On Sat, 27 Jan 2001, Clifford Adams wrote:
Hello to all of my fellow WikiPedia fanatics! :-) I'm the author of the UseModWiki software currently running the WikiPedia.While I was skeptical at first, I think the wiki approach could work very well for a collaborative encyclopedia. I've decided to focus most of my near-term efforts on new features and supporting tools for WikiPedia (most of which will also help the other UseModWiki sites).
If any of the readers of this list have any questions about the wikisoftware, I'd be glad to try to answer them. My "permanent" email address is caadams@usemod.com, but this frontiernet.net address should work for awhile (I'm not planning on moving).
Well, since we've got the ear of a this wiki's maintainer, I'll withdraw my suggestion to change to TWiki. Instead, I'll describe some things I liked about other wiki's I've used...
* In other wiki's, I've seen *bold* and _italic_ done that way, rather than using multiple single-quotes. I dare say I prefer it that way, but it appears that <b>this</b> and <i>this</i> seem to work, so that's ok.
* We definitely need some way to distinguish headers. I've been making them bold, but that's not really enough to distinguish between different levels of headers.
* We really need an upload functionality, so that we can easily submit images for the site. So far, I've just been including src links pointing to places on another server.
* We may wish to consider allowing having multiple "zones" for wiki material. I.e., separate the wiki-related material from the encyclopedia-related material. It might also make sense to set up special areas focused to a particular topic that is going to have a LOT of entries. For instance, under PopMusic, it appears we're going to have entries for all the pop musicians, which suggests having a sub-encyclopedia just for music artists might be warranted. I'm unsure on this one though, so take it as a loose suggestion.
* If I have a document that is in HTML already, is there a simpler way to put it into the site, than to have to manually strip out the HTML and put the wiki tags in it? For instance, the topic on the Photo Electric effect had so much HTML in it that I didn't know where to start to clean it up; it looks like a mess right now...
* Another note is that the Photo Electric effect article is in German. How do we feel about multilingualism? What is the policy - to accept alternate languages / translations, or to only accept english articles? I know this opens a can of worms, but...
Btw, with all of these suggestions, I wouldn't be surprised if they already exist - if so, then change the suggestions into "would be nice to add mention-of to the website".