looks like i came in at lucky #13 in regard to influence.

i’ll have to move more swiftly next time… ;+)

either way, i look forward to what you create.

-bowerbird

p.s. but i will second peter murray’s advice to _skin_
signed pages so they don’t _look_ like a wiki, so as to
lead the user away from getting any misimpressions.
and peter _was_ in your top dozen commenters…

but, as i said, i’ve considered mixed models myself, so i’m
curious to see what you come up with, and how it works.

-bowerbird

The wiki, just like the blog, is a tool. While there are definitely norms, using the tool outside the norm is to be expected.

Go for it, Walt! Can’t wait to see what you’re up to.

As to “asserting and proving” the wiki philosophy, if a necessary part of that philosophy is that collaborative writing is always better than individual/signed writing, I’d suggest that a hybrid platform is the perfect chance to prove that: If it’s true, then the unsigned pages will consistently be better (more interesting, more readable, more valuable) than the signed ones. I must admit that I find that highly unlikely.

just to clear things up for the record…

i didn’t say “bait-and-switch”. what i actually said was
“it seems to me you’d be taking an unnecessary risk
of being seen as having done a bait-and-switch on users.”

accent _unnecessary_, accent _risk_, accent “being seen”.
i made no charges myself, merely assessed the situation…

it you use mediawiki software, it’s gonna look like a wiki.
but it’s not gonna _act_ like one. you were aware of this;
it’s why you asked the question. i just offered my answer.

wiki is an interesting philosophy. how does it assert and
prove itself if people keep eating away at the edges of it?
i don’t have the answer, but i think it’s a good question…

-bowerbird

bowerbird: I hear what you’re saying–but I’m not sure I entirely buy it. The platform in question won’t be advertised as a wiki (that’s irrelevant to the task at hand), but it is built on a wiki platform and direct contributors will use MediaWiki syntax (although, with editing icons, they don’t need to learn much of it). Do you call it “bait and switch” if a library has a news or new-title feed that uses blog software but doesn’t have monthly archives or allow comments? (Do you call it bait and switch if a blog doesn’t allow comments?)

Note: Comments still welcome, but I think we’ve come up with a workable set of structural changes, at least for a first pass–changes based at least in part on what I’ve been reading in this thread. Since I’m sure things will continue changing down the road–I hope not in ways that require complete rebuilds, as the first set will, but certainly in other terms–additional comments will still be helpful.

The book is a “how we done it good” set of case studies. The wiki is designed as a “what happened after” accompaniment to the print chapter and authors have agreed to maintain it for 5 years.

To answer your first question – I’d be really annoyed if someone edited the page I wrote. However, I would equally love a “Talk page” where I could be just another part of the conversation about the topic, and other voices may be heard more strongly.

Not only do I think that locked pages with accompanying publically edited “talk” pages are allowed, I’d say they are actually the most useful format for some works.

Really echo-chambering the “it’s just a tool that should be used in the best way that suits your purpose” comments. But there are other people are planning a wiki the way you propose.

i think the idea of a mixture of locked and unlocked
is very appealing. indeed, i’ve kicked around ideas
about a filtering/ranking mechanism (like slashdot’s)
to vote up or down certain aspects within each page,
thus making them more or less impervious to editing,
and giving to readers an idea about their _certainty_,
or the degree to which they might be “controversial”…

but, after having said all that, there _is_ a philosophy
behind wiki, so there is some _meaning_ to the name,
and if you are not gonna honor that philosophy, then
perhaps it’s not really fair to use the label… after all,
the names that we use for things _are_ important…

and it seems to me you’d be taking an unnecessary risk
of being seen as having done a bait-and-switch on users.

-bowerbird

p.s. and no, i don’t think the “talk” pages are a substitute.
they have a _secondary_ status that cannot be overcome.