TwinWikiO

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Discussion of TwinWiki:

Two Wikis are TwinWikis to each other, if they connect to each other via TwinPages.

For a pair T1, T2 of TwinPages, one of them might be empty, say T1 of Wiki W1 In this case, clicking on the associated TwinIcon of the not empty page T2, an edit-form in T1 should be opened, where to fill in new content.

In the same sense, as there may be more than two twins, there can be any appropriate number of connected TwinWikis, called a TwinBall.

Note how easy it is to:
- migrate and differentiate pages for two (and more) TwinWikis. Lets say, Topic1 is on topic in Wiki1 and Topic2 on topic in Wiki2 and having two twin pages T1,T2 relative to Wiki1, Wiki2. Topic1 might be programmer-oriented and Topic2 community-related. Then partial content of T1 might move to T2 and vice versa.
- translate mathematical-oriented definitions into a global, multilingual network of wikis

-- FridemarPache

Fridemar, perhaps look into LizzyWiki / AlainDesilet? (National Research Council of Canada, iirc) who have implemented a very elaborated wiki software for not only having translated wiki pages in parallel, but also keep track of which pages and parts of pages are changed (newer) and which pages need updating. This also offers side-by-side text areas that show the parts of the page that need reworking.

Thank you Helmut, a great infrastructure is building up there. Yes we need a SplitScreenBrowser? (not only) for TwinWikis. What surprised me was, that in their system they only copy verbatim one language part in the other screen, instead of using BableFish? or some other automatic raw translation service. Or did I miss something? (Yes, now I found the integrated raw translation.) -- FridemarPache

TwinWiki is a name that may unnecessarily restrict the concept, because why only think about two languages?

Thank you for lightening up this point. Yes, it is a far more general concept, as it looks. So with your consent and the friendly author, who made the intro of this page a bit more human-friendly, I delete the misleading "e.g." part in the above introduction. Although multilanguage applications are a very important application, there are other types, completely different, such as TwinWikiForAds for example. -- fp

Your concept of "automatic generation of missing twin pages" seems to disregard that the corresponding page name is needed but not given.

Thank you Helmut, to point to it. BeggingWikiPage name is the natural default name. I Put it in the definition. -- fp

MattisManzel is also very interested in everything that has to do with multilingual concepts. The same is true for ChristopheDucamp. It might be possible to join or form a multilingual workgroup. In general CommunityWiki has a stronger tradition to discuss these issues. -- HelmutLeitner

Helmut, I thank you for encouraging, pointing to collaboration and giving me the opportunity to unroll a bit the concept. Right, we won't have too restrictive a concept. But Twin isn't so bad as I thought first, Hans made me aware of it.In the same way, as any permutation of a finite set, can be represented as a sequence of Transpositions of two elements, so could act TwinPages. Of course some shortcuts would come in quite handy. Your hint to multilingual applications is such an important application, that we could make a separate page out of it. TwinWikiForMultilingualApplication?. As soon as the rebirth of CommunityWiki is completed. We could relocate it. Ok? -- FridemarPache

Would you say that a mirror of a wiki (let's say which points to the original when being edited, to be a little more than a backup copy), is also a TwinWiki?

Formally yes, why not. A Mirror Wiki is the (not so quite) trivial case of its twin. (due to Syncing) -- fp

Fridemar, I've problems with the mathematical concept because there are situations where the 1:1 correspondence is intended but not a fact. E. g. a page may be created in one wiki while the translation is still missing in the other wiki. A mathematical definition would suggest strictness, so that the wikis are not TwinWikis at that point. But I think this is not your intended usage of the term.

Thank you for this hint. A BeggingWikiPage, although empty, is of course counted as a "page" in this definition. As soon as one of the TwinWikis is enriched by a new page, its brother wiki gets an empty BeggingWikiPage, that can be filled by clicking the external TwinIcon of the richer brother. This way a verbatim copy is preset or some automatic raw translation, to be worked upon. -- fp

There is also the situation, where a similar 1:1 correspondence of page sets happens between two namespaces within one wiki, or between two hierarchical branches of one wiki. This will usually make implementation of features easier. So it's unclear why the concept should be restricted to wiki page sets. -- HelmutLeitner

Helmut, could you please give me some helpful context to understand your last statement correctly, thanks. -- FridemarPache

Instead of having two flat wikis A and B containing each N pages, one could have one wiki containing two namespaces NA and NB each containing the same N pages. This is just a different implementation of the same system of corresponding pages. But it is not in two wikis but in one. Another example: we have a wiki http://www.prowiki.org/prowiki.cgi which got a "social twin" French translation in http://www.wikiservice.at/fractal/wikidev.cgi?FR. If this relationship would be made strict it would connect a set of pages in a wiki with a corresponding set of pages in a hierarchical branch of another wiki. What I mean therefore is that the essence of the concept is not bound to wikis as the only possible container. -- HelmutLeitner

Thank you, for this insight. Now my standard question: does it scale? Does it allow a PageMitosis?, WikiMitosis?, i.e. userdriven, dynamic creation of new twins, for massive growth? -- FridemarPache

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