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WhatIsTheWikiNet

What is the wiki-net?

Lightning talk on 2006-12-28, 23rd Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin

The referring day-page "face". Watch the video of the lightning talk. Or watch all lightning talks of the day starting with mine (1 hour, 121 MB).
There is a French translation of this text.

2006-12-28 Agenda

See also the 'wiki-net', please.

What is the wiki-net?

The wiki-net is a proposal for all wikis to collaborate.
The wiki-net is supposed to apply to all wiki-engines and all wiki-engines can be modified in order to support it. For my proposal I use the Oddmuse wiki-engine.

When starting a wiki there are always other wikis dealing with something somehow similar already. We will call them “neighboring wikis”. Note that the task of defining which wikis are “neighbors” is entirely with the community. The likelihood of a collaboration between your community and the communities of “neighboring” wikis is high.

Defining a “neighborhood” for wiki-communities is in practice already for some years in the form of the wiki-node. Many wikis have a page called wiki-node. On the wiki-node you find links to the “wiki-node” pages of neighboring wikis. This is where these wikis again define their neighborhood and so on.

To see what is going on in your neighbourhood still requires too many steps. Instead there can be a page wiki-net changes on your wiki showing your local recent changes merged with the recent changes of the few most interesting neighboring wikis.

Even easier would be to have a “summary for the public” created by the community on day-pages, that are gathered together on a page called blog. The blog is also displayed at the bottom of the page front / blog.

The blog is also syndicated to other wikis, just like the recent changes are. The page wiki-net blogs shows both the local blog and the blogs of the currently most interesting neighbors. This allows you to see what’s happening in your neighborhood without having to leave your wiki. You and everyone in your community can dynamically shape this “common fish-eye view”.

The interesting part actually is the “interference” between two different wiki-nets. The global brain we are about to build – It seems to me – will be able to see things, both in large scale and in detail, sharp at the same time. It focuses on the individual people (personal wikis) and on the communities (community wikis).

We want to be automatically notified when another wiki starts or stops to “watch” our wiki. “Feeling the others’ gaze on your skin” – that is an expression we use for it. This is a little harder to do and it takes us to the local page wiki-net and to the wiki-net server.

The day-page set who helps here? is for documenting who currently makes part of the community.

The day-page set wiki-net puts out a feed containing the current information about the “state of mind” of a wiki community: who is the community currently composed of and what neighbors is the community currently interested in? The latest date-page in the day-page set wiki-net is valid, as a whole the day-page set wiki-net writes a history of the development to this current state.

Every change in the composition of the local wiki-net pages also changes the page wiki-net. We synchronize manually for now, this should be done by the software later.

There is also a page “events” that works similar to the “blog” and “changes” pages. For example, here are the local events of Stuttgart, Venice and Melbourne merged. Melbourne-wiki: wiki-net events.
They are very distant places – if they were wikis for Stutgart, Ulm and Ludwigsburg it would be more useful.

Today wikis are like this: You enter a community. You start to understand what the idea is. And after a while you get that Person A is also busy on your second favorite subject. Person B does what a good friend of you does, but in French. Person C is rarely around but busy on something pretty interesting you never ever heard about before and so on. What about having this information even before entering the community?

That is the wiki-net.

No. The wiki-net is just something I came up with in spring 2006. (Naaah!)


Old, too long version

Draft for my lightning talk on 23C3

What is the wiki-net?

Wiki means collaboration. Collaboration between people working on a wiki is sufficiently supported by current wiki-software. But not necessarily is the collaboration between different wiki-communities. How to change that?

The wiki-net is a proposal I came up with in spring 2006. It is supposed to apply to all wiki-engines and all wiki-engines can be modified in order to support it. For my proposal I used the Oddmuse wiki-engine.

When starting a wiki on an issue there are always already other wikis dealing with something similar.
They might use a different language than you do or a different wiki-engine than you do. In any case the likelihood of a useful collaboration between your community - if there already is one - and the communities of “neighboring” wikis is high. Note that the task of defining what wikis are “neighbors” is entirely with the community. There is no owner and there is no “wikiroll” such an owner might define. Everybody can add and remove neighbors. On the contrary there is the wiki-net of a wiki which is the
set of neighboring wikis the community of the wiki currently is especially interested in.

This idea is developing nicely since some years already in the form of the wiki-node. On the wiki-node you find links to wiki-nodes on neighboring wikis who again link to the wiki-nodes of their neighbors on them and so on. Many wikis already have a page called wiki-node.

But having links to the wiki-nodes of neighbors on your wiki-node doesn’t really make you see what’s going on in your neighborhood. You still have to click one of the links and go to the recent changes of the neighboring wiki to see what’s going on there. That are still too many steps.

Instead there can be a local page on your wiki showing your local recent changes and the recent changes of a selection of the few most interesting neighbors merged. This page was originally called recent near changes (show community-wiki recent near changes, enter the edit mode view to see how its done). I call it wiki-net changes = Our recent changes and the recent changes of our most interesting neighbors merged (show oddwiki-center wiki-net changes).

Merged recent changes are still pretty confusing and following what is going on on neighboring wikis is simplified but still not easy. It would be easier to have each community summarize what has been going on in it recently and display a mix of these summaries. This “summary for the public” is called the blog of a wiki. It is located on date pages of a day-page set called blog (show oddwiki-center: blog). The date-pages of the blog automatically get attached at the end of the front-page (show oddwiki-center: front / blog). Entries on your wiki’s blog are syndicated and visible on other wikis. Note that everybody can edit this page and that the community controls its blog = its “summary for the public”.

The page wiki-net blogs shows the local blog and the blogs of the currently most interesting neighbors merged (show oddwiki-center: wiki-net blogs.

The pages wiki-net changes and wiki-net blogs enable you to follow the ongoings in the neighborhood of your wiki with only a click to a local page of your wiki. You and all in your community can dynamically shape this “common wide angle view”.

Another wiki-net page is events. City-wikis for example can announce local events on it (show Melbourne-wiki: events). On wiki-net events (show Melbourne-wiki: wiki-net events) you see the local events and the neighbors’ events merged). My example shows the local events of Stuttgart, Venice and Melbourne merged - not a very useful page. If the distant places were closer to each other - like Stutgart, Ulm and Ludwigsburg - it would be useful.

What about being automatically notified when another wiki starts or stops to “watch” your wiki? “To watch” mean the feed of the changes or the feedo of the blog of your wiki is added to the page wiki-net changes or wiki-net blogs on another wiki. “Feeling the others’ gaze on your skin” is an expression we use for it. That’s a little more difficult and finally takes us to the local page wiki-net and to the wiki-net server (show wiki-net).

We currently synchronize manually, it should be done by the software later. Every change in the composition of the local wiki-net pages such as wiki-net blog, wiki-net changes, wiki-net events also changes the day-page set wiki-net. It puts out an rss-feed called wiki-net feed that contains information about the current “state of mind of a wiki-community” - what people is the community currently composed of and what neighbors is the community currently interested in? Who helps here is for documenting who is currently a part of the community (show who helps here?).

The wiki-net feed goes to the wiki-net server. Such doesn’t exist yet but I have been told the software for it wouldn’t be too difficult to write (see wiki-net: wiki-net server).

The wiki-net server regularly connects to the wikis, reads their wiki-net feed and feeds back to them the information about which other wikis are currently watching it. You could also make an updating map showing on which other wikis the core participators in your community are also active.

The interesting part actually is the “interference” between two different wiki-nets: a net of personal wiki and a net of community-wiki. They are like two eyes looking at something but focusing on a different distance. One is focused on individual people, the other is focused on communities of people. The global brain we are about to build - that’s what it seems to me - achieves some kind of three dimensional view by it. Imagine: you hold a violin bow, holding it between your fingers in the middle of it and on a stretched out arm right in front of you. The tip of the bow is pointed to your nose the end of it points away from you. Now imagine you could focus your right eye on the tip of the bow and your left eye on the end of it. Seeing them both sharp at the same time. That kind of a three dimensional view.

On personal wikis individuals keep up to date their agenda, their blog and their to do list (and it’s fragmentation, see Hans-Wobbe-wiki: micro tasks) and by that form a net being connected via WikiNode, WikiNetChanges, WikiNetBlogs or WikiNetAgenda?.

On “community-wikis”, non-personal wikis people work together and collaboratively decide about the goals, the tone and the topics of their collaboration.

You enter a community, start to understand what the idea is, you come to know the other members by reading their posts and in their reaction on you and you slowly understand: A is also busy on your second favorite subject, B does what a good friend of you does, but in French, C is rarely around but busy on something pretty interesting you never heard of before. What about having all this information even before entering the community? That is the wiki-net.

No, honestly. The wiki-net is just something I came up with in spring 2006.


beamer

What is the wiki-net? / links - the links for the beamer to change during the talk

thanks

MattisManzel: Thanks to RadomirDopieralski / “TheSheep” for your help compressing and elaborating the text and publishing the video. Thanks xorAxAx for recording the stream.

comments

SamRose: COOL!!!!!

EditNearLinks: TheSheep RadomirDopieralski

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