vB wiki

[ataraxia]

The other, perhaps even more significant, aspect of a wiki is it's ability to instantly and automatically create cross-referencing hyperlinks.

Here is how it could work. Suppose I posted a message containing, say, the word "BorisYeltzin". If someone else has already posted a wiki "article" with BorisYeltzin as the title, the word in my message would be automagically hyperlinked to it. (Note the deliberate smashing of two capitalized words together. This makes it a "wikiword", recognizable by the system as such.)

If, on the other hand, I posted a message containing "NikitaKruschev" and no one else has already posted an article for that, the word in my message would not be hyperlinked to anything (yet) but would be suffixed with a hyperlinked question mark. Clicking on that would take the message viewer to an empty "post an article" box, inviting them to say something about Kruschev.

In either case, all (or most) articles (as distinguished from messages) can be edited by anyone. So, what happens is that the articles on, say, Kruschev and Yeltzin will continue to grow and evolve.

Note that there is a difference between articles and messages. Articles are referenced by wikiwords and can be edited by anyone. They may contain other wikiwords and also tend to be stand-alone "glossary" or "encyclopedia" style pieces rather than "conversation". In contrast, messages may contain wikiwords linked to articles but may only be edited by their authors.

Integrating a wiki with vB, then, would probably entail a separate wiki engine which periodically parses the vB message base to convert any new wikiwords it finds in the messages into hyperlinks to corresponding wiki articles. Perhaps it could even go so far as to examine it's current list of wikiwords and then convert "nearly wikiwords" in the message base into actual wikiwords. (E.g. Change Nikita(space)Kruschev into NiktaKruschev.)

The wiki's ability to automatically link certain words is the next GIANT step in the evolution of the basic hyperlink concept that is the basis of the World Wide Web. This is not a trivial thing! It is probably the "next big thing" in the Internet! The vB community can be a leader in this! (If we don't, someone else will!)

References:
The Essence of wiki
What's a Wiki?
Wiki FAQ (Has lots of good Q&A's to help you visualize this.)
Advantages/Features of a wiki
List of Wiki engines
Sand Box Try it out here. Scroll to bottom and click on "edit this page".
The Wikipedia Probably the largest wiki. Has 1/4 million articles and clearly shows the raw power of the wiki concept. Quite amazing!