Andre Engels wrote:
Well, as said, for Wikipedia wiki worked very well. That doesn't mean it works as well for other projects. A wiki means several things at once, and it is one of them (the wiki philosophy of free editing and control afterward instead of in advance) that made Wikipedia work where Nupedia did not. Wiktionary would I think work better in an environment with the same philosophy but a different technology (more database-like rather than marked up text). Wikiquote and Commons might well profit from a similar switch. For Wikisource the whole 'free editing' concept itself does not seem as suitable, or at least, not as necessary.
I agree. The wiki format works very well to collaboratively create a text. But for other purposes it doesn't suite that perfect. An other example is discussions. I think, it would actually be nice if the MediaWiki software would be changed in that way that the 'discussion' page of each article had a more automated formatting, more like a forum, while still enabling the wikimedia-syntax. Outdated discussions could simply be hided and a rating system for comments (maybe similar to /.) could also work very well. To enable more semantic and meta-data support, or a more data-base-like feeling for Wiktionary etc. there's being worked at the Semantic MediaWiki (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki). Looks very promising!
Mauro Bieg