Hacker News Reader

Comment by akavel | Hacker News Reader

I disagree about "wiki not being used much [other than] Wikipedia [except super-niche areas]". Just a few successful, absolutely useful and worthwile as much as notable examples off the top of my head:

- http://www.scp-wiki.net/ — platform for artistic expression

- http://duolingo.wikia.com/wiki/Duolingo_Wiki — practical FAQ for users, by users (I learned from it quite a few things I needed about the app)

- https://wiki.archlinux.org/ — super practical, ultimate guide/HOWTO for many Linux-related technologies

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WoWWiki

- not to mention cr*ploads of "corporate wikis" in corporate intranets where any and all information can be lost (ummm... "found" according to official corpo-speak...)

I pose that wiki as a technology is now firmly entrenched and was without doubt revolutionary. (Btw, it was pioneered on http://c2.com, not "Wikipedia itself".)

View on HN

Good point, but I meant the social system of Wikipedia more than the technology. On a corporate intranet vandalism was never a concern, as you can always have their manager tell them to lay it off.

You can separate wiki history quite clearly into pre-Wikipedia (c2 and friends) and post-Wikipedia. What disappoints me is that post-Wikipedia wikis are almost all "Wikipedia for <niche>", rather than something new.

Ah, so you mean the various orgs, policies, moderators, etc. "administrative" social structures that emerged on Wikipedia? In other words, more or less "meta.wikipedia.org"? If yes, that was not clear to me from your original post (to tell the truth, still isn't; that's why I decided to hereby ask in the end).

As to the "something new" in this area, one thing that comes to my mind is some wiki-based experiment/game I seem to have seen once, where its own rules could be edited; I think it was framed as a kind of "social experiment", but I can't google it out now. Other than that, I'm afraid I'm still not exactly sure what you're trying to say, so I find it hard to discuss or acknowledge yet...

That said, for sure I seen the wiki tech used in more than one SCP-like narrative/worldbuilding case.

On the other hand, the c2 wiki was in fact a kind of encyclopedia already, so maybe a wiki just naturally matches with such structural model?

some wiki-based experiment/game I seem to have seen once, where its own rules could be edited; I think it was framed as a kind of "social experiment"

That's touched on in SF, in "The Moon Goddess and the Son" (1979), by Donald Kingsbury. It's not developed there, just mentioned briefly.

> As to the "something new" in this area, one thing that comes to my mind is some wiki-based experiment/game I seem to have seen once, where its own rules could be edited

You might be thinking of Peter Suber's Nomic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic

You are likely thinking of the game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic, which happens to be very well-suited for online play.

Two of the largest instances are https://agoranomic.org/ and https://blognomic.com/

By "new" do you mean you just wish they had a different elevator pitch, or do you wish for an entirely new platform with communication and collaboration features, maybe along the lines of Google Wave, or do you mean something different, like OpenStreetMap where it's globally collaborative like Wikipedia, just for a different sort of information.

Would you consider Stack Exchange to include wiki concepts in a non-traditional (Wikipedia) manner?

The only other wiki project I know of that's the opposite of Wikipedia for <niche> is https://everipedia.org/ which tries to be a wiki for "everything" by not having Wikipedia's deletionist rules. It's an alright site but has nowhere near the traffic and name brand as Wikipedia, even though it has all the pages Wikipedia has.

Several hackerspaces/makerspaces are physical space which run on the "just give anyone access, don't worry" philosophy. It also works out suprisingly well. I know spaces where over 250 people have (electronic) keys, with about 10 minutes of vetting.

Even the NSA and related three letter agencies use wikis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellipedia

Also the FBI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaupedia

The DoD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoDTechipedia

The State Department: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplopedia

Is there actually that much wiki-ing going on on SCP-wiki? It always seemed that it was just the author doing anything with the pieces more like a fanfiction.net than a wiki.

SCPs themselves can be written by anyone, thrown into the 'Sandbox' wiki, and approved by staff.

(I have never gone through the process myself, so if anyone else wants to clarify, please do.)

SCP articles are written by anyone and posted by anyone(who is a member, which. Is staff approval via simple rules and entering a code in application) and the community votes on it. Anything below a certain threshold is deleted by staff.

SCP is a good example of things that can go wrong with a wiki other than vandalism.

Heavy handed self-proclaimed editors with too much time on their hands to stifle any creative writing that doesn't fit the mold of schlocky fan fiction.

Other than not being forkable to satisfy the people who's fiction is excluded, what's the problem? You can't satisfy everyone, those that want a consistent theme and voice would be unhappy if they ease up.

Do any wiki's support forking and merging?

I recall running across c2 a few times .. there was also everything2.com from 1998 which was/is a community wiki with its own engine, and kuro5hin.com from 1999 which was wiki-ish as well

Is this still answering the original topic though?

None of these wikis have deep life and death financial interests tied to their content like news and indirectly political world views does.

I'd point to Openstreetmaps as another example

Reply on news.ycombinator.com