I’ve moved permanent anchors from the core script into a module, and I’m trying to do the same to near links. I wonder: Does this go against my principle networking design goal? For some time now I felt that Near Links were an important part of Oddmuse because it drastically improved interlinking between sites. Now I’m no longer sure. If nobody uses it because it is difficult to set up (ie. not usable out of the box), then it should be moved into a module.
principle networking design goal
#Oddmuse
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I’ve noticed that the cross-pollination via NearLinks between MeatballWiki, CommunityWiki and EmacsWiki has decreased over the years. Mine is an unfair survey, of course, but it seems like there’s less symbiosis between the individuals and the overlap in ideas has also decreased. I’m not arguing we shut this off, because there are a handful of links on EmacsWiki that are well serviced by these other Wiki sites.
It will be interesting to see how “Near Wiki” stuff evolves in the *long term* as Wikis become more (or less) popular, the number of Wiki software packages likely increase, and what types of communities latch on to Wikis. For an example of the latter, software packages only need one Wiki, but there are other types of communiteis that need their own Wiki but overlap with other Wikis. I think EmacsWiki would have more overlap with material at Wikis listed on EmacsWiki:WikiNode, ones on Lisp and Scheme topics for example or even Vi (shudder!). I imagine the hurdle to getting “Near Wiki” stuff adopted is not in installing a module, but in doing the “leg work” of organizing and “networking” with other Wikis to provide their page index and enable NearLinks.
– AaronHawley 2007-10-08 20:31 UTC
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Well, that’s what I hoped when I implemented Near Links in 2003. But it didn’t take off. Isn’t four years “long term” in Internet terms? I think the key to understanding this lack of interlinking is the small set of potential actors: Only if you’re reasonable familiar with the pages of one community and invested enough in another community will you start interlinking between the two.
The only site everybody wants to link to is Wikipedia. And Wikipedia’s pagelist is too long to be useful for Near Links, I think.
– Alex Schroeder 2007-10-10 13:47 UTC