Sister Sites

Context:

  • you are a reader/writer of multiple WikiSpaces (Multiple Thinking Spaces) (see WikiTypes)
  • other members of these spaces are members of overlapping sets of WikiSpace-s
  • these various clusters of spaces "cover" overlapping topics
  • you would like to avoid creating copies of the same content in every space

Forces

  • ?

Solution

I've created a separate database/server for WikiGraph links, and widgets for TwinPages and Backlinks.


MeatBall:WikiEnginesWithSisterSites, MeatBall:SisterSitesImplementationGuide

MetaWiki - it would be interesting to query this to find out which wikis have the most shared names with you.

Here Ward Cunningham suggests that each Wiki maintain a URL which lists all its pages, 1 per line, with MIME-type text/plain. (He doesn't specify order - also, I wonder whether the code he's used to can handle having additional data on it - this might allow multiple uses for the same URL, like Touch Graph lists, Site List Txt (see Web Robot), etc.)

Sept'03: MeatballWiki:MetaWiki can be used to provide a list of Sister Sites for every page on the wiki you submit to it. (See section "How to use MetaWiki to implement Twin Pages")

  • MetaWiki seems to build its listing by scraping MeatballWiki:AllPages listing for each member wiki. Should that be returning HTML or text?
  • It appears that Zwiki:SisterSites used Zwiki:MetaWiki at some point, but then stopped. Was the list, just of matching pages, really 650kb back in 2000? And it seems like the code was based on querying the pure text return from MetaWiki, rather than building a Python dictionary (or Zope Catalog, or something).

Should this be done in the client (Web Browser extension)? Or maybe a WikiProxy?

  • Who should define the set of sites to search/link - the author, or the reader? Maybe the author suggests, and the reader decides. (Kinda like a blogroll with subscribe-links, e.g. on Jon Udell's sidebar.)
  • How does that differ in Intranet environment vs public spaces? or private spaces (maybe I want my public wiki to make it easy to jump to my private wiki, say, to look up contact info on someone)? I don't want other people to even know the list of page names in my Private Wiki.
    • This could still be server-based, but at the Wiki Server level, not a single shared server.
      • Though maybe it would make sense to have a central directory for aggregating the public data, to have n-squared polling. On the other hand, maybe that bushiness isn't much of an issue unless you're looking for near-RealTime list updates.
      • No, even the Wiki Server isn't the right place, as I don't even want my TeamWiki-mates knowing my full Private Wiki page-list.

I'm working on some code to implement this for PikiePikie, which is in Python, so it may be of some use to Zwiki-folk once i get it working. See PikiePikie:TwinPages. pikie.darktech.com is down temporarily anyway, so for now see http://pikie.webbing.nl/cgi-bin/pikie.cgi?TwinPages ). --JohnAbbe


Some possible approaches for me - various scenarios

(general reminder: have to catch when a site deletes a page - or maybe not just be sloppy)

Using MetaWiki, just for this WikiLog

  • note that this approach doesn't let you link to sister sites for nodes that you mention but don't locally have
    • could walk catalog of forward-links to build longer list of local pagenames to submit
  • need way to save/manage list of which wikis I want to show (assuming I don't want to show every single MetaWiki space)
  • just add another persistent property to each page object
    • doesn't work if I want to link to pages that I don't locally have

Handling this WikiLog without MetaWiki

  • grab each site's listing url, building dictionary (which would be of every page at any of those sites, not just those matching local pages); then at end go through and turn into persistent properties

Supporting all locally hosted WikilogsCom sites (assuming not satisfied with having replicated process/data in each individual wiki)

  • start by building a list as a union of all pages on all sites
  • submit that list to MetaWiki to get matches; save to local dictionary and save it (don't even know how to do this in Zope!)
  • then have a function to query that dictionary: should be pretty fast

Running a small MetaWiki-like service for a small number of friends' wikis hosted elsewhere.

Supporting a number of TeamfluxCom sites as part of a single enterprise.

  • do they need to be in contained in a single parent folder?

other????


2012-02-16-LocalSisterSitesHack AllPages URLs at My Sister Sites - see related Wiki Node

My list: http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/?action=titleindex

Chris Dent - argh all Free Link mess

Community Wiki http://www.communitywiki.org/cw?action=index

Eugene Eric Kim http://eekim.com/wiki/Special:AllPages are Free Link

Blue Oxen argh these are dead

Phil Jones http://thoughtstorms.info/ - oy Smallest Federated Wiki has weird URLs; does it have AllPages URL?

MeatBall: http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?action=index

Wiki Wiki Web: http://c2.com/cgi/wikiNames

Some other people to check out: http://www.quora.com/Which-Quora-users-are-very-interested-in-wikis


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