WikiFamilyTree

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MattisManzel recently made the suggestion on #wiki on irc.freenode.net that "a graphic showing on a timeline how wikisoftware forked would be nice" - presumably much akin to the [UNIX History]. I think this is a fabulous idea. What do we know of the relationships between wiki engines that exist? As a start, I know from the source code of UseModWiki that it was based on AtisWiki?, which was based on CVWiki and the original WikiWikiWeb. I'm guessing that there must be somewhere in Wikilandia that has more information like this. -- EarleMartin

Recently over at [WikiIndex:WikiEngineTree] some wiki engines have been placed in a tree arrangement.

I think it will be difficult to construct such a tree. AtisWiki? and CVWiki seem to be unimportant, so it tells us almost nothing. Often it's unclear were implementations in new languages came from. SWikiWiki? seems to be a separate wiki without parent or children. To see what happened you'd also need Version numbers and lines counts. Add UseMod.0.88(3200)=>ProWiki(14700), UseMod.0.92(4044)=>OddMuse(4000). -- HelmutLeitner

Perhaps CliffordAdams may be able to elaborate on those first two? -- EM

MoinMoin as of 2006-02-01 is about 40.000 lines Python code (not counting 3rd party py modules and i18n). -- anon

Other interesting histories are the trace of WikiSyntax. WikiBase and FoxWiki and Everything2 impacted UseModWiki, which was refined here on MeatballWiki, to go on to inspire MediaWiki which runs WikiPedia. I've been wondering if we had done a disservice by not creating a history of wikidom like I did with WebLogs, but a part of me feels atemporality is half the fun. -- SunirShah

Such a conceptual evolution, rather than literal code forks, makes me think of [What Languages Fix] [(diagram)]. Yes, the WikiNow is entertaining, particularly when it comes to representing a point of knowledge, but after realising how little I know of my own family history, I'd like to know about the history of my adoptive wiki family (so to speak). -- EarleMartin

Maybe use the same sort of concise description:

WikiWikiWeb: Make webpages editable with any browser
UseMod: WikiWikiWeb doesn't support SoftSecurity very well
OddMuse: UseMod is not easy to extend
ProWiki: UseMod doesn't have enough features
MoinMoin: WikiWikiWeb is written in Perl but Python is better
WikkiTikkiTavi: UseMod is written in Perl but PHP is better
MediaWiki: UseMod doesn't use a database

So let's start adding data points. UseModWiki(Perl,flatfiles) loosely inspired WikkiTikkiTavi(PHP,MySQL). WTT tried to be relatively close to UM in behavior and syntax, but introduced the notion of explicit categories (which never really took off).

One way of gaining more data points might be to create a sister page on WardsWiki. -- HansWobbe

UseModWiki replicated TaviStyleHistory? from Tavi. -- SunirShah

The engines are living software, they constantly borrow from each other. Maybe a directed graph whose nodes are the engines and arcs are features/ideas borrowed would be a better representation of the history of WikiSoftware development. This [diagram on the 'Unix' wikipedia article] combines tree inheritance information, and a timeline. Would be interesting to see a wiki engine tree in this format.

There's a similar attempt to build a [wiki engine tree at wikiindex.com]

CategoriesAndTopics describes the evolution of the category system.

WikiFamilyTree

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