Live Wiki

Well, the WorldCat wiki functionality went live over the weekend.  Although the concept seems fairly straight-forward, there were a lot of decisions to be made (and a bit of code to be written) to make it happen, and this first version got done in what seems a very short period of time for a major piece of functionality.  It really wasn't much more than an idea when I posted about it in May, although some of the code was starting to work.

Some here at OCLC have said we really shouldn't call it a 'Wiki' since it all act the way a standard Wiki would.  Well, maybe, but there's more there than meets the eye.  Taking some liberties with what a 'review' should be I've created a little review of the Laughing Policeman.  Here's what I put in the review to make this work:

Here is an ISBN link: ISBN: 0752850938
A link into [[WikiPedia:Martin_Beck]] WikiPedia
A link to a discussion of links: http://outgoing.typepad.com/outgoing/2005/10/live_wiki.html

After I finish the Laughing Policeman, I'll go back and make it a real review.

--Th

Comments

[Eby]

This kind of functionality was what I was hoping to see. Currently it is against the content guidelines though.

"URLs, no links."

Are there plans to reword that? Thanks for shedding some light on the back end.

[jessamyn]

I'd really like to know in what way this is a wiki? I understand that your back end software is sort of wiki-creation software (or that's what I've heard) but the definition of wiki includes way more functionality than I currently see. So, why is this a wiki?

For reference, Wikipedia says this "a wiki is a web application that allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows others (often completely unrestricted) to edit the content."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

[Thom]

Yes, I understand the guidelines are being revised to allow outside links.

I can certainly understand someone objecting to calling this a Wiki, but it is a Wiki in at least a couple of ways. Some of the material is available for general editing (notes and tables of contents). There was general agreement here, though, that people should 'own' their reviews, so reviews are not open to everyone to edit.
As noted, the underlying software has full Wiki functionality (plus a lot of other capabilities). This should make it a lot easier for us to add more 'Wikiness' to it as we gain some experience and confidence in the approach.

--Th

[Ralph LeVan]

Wiki's have been used for limited purposes; they've been used for community creation of collections of facts. OCLC is trying to collect opinions as well as facts. You can't let other people edit your opinions.

[Daniel Cornwall]

Hi Thom,

Do you know if either the material in the reviews or in the table of contents will become web searchable or just the basic record? I added a table of contents to Pocket Guide to the Arabian Peninsula and was curious if that addition will make it out to the searchable web.

Product looks good so far!

[Thom]

I don't know of any plans right now to make the reviews searchable (actually, Open WorldCat doesn't have any searching at all other than via Yahoo, Google, et al), although I suppose the reviews could be exposed to the search engines. We have an RSS feed of reviews available internally, but I'm not sure how interesting that would be outside OCLC.
What I'd like first is a way to find all the reviews for a given work. Right now each is associated with a particular manifestation record.

--Th

[Daniel Cornwall]

Thanks! I was mostly interested in the table of contents being exposed to search engines.

I agree with you that finding all the reviews associated with a given work would be helpful.

Forgive the lag time in bringing thanks, but I read you through Bloglines, so if it doesn't flag new entries, I forget to stop by to check for comments.