Hi Denny - Thanks for your reply and I am relieved. The design seems in the process of walking towards looking quite alot like ISO Topic Maps, I must say, because it designates no wall of separation between classes and topics. Today that wall exists in SMW in the dichotomy of Category vs all-other-namespaces, with the problems I've outlined. I'm reading into your document that there will be no wall - that the topics describing classes surely will exist in the same 'namespace' as the topics purported to be instances of these classes.
Is this correct? If so, then there's less difference between ISO Topic Maps and your design than what I had origianlly thought. If indeed the direction of the project (as I detect on this email list) is to associate pages with classification schemes such as LCSH or many others, then we're talking about even more an ISO Topic Map orientation. Which brings me back to the many benefits of a *brutally honest* adoption of the ISO Topic Map technology.
Extend & refine it for sure, but imho ISO Topic Map technology is an excellent fit with wiki implementations. It seems to be what you're incidentally doing anyway. cheers - john