--- Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se> wrote:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
Ward Cunningham, the founder of Wiki, says on
WhyWikiWorks (
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyWikiWorks)
"Wiki is not WYSIWYG (WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet).
It's an
intelligence test of sorts to be able to edit a
wiki
[...]
I think he's probably right. We should remember
that
I think the Portland Pattern Repository (on the
topic of
object-oriented programming) and Wikipedia (a
general purpose
encyclopeida) are enough different in scope and
target audience to
have different rules.
I'm not suggesting a rule, but simply making an
observation. I'm also not against GUIs and multimedia,
as long as we don't lose focus, trying to make
everything flashy and clickable. If someone wants to
make a GUI client for Wikipedia, great. Let's just not
make it mandatory for contributing.
I also think a GUI is unwiki only as much as it is
unhuman for man to
go to the moon. Nobody had done it before 1969.
Some thought it was
impossible. It might not be really useful, but
there could be value
in proving that it is possible and learning from the
experience.
Sure, as long as it doesn't get in the way of creating
a truly useful, copylefted encyclopedia. I don't think
there's some doctrinal WikiWay that cannot be bent or
reshaped. The very nature of Wikipedia itself is quite
different from any other wiki.
Stephen G.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs
http://www.hotjobs.com