InterWiki Gobby Session

InterWiki workshop! 2005-10-18

Participants who want their name listed:

• Bayle Shanks (bshanks@ucsd.edu) interoperability
• LionKimbro (lion@speakeasy.org) - whacky wiki something or other
• Helmut Leitner, social issues
• Eugene Eric Kim - "want to help"
• Beat Doebeli Honegger, wiki in education
• Crawford Currie - http://c-dot.co.uk
• TWiki Developer
• Ted Ernst (ted@chicagohumanist.org) "self organizing advocate"
• Ward Cunningham (boost wannabe?)
• Hans Wobbe - Multiple Wiki socusiaer and sponsor
• BrandonCsSanders (sanders@cs.rochester.edu) - EVERYTHING
• JohnAbbe (johnca@ourpla.net) - Process artist
• MartinCleaver (Martin@Cleaver.org) (his computer was on the projector) - effects of wiki on innovation, TWiki Developer
• Michel Buffa (buffa@unice.fr) education, intranet, semantic wiki
• Joe Connell - "Developer and Storyteller"
• Raymond King - "wiki index, wiki smitten"
• John Stanton - wiki index (same project as Ray)
• Jeff Garland - manager of boost wiki
• Steven Mattias - snipnap developer
• Anne Goldenberg (agoldenberg@vecam.org) social science and political ramifications
• dan
• beat
• MaxVoelkel (dev@xam.de) - SemanticWiki, WikiArchitecture
• Jeff Garland (jeff@crystalclearsoftware.com) Host of the Boost Wiki http://www.crystalclearsoftware.com/cgi-bin/boost_wiki/wiki.pl
• MarkDilley (markdilley@gmail.com) Union Organiser Enthusiast and wiki fanatic
• Joe Callen(sp?) of Select Minds

Future: JotSpot Live (though some limitations)

== Projects people wanted to introduce to group ==

• SwitchWiki
• An alphabetical list of wiki
• google for SwitchWiki
• http://www.worldwidewiki.net/wiki/OneBigWikiAlphabeticalIndexK (for example)
• Wiki Index
• http://www.indexwiki.com/index.php/Main_Page
• logo, the name, what kind of category
• Index active, good wikis
• http://wikisoft.com/ - a blog about wiki - effectively recentchanges.com
• raymondking@gmail.com, ...(another one)...
• There is an index of public Twiki & mediawiki
• existed, but it's not on the internet anymore
• ask MartinCleaver
• Tour Bus Stop
• http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?TourBusStop
• speakers: HelmutLeitner, MarkDilley
• a way to discover other wiki, meet people in other wiki
• a system, that is organized, that links to active (good) communities
• a ring of communities, connected
• there has to be a tourbus stop (describing the wiki and suggesting good entry points)

at a wiki listed in a tourbus route (difference to just a wiki directory)

• if you want to be connected and have medium sized activity, come be connected
• if you have suggestions to improve, please
• (Helmut retiring from maintenance, looking for someone to step forward):
• 98% *social reasons for a wiki to fail*
• Helmut would like to see many more wiki succeed

(wiki fail for social reasons)

• We need social tools and standards, ''common language''
• Founders of communities explicate rules, license, ...
• Community use patterns: "Show examples from different wikis"
• Christopher Alexander: Patterns are a way to create living environments
• Main goal to make wiki not technical places, but environments for fruitful collaboration
• "Knowledge Distribution" - Guest, Visitor, Member, Contributor roles
• Brandon's anecdote -
• Helmut's terminology for guests, visitors, community members, contributors, helped clarify expectations
• WikiIndex, WikiNodes and SisterWiki
• idea is that every page has a page called WikiNode
• 3 basic sections:
• introduction
• key points of interest or interesting pages
• neighbors (links to wikinodes of neighbors, topically connected, socially connected, etc
• decentralized (no central index)
• Project space network - every project will have a wiki
• We can do this now… just an organisational matter

http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=328 Michael

Collaborative editing

• http://CoTor.org … an AJAX (web client) collaborative editor that can be used to edit any wiki
• SubEthaEdit
• CoEdit
• MoonEdit
• http://Synchroedit.com
• Common glossary

Social issues

• common language
• role model
• common expectations, rules, constitutional elements

Pattern issues

• baseline knowledge
• usage pattern language
• Include content from other engines Transclusion
• Unified Recent Changes
• Wiki Synchronisation
• To like and unlike servers
• For offline editing and backup
• Includes issue of versioning numbering
• Page Transfer/snychronization
• Local Names
• MachineCodeBlocks / WikiFormats / universally applicable networked data format
• Spam Regex database for control of Wiki Spam
• Common plugins interface
• Common usage/social patterns

Simple ExchangeFormat and ExchangeProtocol (URL conventions) RESTWiki - splitting wiki into

• backend server (URL conventions & XML)
• user interface server (parser & stuff)

technical view:

• ExchangeFormat
• XHTML or OpenDocument or plain text ?
• I would do a spec lead on an XML based exchange format
• ExchangeProtocol = API
• REST or XMLRPC or SOAP or ?
• just some URL convention where to HTTP GET
• RecentChanges, AllPages, a particular page (which version)
• (see also http://www.communitywiki.org/cs?ModularWiki)

== Bayle's interests ==

• federating wikis
• NearLink
• InterMap
• PageClusters
• InterMap
• unified recent changes
• transclusion
• APIs etc
• WikiGateway
• modular wiki: http://www.communitywiki.org/cw?ModularWiki
• goals of APIs etc
• client side tools
• filtered, unified, rated recent changes
• wiki client (http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiRefactoringBrowser)
• MobileContent (ttp://www.communitywiki.org/MobileContent)
• Sunir asked me to mention the MetaWiki title search:
• Tools to interlink wiki community more
• switchwiki
• metawiki
• martin's wiki crawler
• sisterwiki
• plaintext standards for getting info from wikis:
• plaintext AllPages
• plaintext InterMap
• etc
• (can't read my note)
• WikiProcess: Helmut's explicit community rules
• mailing lists:
• wikitech
• wiki markup standards
• interwiki-discuss
• http://wikisym.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wiki-standards

== Potential breakout sections ==

• SisterWikis - WikiNode
• Wiki standards
• Wiki Architecture = which data to expose and how (URL conventions & data formats)
• introductory page distro/centralized process explanations
• SemanticWiki
• Synchronising changes between wikis
• off-line
• same platform
• People introducing other projects breakout group?

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random notes:

Helmut is going to add a ProWiki module to WikiGateway. He wants to add more functions (and Bayle agrees!)

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• Wiki Indexes, Wiki Nodes, Sister Sites, Universal Data on Wiki
• Michel Buffa
• Eugene
• John
• Anne Goldenberg
• Lion Kimbro
• Social Issues (what Helmut was talking about) Back - "C"
• Anne Goldenberg
• Helmut
• Beat
• Lion Kimbro (briefly)
• Collaborative Editors with Wiki - outside with Brandon
• Brandon
• Michel Buffa
• Wiki Sychronization (and offline editing)
• Martin Cleaver
• "B" WikiArchitecture = Page Interchange, Wiki Interchange, History Transfer, Rest wiki, Transclusion Technology
• MaxVoelkel
• Bayle Shanks

group = wiki architecture = all the same technology

== Results of Discussions ==

• Sister Wiki
• Simplest that people can do
• Implement on as many wiki as possible
• every website to publish list of pages that are on the website
• URL canonicalisation
• list of page names (URL page start + page name)
• will record as spec, record on the wikisym mailing list
• talk to Dirk
• Sister Aggregator
• Connect to instead of explicit per-site list
• Wiki Nodes Visualization
• see notes at bottom:
• "WikiNodes & Universal Machine Code Data & FOAF & RDF"
• Page Interchange, Wiki Interchange, History Transfer, Rest wiki
• see notes at bottom:
• "http://wiki.wikisym.org/space/WSR+3"
• REST-ful approach
• HTTP GET to get raw version, xml version, rendered version, ...

Social Engineering

• Not easily amenable to tehcnical issues
• Capture solutions -> will operate a working group
• 10 points at the bottom of the page

Wiki Gateway

• Bayle's Interwiki gateway will communicate with different wiki servers
• collects scraping/writing drivers

= Wiki Nodes, Wiki Index, Sister Wiki, Universal Data =

• FOAF, existing standards
• Ward: Make it really easy for people to cite other sites as sisters
• how Sister-wiki works - nightly basis, pull list of names
• list of pages? utf-8, line per line
• synonyms dictionary
• universal machine code data?

= WikiNodes & Universal Machine Code Data & FOAF & RDF =

• We should use FOAF tools to visualize the WikiNodes network
• We can use an intermediary data format before RDF-ization,
• an intermediary applicable on all wiki by relying on HTML output
• We can imagine a tool that writes out the wikisyntax for the different

wikinodes with the different syntaxes (usemode, oddmuse, moinmoin, etc.,.)

= Wysiwyg Twiki, Semantic Web work =

• http://miageprojet.unice.fr/twiki/bin/kupuedit/Main/WebHome
• If you want to try it, mail Michael Buffa, buffa@unice.fr
• It has Semantic web functionality, but not in WYSIWYG form

Michael Buffa, Lion Kimbro Michael: Research team acacia, from inria sophia antipolis, france Semantic inference engine

== Wiki Architecture ==

We started a WikiStandardizationRequest here:

| | | | | | /

• http://wiki.wikisym.org/space/WSR+3 -

/ | | | | | | RAW NOTES

Participants:

• Dirk Riehle
• Jeff Garland - give feasibility feedback for usemod
• John Stanton
• Bayle Shanks
• MaxVoelkel - will set up a wiki page and push other to get feedback
• Christoph Sauer - will take a look and tell what implemented in JSPWiki
• summary of wiki standards BOF last night
• (another!) mailing list was formed
• decided to do simple stuff first

Topics that people want to discuss:

• REST architecture
• WikiGateway
• Modular wiki (http://www.communitywiki.org/cw?ModularWiki)
• Atom vs. WikiXMLRPC vs. WebDAV + DeltaV vs. this
• we should maybe use/extend AtomAPI/WebDAV

Random notes:

• Uses machine readable data like XML (how is this a topic?)

*Page posts might need to be protected

• What do you do with Users for the Rest arch?
• XHTML subset (see also IWML: http://www.altheim.com/specs/iwml/)

*Implementing Sister Nodes

• Read the list of pages from the wiki
• Can find sister Nodes comparing against your particular page
• Elements of a page list query?
• PageName, RenderingURL, List of operations (with URLs)?

*Registered Services

• On the wiki you get a list for the wiki
• On the page you get the list of services for the page like fetch page

List of all Pages

REST architecture:

http://exmaple.com/wiki/SandBox -> user stuff

http://exmaple.com/restwiki -> XML info about services (XHTML subsets are browsable) http://exmaple.com/restwiki/SandBox -> XML

GET base/ -> list of available services, DTDs, XSLTs for page->html, page->text GET base/about -> versioninfo etc… see also: RSD: http://archipelago.phrasewise.com/rsd#ODoxODozNSBBTQdbdb

services we need

• all services for this wiki (links, keys, description)
• get page by name, version? -> xhtml subset?
• recentchanges after some given timestamp
• all pages (title, link, services for that page, timestamp/number) after a given timestamp/n
• page -> page history
• search service (keyword for page name or content) -> list of pages

format for page list (page meta data) -> Some starting ideas LastEditTime, VersionNumber, Author, PageName

format for page content

JSPWiki lacks:

• WikiFarming -> no central search
• global content search

requirements:

• authentication! -> ask implemtentors, look up HTTP authentication

GET base/page -> all pages as linked list GET base/page/WikiWord -> wiki page named "WikiWord?" GET base/recentchanges ? since = timestamp | size = maximal map(name->, lastModified->, author->, version->) A page MAY be specified multiple times with different modification date. GET base/page/WikiWord/version -> linked list of versions GET base/page/WikiWord/version/3 -> third version, base/page is a redirect to base/page/version/N first version is version/0 XML response with full content for the page, including metadata GET base/page/WikiWord/version/3/diff/N -> diff between version 3 and version N and N < 3 PUT base/page/WikiWord/version/N with full XML (including comment & minoredit & extension) -> redirect to new version N+1

== XSLT on full response GET base/page/WikiWord/attachment -> URLs of attachments GET base/page/WikiWord/link -> array of URL + ("external","local","href") ??? GET base/page/WikiWord/backlink -> pagenames GET base/bin/N -> attachment PUT base/bin/N with attachment GET base/bin/N/version

GET anyurl?xrest=doc

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LINKS

Atom: http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/ (note: there is both a syndication format and an API; the API is most relevant to us

WebDAV: Janne's WikiMania talk: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikimania05/Paper-JJ1

RSD: http://archipelago.phrasewise.com/stories/storyReader$1368

Wiki RPC Interface: http://www.jspwiki.org/Wiki.jsp?page=WikiRPCInterface2 see also http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/XmlRpcToWiki

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WikiGateway/collaborative editor group

• Bridge map
• 2 levels:
• APIs
• Wiki markup translation

Next steps: 1) Reference table for wiki markup 2) Proxy connections by a user 3) Markup -> IWML/or some other XHTML Basic subset -> Markup

• http://www.altheim.com/specs/iwml/

4) Single repository for wiki interop code 5) Martin will organise someone to write a TWiki driver for WikiGateway

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Social Issues

http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiPractices

2 Trawl C2 (existing patterns e.g. MadMullah) 3 Glossary

• Behavioural patterns, Rituals, Business processes
• Write a definition
• Attach the words that apply in different domains

4 Language for expressing patterns 5 Capture Solution examples for the community (Practices)

• Backstage coaching
• Silent listener
• Partnership
• Personal welcome to new users
• Awards (rules for awards)
• Credentials/trust

6 Problem examples (anti-Practices)

• YAWN (Yet Another Wiki? No!)
• Vandalism
• SPAM
• Foot - in - mouth
• WikiWars
• Roles and reputations

(see also http://communitywiki.org/WikiProcess)