WhichWikiShouldWeUse

The other day, on a page I cannot find now, someone suggested that we might switch to a version of Wiki which supports arbitrary linking. The idea is that, particularly for an encyclopedia, having arbitrary links is better than the amusing but odd wiki capitalization conventions.

It strikes me that a very simple system would be to be able

to link like this: <<< Albania >>>.

Is there a wiki software that can support this? -- JimboWales

I just had another thought. Perhaps arbitrary linking using

<<< >>> should be limited to single words only. For example,

a list of UnitedStates might be written like this:

<<< Alabama >>>

<<< Alaska >>>

NorthDakota

<<< Wisconsin >>>

That is, if you use <<< >>>, the rule is that there has to be

only one word inside there.

The whole point here is to get away from weird names for single-word articles, things like NuPedia or AlaSka. Is

there a wiki that can do that? Or, should I just add the capability to this one? Or, is this whole idea really bad for some reason?

Hi Jimbo, I had made a suggestion a few days ago about perhaps switching to TWiki, as it is one of the more

polished (and well-documented) Wiki's. Twiki supports doing links as we've been doing here, as

well as forced links with double brackets. It's got gobs of other features... Check out

http://www.twiki.org. It's got pretty good docs, too. I highly recommend it.

-- Bryce

TWiki is a good wiki. (I prefer my own <nowiki>UseModWiki</nowiki>, but I'm slightly biased. :-) TWiki certainly has more documentation than <nowiki>UseModWiki</nowiki>. A third possibility is the <nowiki>MoinMoin</nowiki>: see http://moin.sourceforge.net/.

Adding word or <<<word>>> -style links to this wiki should not be very difficult. The main disadvantage of such links is that they would not be automatic. That is, if someone typed the plain word "Alabama", it would not become a link automatically. (The user would have to type something like "Alabama".) On the other hand, I'm not sure that every instance of simple words should be a link. Requiring explicit links might make the page look cleaner.

If this wiki community really wants more free-form links, I'd be willing to take a look at adding word-style links as an option in <nowiki>UseModWiki</nowiki>. --CliffordAdams

P.S. The "Please notice" text on the edit page is missing a closing tag. This makes any previews show up completely in bold text. [Please delete this note when the bug is fixed.]