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You can think of a WebLog as a sequence of InternalTransclusions (ordered reverse chronologically). Connecting this with UseModWiki's SubPages might be interesting.

In a wiki, it makes sense for each WebLogEntry? to have a WikiName. This gives rise to an interesting design question -- to put those names in the same namespace as the rest of the wiki, or in a separate namespace for each WebLog?

The choice on PikiePikie has been for each WebLog to have its own namespace (and in fact to allow for duplicate names). I would love to know if this is a choice you spent some time with Steve, and if so what you came up with as the advantages and disadvantages of doing it either way. --JohnAbbe

Hmmm, did I think about it that much? It just seemed logical. These are some of the consequences of my implementation (I leave it to the reader to decide whether these are advantages or disadvantages):
--StevePike

Thanks for your response. I see how the last three make things easier for the programmer -- which has the distinct advantage that we have a WikiLog to play with now (danke, Steve).

I question that "the user should not have to deal with issues such as thinking up unique WebLogEntry? names" though. This issue comes up in naming WikiPages and is seen as a feature: i go to create a page with a name that i think is descriptive, and discover that the page already exists. Now i learn from the existing document/thread, and am able to contribute on the shoulders of others. Wouldn't it be interesting to see how this wiki feature contributes to weblogs? The old entry is 'revived' in the weblog even if it is unchanged (and if it is changed, in RecentChanges as well). The cost of having to come up with a new name when the content does not relate is a price i'd be willing to pay to see where this leads. Btw, i assumed it would be this way, but maybe that just proves that i'm illogical... --JohnAbbe

I think that the issue of WebLogEntry? naming depends on the uses to which WebLog's are put. Given the use that I have made of WebLog's to date, mainly as activity journals, I have never yet produced WebLogEntry?'s which deserved to exist independently of the WebLog in the main name space of the Wiki, or to be automatically referenced as such from other pages in the main name space. I suggest using the system for a while as it stands, we can then review the situation if you still feel that page naming and separate name spaces are serious problems. --StevePike

It's not so much a problem as standing in the way of certain kinds of exploration. Here's one vision of what could be done if we have EntryNamesInWikiNameSpace?:

Joe, Shena, Carlos and Mel each write weblogs in the same wiki as a way to communicate and provide documentation with their customers.

Joe posts a WeblogEntry? titled MacOsxUpdateIncludesXmlRpc?:

Apple's including XmlRpc (and SoAp?) in OS X 10.1! This means MacOsx will be fully integratable into all kinds of neat services.

See http://www.apple.com/officialpressrelease.html

Shena, not seeing Joe's entry, posts something similar with a different title, and a pointer to a more complete analysis.

Carlos reads Joe and Shena's weblogs before posting that day. He decides the MacOsxUpdateIncludesXmlRpc? title works better, but refactors the content, adding Shena's pointer, a bit about what it means for their project's AppleScript? support, and pointers to relevant pages in their wiki, including one on which they and customers are hotly discussing the spread of XmlRpc and SoAp?. He also changes Shena's weblog to point to the new title (they trust each other to do stuff like that). Finally, he adds the entry to his own weblog.

Mel and his weblog are less technical, so he includes a link *to* MacOsxUpdateIncludesXmlRpc?, but does not add it as an entry to his WebLog.

Users are free to edit, or add discussion to the entry itself, like any other WikiPage. If it gets long, it trims itself off at the bottom and offers a "Read more..." button to get the whole page.

When OS X 10.1 is released, the page appears on everyone's weblogs again, and much of the relevant wisdom, information and references is already there.

My initial reaction is that there is a perfectly viable alternative scenario using the current implementation, along the lines of:

So now there are four pages, and it's not clear who's responsible for making sure that the canonical one remains canonical. I'm realizing, given our discussion on Pikie:IncludePage, that my ideal solution would let my WebLog mix and match entries that are regular wiki pages, and (possibly nameless) entries that are connected to their page. For now i'll settle to get WikiPagesAsWeblogEntries? (basically InternalTransclusions). --JohnAbbe

_Why_ does it make sense for each blog entry to have a WikiName? I considered this, but became concerned that the names would become pointlessly long, and I've rarely want to refer to one after posting it, and even more rarely would expect to do so "naturally" via WikiName. So I'm planning on a model that uses some simple date-id for blog entries. Then a RecentChanges page can recognize items that follow the blog naming convention, and render them differently from true Wiki pages. (Why use Wiki at all for blogging then? Because I want (a) to easily go the other direction, having a blog entry use a WikiName to lead off to an ongoing idea, and (b) I want to have an integrated RecentChanges view.) --BillSeitz

One, no one will ever accidentally link to a page named MyWikiBlog/2001.11.23. Two, from experience, i've had weblog posts that i wanted to convert into regular wiki pages, and i have to do it by hand, then add a redirect link for people who permalinked. That means sometimes i just don't do it. Three, i want the AccidentalLinking experience of naming a log entry and discovering the name already exists (probably with useful information in it :). Four, advantages and possibilities for multi-weblog wikis as described above (e.g. editing an item appearing in one weblog is editing the same item in whatever weblogs it's in). Finally, it just seems like the most wiki way to do it; i'm not sure how it would turn out, but i want to see! I think i would like the name to be optional, and haven't yet thought of a really wiki way to pull that off. I'll be playing around with this more when PikiePikie 0.5 comes out by the way, as it has InternalTransclusion! --JohnAbbe

Weblogs keep old information organized by date. Wikis keep it organized by other more fluid contexts that require work, but wiki is designed to make that work easy. Hopefully we can keep it easy as we add weblogs. --JohnAbbe

You may want to see the DrupalEngine which has a blog-like structure on one side, and a wiki-like structure on the other. It might be easier to take one really good blog implementation and another really good wiki-implementation and merely modify the two so they can easily make links between each other.

I'm just starting on writing up a WikiLog extension to UseMod wiki. As above, I've decided to lump all blog entries under an owning page name as sub pages. I really don't want to have to think up good wiki names for my blog entries because I want to capture things of passing interest and do so quickly. I also want to do this via a simple popup form (a la Blogger), which means I won't even get to see if the wikiname I make up already exists (or should but I typoed) or even if it is actually valid as a wiki name. I will however include a subject field - I just won't be treating it as some unique identifier.

Thus, blog entries will be uniquely identified by some automatic meta-data. To keep things simple I decided on a sequential serial number rather than some munged datestamp. Dates will nonetheless be captured and stored with the blog entry, and can also be used to generate the chronological transclusion globs.

This is the namespace schema I've decided on (rather ambitiously):

All rather ambitious, but I think it has logical consistency.

-- EricScheid

go Eric! Let us know when there's anything to look at. If you add InternalTransclusion you might even lure me away from PikiePikie. --JohnAbbe

OddMuse has transclusion, and therefore also internal transclusion, but it is cumbersome to use, I think: Create a tiny new page, write two sentences, edit the front page, add a transclusion tag. For a better solution, see WikiLog, section "Permanent URLs". -- AlexSchroeder

See ArchivingNews for a previous discussion of this idea.

This originally came up at [PikiePikie:WebLog].

Also see WikiLog, about real and possible combinations of wiki and weblog.

[CategoryWikiTechnology CategoryWebLog]

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