Re: Wiki War I

Welcome to the list. I'll give you my comments on some of what you related.

Aaron Peterson wrote:
> backlinks
> from what I see, wikipedia does not support backlinks, which means that 
> developers must do twice as much work for every update than is neccessary
> 
> Navigation
> pages must have links to documents that are logically parents, and peers
> this type information makes it extremely easy to navigate a site

I'm not sure to what extent I am comfortable with this. Many pages may 
not properly have a single logical parent. Multiple nodes each of which 
do not make sense independently of the others can be combined into a 
single node with a section structure. Attempting to force a single 
logical parent structure unnecessarily constrains the use and 
flexibility of content. We should so far as is possible always try to 
create content that is independently valuable. The more flexible the 
content is, the more informative links will be possible, the more 
information value will be produced.

Also, all modern graphical browsers provide a "Back" button with a drop 
down list of previous links. And any user who is not comfortable with 
this is perfectly able to use a "table of contents" node as a navigation 
window, and a second window as a content window. Most browsers I am 
aware of support drag-and-drop of links from one window into another.

> Save Work
> why put stuff into paragraph format if it's already said better elsewhere? 

But can it be said better here? Value is added to content by the editor 
critically processing information he or she has obtained elsewhere. It 
is processed for bias, usefulness, and relevance. The editor also 
incorporates insight obtained from experience and other independent 
sources. Even if an editor is only going to uncritically (but legally) 
incorporate the content of an official project "About" page, doing so is 
still better than only providing a link. Getting the content into the 
wiki node in the first place, is the first step to it benefiting from 
the wiki collaborative editing process. The premise of wiki seems to be 
that multiple independent, informed editors can produce more informative 
content than can a single person elsewhere. Wiki facilitates the 
elimination of individual bias and the synthesis of multiple informed 
perspectives.

> why 
> hide a hyperlink with a title.. when it just causes the end user a bit more 
> work when they want to remember the site?  (you are taking away the ability 
> of the user to remember the URL on vis own)  The user is a part of the wiki!

When a link exists in the context of a paragraph, or in cases where the 
link URL itself is not memorable, I generally see no reason not to 
re-title the link to make it flow with the paragraph. This is also 
addressed in ensuring that a project or application title is never 
associated with a link to anything but the official source of 
information for that project or the node that functions as the same in 
the wiki. Miscellaneous non-official links generally, I think, shouldn't 
be included in the first place.

--dircha