FriendPage

MeatballWiki | RecentChanges | Random Page | Indices | Categories

A is a FriendPage to B :<=> A and B are connected by a chain of ReciprocalLinks, ComplementaryContent? and MutualHelp?.

Reason for suggesting this definition:

Isn't friendship based on reciprocity
Friends complement each other, i.e. they add up to each other
MutualHelp? typically characterizes friends within the growing FriendWikis (obsolete AffiliatedWikis) and beyond.
Friends make each other friends (contrary to twins, who are twins by fate)
If A is a friend of B, then B is a friend of A (Symmetry)
If A is a friend of B and B is a friend of C, then A is a friend of C Your friends are my friends (Transitivity)
A is a friend of itself, if s/he is not a masochist. (Reflexivity)
Regarding TheSingularityIsNear we anticipate WebAgents, working on WikiPages, building friendly relations as WikiFriends.
Note, that this definition of FriendPage is not restricted to WikiPages.

This page is used on CommunityWiki:FridemarPache

This sounds a bit like "link exchange". Does this really imply friendship? Wouldn't a more neutral name like e. g. "coupled" make a better fit?

What if two pages refer to each other in a negative sense, e. g. accusing each other to be wrong - is this still a reciprocal "friend" relationship?

While friendship can be transitive as a principle of initial trust, this is not necessarily the result in practice. Especially the meaning of "a friend of a friend of a friend" quickly loses this transitivity.

Wikipedia translations refer to each other trivially. Are all these pages considered friends, together with all the pages they are linked to, e. g. "Albert Einstein" may be linked to the years of birth, death and publishing his theory of relativity, which are in turn linked to hundreds of other pages in a similar reciprocal way. Does it make sense to talk about arbitrarily linked pages as friends, only because the persons they refer to are born in the same year? Or worse, on the same day of the year?

Thank Helmut, for your questions. This helps to elaborate the concepts.

link exchange is (normally) only a necessary, not sufficient condition to give FriendPage its full meaning. Therefore the author added MutualHelp?. Accusing each other is not mutual help. But two pages with opposite views can be FriendPages.They help each other to list the pros and the cons. The same agent (man or machine), could add to both pages useful content.
The "transitivity in practise" is a fuzzy concept, that could be defined with Markov-chains, stochastic automatons or even fuzzy logic. But why not defining the most primitive classical idealisation first.
The Wikipedia-Argument appears to me a very good one. Implicitely you suggest, we need QualifiedFriendPages?, FilteredFriendPages?. There are different groups with different interests. "Same day searchers" might be find, that appropriately filtered FriendPages chains are ok for them. Nevertheless it would be great help for the general surfer, to

always (i.e. not only during a session) be able to go back to page A1, when s/he reached after several steps page An. (It would even be better of course to have software, that helped to remember the navigation history graph of the surfer. This should be a graph with bidirectional edges for convenience.) -- FridemarPache

We are only scratching the surface. We could also incorporate into the definition of FriendPages

the number of ReciprocalLinks, that connect to anchored parts of each other page and beyound.

We could see each page itself as an object, as Python people do, and see pages itself becoming WebAgents. -- fp

So, this is less about a technical jargon (like SisterSite) having a vage social analogy? More along the lines of ChristopherAlexander's "centers helping each other" in growing "living systems"? -- HelmutLeitner

FriendPage

Discussion