Socialtext

Last week at the San Francisco Bay Area Wiki Wednesday, we had a great talk and group discussion on wiki interoperability, led by Eugene Eric Kim of Blue Oxen Associates. The day before, Eugene led a discussion on the #wikiohana irc channel on irc.freenode.net. We talked on #wikiohana about WikiCreole, a project to build a wiki markup that can continue to converge between different wikis.

Creole is a common wiki markup language to be used across different wikis. It's not replacing existing markup but instead enabling wiki users to transfer content seamlessly across wikis, and for novice users to contribute more easily. Creole will create a community of wikis users and developers that forms a Wiki Ohana.

This made a lot of sense and I'm impressed with it as a great model for collaboration. In the IRC discussion, I also learned about the UniversalWikiEditButton project, to create a standard button that will signify "you can edit this page, it's a wiki". Like the familiar orange RSS icon, it will spread a shared understanding across applications and across languages. Personally... I like the bright green squiggle as a wiki edit icon! It seems friendly, graceful, and inviting.

At Wiki Wednesday, we touched on some of these issues. Everyone in the room came up with problems with wikis today, and solutions or opportunities. This boiled down to: 1) editing and markup 2) data and data structure migration 3) interconnection, or "one big wiki".

I especially liked the discussion of sister wikis and tying similar content in multiple languages together. For example, in Wikipedia, if I'm watching a page on the biography of Gabriela Mistral, I'd like to be able to track recent changes on the English, Spanish, versions as well as versions in other languages. With some way to know there is content in other wiki on the same or similar subjects, we could potentially improve content quite a lot. Eugene pointed out that being aware of the existence of other contexts - especially the context of language and culture - adds immeasurably to general understanding.

Phoebe Ayers talked about the main three wiki conferences: Wikisym, Wikimania, and Recent Changes Camp. She's involved with all three conferences, and she encouraged us to come to them or to help out with planning and organization. I heard that there will be a Recent Changes Camp in the Bay Area in March 2008!

Most of our discussion is on the transcript of the SF Wiki Wednesday. If I got your name wrong, please fix it on the wiki.

The #wikiohana IRC meetings will be happening each month, the first Tuesday of the month, 21:00 GMT.

Thanks to Tara Hunt and Chris Messina for co-hosting the event at Citizen Space, a San Francisco co-working space.

Other Wiki Wednesdays took place in London, Portland, Stuttgart, Montreal, and Sydney. I'll write up a review of what happened there in a separate post.

Also, we have interest from SondraC, a top contributor at WikiHow, in starting up a Wiki Wednesday in the Orlando area. Sign up here if you're in that part of Florida and are a wiki enthusiast or developer!

If you'd like to be a speaker at a future Wiki Wednesday, please email me at liz@socialtext.com.

Liz Henry
liz@socialtext.com
http://socialtext.com/blog/27
http://bookmaniac.net