CleanLinking

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Clean linking makes it possible for any kind of links on any kind of wiki to:

use a wikidom-wide syntax ([community-wiki: wiki-syntax]) and hence look alike or at least very similar, regardless which engine the wiki runs on.
be orthographically and grammatically correct.
eliminate any use of CamelCase spelling from the read mode.
translate the name of a page into different languages, which is essential for true multilingual pages. [community-wiki: multilingual experiment]

Recommendations on how to use clean links in order to unify wikidom:

(click "Edit this page" to see how the links get done)

Internal clean linking:

This is a clean link to the [recent changes] here. It shows the [recently changed] pages of this wiki. Both links point to the same page. "[Jüngste Änderungen]" is German for "recent changes" and points to this page as well.

External clean linking using the URL of a page:

You put the name of the wiki + colon + space in front of the name of the clean link.

This page here exists on several other wiki running different engines to show how easy it could be. We first make clean links to each of these pages using the pages URL and then using [near links]. You'll recognize no diffence between them unless you look at the page in edit-mode.

[community-wiki: clean linking], engine: OddMuse
[moinmoin-wiki: clean linking], engine: MoinMoin
[meta-wikipedia: clean linking], engine: MediaWiki
[open-wiki: clean linking], engine: OpenWiki
[founder-wiki: clean linking], engine: ProWiki
[php-wiki: clean linking], engine: PhpWiki
[wacko-wiki: clean linking], engine: WackoWiki
[crao-wiki: connexité idoine], engine: PhpWiki
[plastic-wiki: clean linking], engine: WakkaWiki?
[transitioner-wiki: clean linking], engine: TikiWiki
[mind-wiki: clean linking], engine: WikkaWiki
[pm-wiki: clean linking], engine PmWiki
[serverside-wiki-test: clean linking], engine: ? (ruby)

now the same using near-links:

Discussion

For other discussions see also the [community-wiki: clean linking] page.

LangueFrançaise

Voir [crao-wiki: connexité idoine] m'enfin!

Criticisms

I don't understand what problem this suggestion is trying to fix. Rather than fixing something critical, following this suggestion will make it harder to create links, harder to read a page, and implies that linking in wikis a useless feature. The latter point needs to be explained. It's just a more obtuse way of writing an absolute URL to link to pages within the wiki, e.g. [http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?CleanLinking clean linking]. This has a few problems. For one, absolute URLs tend to become BrokenLinks. Second, linking on a wiki is best when not explicitly constructed, but rather an implicit suggestion by the script, even if this is very difficult. Third, and more to the point, it's busywork to write so much non-essential technical text when all you want to say is CleanLinking. Finally, we already have an InterWiki convention that is just about as useless as writing URLs directly for everything.

Potential problems this is trying to solve: unifying link strategies on various wikis. I don't think that's necessary nor desired. If I'm wrong and it is desired, then the best answer will be market-driven rather than protocol-based. Perhaps, translating links? However, distributing the workload of translating a page title across every link to that page is counter-intuitive as it violates OnceAndOnlyOnce?. Rather than rejecting links in wikis, the better approach is to see what the wiki can do to help. For instance, by having an EditableTitle, translators can use more than one title for a page, and then the wiki will automatically redirect links to translated versions of a title to the intended target. Not that this is a good strategy for multilingualism anyway as lying about the target language violates the PrincipleOfLeastAstonishment?. -- SunirShah

Recently I tried to collaboratively write an semiofficial report. I choosen a wiki for the collaboration. But then we needed grammatically correct phrases for the links, CamelCase just would not do. -- ZbigniewLukasiak

: I agree that there are cases in which CamelCase impedes the communications process, but I also know of cases in which is aids that difficult task. Perhaps the explanation lies in 'knowing your audience' and choosing the right tool for the specific communications task. -- HansWobbe.