The wiki, all wikis, have a few 'special' pages -- Recent Changes, auto-generated indexes and the like. I've been thinking about how handy they are, and had some ideas on how to expand on the concept. Specifically, editable 'special' pages.

Following are two examples:

   * images. This and some other wikis support inline images. Wouldn't it be cool to be able to 'edit' the image like you edit a page? I'm not talking about a drawing or painting program. Rather, when you 'edit' an image you get a form where you can submit a static file that overwrites the existing image, much as the text in a regular page gets overwritten when you save a page. This would allow one to add ad hoc images to a wiki instead of having to reference external images. 

   * a calendar page. When you view it, it looks like a calendar. Day boxes would have appointments, events, whatever. But when you edit it it's not WYSIWYG. Rather, it's a list of dates and events. 

The whole idea of the wiki is to be able to create content easily, and without a lot of formatting fuss. These two ideas seem to fall readily into that category, even though they sort-of break the mold of quasi-wysiwyg formatting of traditional pages.

Comments?

See also [What Would You Change about the Wiki]

--[Bryan Oakley]