found here: http://fed.wiki.org/view/welcome-visitors.

Bear in mind, however, that while Ward is brilliant, his released code is hardly ever up to mass-production (nor should it be). He's trying to popularize the idea of the decentralized wiki. I haven't tried the code yet myself.

WSFW is intriguing, although I've also found it confusing every time I've looked at it. I'd like to see other people's takes on the idea, perhaps with a different interface. Ward has come up with a number of brilliant things - I particularly liked the HyperPerl annotated code that allowed you to generate a customized version of the original (more or less, to be pedantic) WikiWikiWeb code, and rendered itself in the browser through its own code documentation. And you could edit it.

Konveyor Belt wrote:Suppose Mediawiki exploded tomorrow, whether it be from a bad line of code, too many features that clog the servers, or otherwise. And Wikipedia needs a new software, and it needs it fast. Never mind the how. I am well aware that Wikimedia would shove their own software down our throats even if it was unusable.

But if we did have to change, what would be best?

The best solution is not to use a Wiki at all. Wikis allow for rapid growth of certain types of content, but their use also causes many problems: Groupthink, censorship, bullying, gender bias, harassment, excessive rules, vandalism, edit-warring, conflict of interest, inconsistent page format, unsortable page content, inability to cross-reference data across pages, weird link format, too much text, inconsistent formatting, lack of multimedia, too much power in the hands of a small group, virtual ownership of pages, no incentive to maintain content...

We use a modified version of WordPress, and the way we have set up our system removes all of Wikipedia's problems while giving the writer and reader a better experience.

greybeard wrote:Ward Cunningham, creator of the Wiki, has long believed that the centralized wiki model is not a good one. His latest project, release this past summer, is called "World's Smallest Federated Wiki". This is a distributed system without any central controller. You host the pages you create, and control them. More about it (from 2012) here, and an implementation can be found here: http://fed.wiki.org/view/welcome-visitors.

Bear in mind, however, that while Ward is brilliant, his released code is hardly ever up to mass-production (nor should it be). He's trying to popularize the idea of the decentralized wiki. I haven't tried the code yet myself.

That site is absolutely unusable. I can't find anything and everything seems to be made using frames of some kind. Also, every little box has dev tools under it, including one to "fork this page". I could do just that, but I'd have no idea where I be forking it to, and how it works. Even Less user-friendly than Mediawiki. Jeez.

If I had a startup, and venture capital, and had just thought of Wikipedia, the idea, I would create it as a bundle of applications built in SharePoint (T-H-L).

Zoloft wrote:If I had a startup, and venture capital, and had just thought of Wikipedia, the idea, I would create it as a bundle of applications built in SharePoint (T-H-L).

By default, SharePoint has a Microsoft Office-like interface, and it is closely integrated with the Office suite.

I'm OK with this, because it means that even the layman can design their own site. However, it seems like a bunch of different apps (lists, search, etc.) inserted into a single site. This is ok for the casual user, but not ok for such a large site like Wikipedia. In Wikipedia, everything needs to run on the same software, or else it just becomes a bunch of clashing designs. This is why so many people hate Flow and VE, because it's not the same editor they would use for anything else and feels out of place.

Konveyor Belt wrote:

Zoloft wrote:If I had a startup, and venture capital, and had just thought of Wikipedia, the idea, I would create it as a bundle of applications built in SharePoint (T-H-L).

By default, SharePoint has a Microsoft Office-like interface, and it is closely integrated with the Office suite.

I'm OK with this, because it means that even the layman can design their own site. However, it seems like a bunch of different apps (lists, search, etc.) inserted into a single site. This is ok for the casual user, but not ok for such a large site like Wikipedia. In Wikipedia, everything needs to run on the same software, or else it just becomes a bunch of clashing designs. This is why so many people hate Flow and VE, because it's not the same editor they would use for anything else and feels out of place.

You can secure it well, build collaborative spaces (even wikis if you insist), and use CSS and themes to make it look however you like. Custom web parts and built-in lists, file libraries, editable views, and scalability for miles if you give it enough server resources. It's proven enterprise software.

Of course, it's the exact opposite of the open-source model, but you could build one hell of an encyclopedia and panopticon using that infrastructure. It's designed from the foundations up for secure collaboration.