Version 4 of Wiki jumps the shark

Updated 2009-06-14 20:17:49 by dkf

Once upon a time there was a very simple wiki. It didn't have a lot of fancyness - just content. The content was impressive, interesting code, concise examples, imaginative input.

A new front page arrived, a fancy image that I both liked and disliked. It was a nice graphic with image mapped links to parts of the wiki. Wiki maintainers changes and Wub began. Wub is nice, has architecture and some docs - something that wikit perhaps lacked, its more complex. A side bar appeared, some complained, others claimed "Its optional". I was disturbed - its a complication. Recently, Recent Changes gained an inexplicable header, Recent News? As I enter this screed, I see that I have fancy buttons across the top of the text box to help with markup, isn't wiki about simple ASCII content? Markup is sparse to complement content not upstage it. Now alas page names are obscured, bowing to appearances.

This is no longer simple:

 ----
 !!!!!!
 %| [Category Command%|%Command%|%] | [Category TclX%|%TclX%|%] |%
 !!!!!!

This wiki has jumped the shark.

jbr


AMG: I haven't seen anyone rename the category links like that. You can do it if you like, or if you don't like, don't do it. All that's going on here is that we Wiki authors now have tools to gussy up the style a little bit, if we so fancy. And if you think it's complicated to center and "table" the categories, well... that's why it's built into the new-page template. Still think it's too complicated? Use the old style on your pages, or make up your own. That's how Wikis operate.

I don't like the link renaming either. Therefore, I use it only very sparingly, to work a non-Wiki hyperlink into the text of my page. And (although this constitutes even more stylistic clutter!) I would like to see a little planet icon or different link color or something to help distinguish between this style and a true Wiki link. But I guess I could have just used the [L1 ] style for that, if it really mattered to me. It doesn't, not really. So long as I have my content, I'm happy.


DKF: You do realize that that is (a) just a hack of other formatting, and (b) something I was just copying-and-pasting from one page to the next? You really don't need to follow that sort of thing.

There is exactly one person working on advancing the wiki application (jdc) and another working on the webserver containing it (CMcC). I focus on producing good content. I'm happy to hack around with the tools provided to do that, but I'm truly just making simple webpages. (If you want real complexity, try mediawiki when tricked out with all the features that wikipedia has...)