About Sister Sites
About Sister SitesThis approach to InterWiki linking was proposed by StevenBlack. A wiki server polls other sites for their current list of page names. It saves these results and examines them along with queries to its own database. There are two important queries ...
See also the MetaWikiSearchEngine, a multiwiki title search that you can use to implement SisterSites (aka TwinPages) easily. The MetaWikiSearchEngine canonicalizes the page names so it matches pages that only slightly differ. e.g. http://sunir.org/apps/meta.pl?twin=categoryhomepage.
http://www.zwiki.org is using the MetaWikiSearchEngine to implement this. They call it SeeAlso http://zwiki.org/SeeAlso
I don't know if this fits here, but the http://www.wikipedia.org got a lot of help from the style of work done here.
Larry rejected this in favour of assimilating foreign sites. http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:SunirShah.
How about more stringent rules about what a topic is called. For instance:
It's too hard to enforce these semantic rules using the simple technology. Moreover, this doesn't solve the fundamental problem that at best 10% of pages, and in reality more like 1%, find matches across all the wikis. This is probably a good thing. It indicates a good factoring of topics across wikis. Overlap suggests overcompetition. But then again, sparsity indicates overfitting. -- SunirShah
Is there any particular reason that Wiki is only polling six SisterSites? Is this due to technical limitations? Or is it more of a design decision to not link to every one of the huge list under PublicWikiForums?
Currently, all our sister sites are sites that have spun out of this wiki with my cooperation. I'm open to other policies, though this one has worked well so far. -- WardCunningham
The SisterSites and TwinPage - relation suggests by its underlying metaphor, it should be a symmetric one. So the author is looking forward to reciprocity, i.e. each page in forum A that has a nonempty twin in forum B should have a BackLink. I'm very astonished, that e.g. on RecentChanges, there are links to the Twin Pages of SisterSites, but not (yet) backlinks to Recent Changes here. Even "Empty Twin Coupling" could be helpful to support WikiWeaving. As an example for this take the entry WikiWeaving. When writing this, it is not yet defined in WardsWiki, i.e. it is an (nonexistent) empty page, but has an entry in the SisterSite at MeatBall, so it would be helpful for WikiWeaving to present in the edit form page an option list, showing all nonempty remote twin pages. As the different SisterSites all have their special focus, the reader/writer could choose the adequate one (focus on community building, or programming concepts, general philosophy etc.). -- FridemarPache
The new version of the MeatballWiki script has a link called "Search MetaWiki" that will find twin pages across all index wikis. I decided to go this route instead of listing the links directly because the output from MetaWiki is potentially complex. -- SunirShah
If WardsWiki is taking applications for additional SisterSites, may I heartily recommend BookShelved? It's growing nicely into a Wiki about Books and Authors. -- SeanOleary
Excerpts from a conversation regarding mapping Fitnesse into fit.c2.com wiki. ...
Fitnesse is a hierarchical wiki, which means that each page can be the parent of a flat wiki. We use the hierarchy to organize different classpaths and variables for different test suites. -- BobMartin
I'm sure the hierarchy is an asset, especially when in a classroom environment where many people are doing the same thing and need to keep their work separate. I love hierarchy and find the discovery of effective hierarchy (as in classes or directories) rewarding.
I thought I'd mention why I don't do hierarchy on my wiki.
I see wiki as a place where people work out the names of things that they will say. Since our spoken vocabulary is small, we must struggle to find words that carry value commensurate with the space they consume in our brains. Where works collide in wiki they will also collide in our thoughts. Usually that is a happy circumstance. Still, we often establish the context of a conversation so as to avoid or at least disambiguate many of these collisions. The analogy of this I've chosen for wiki is SisterSites. Two sites are candidates to be sisters if the collisions in their vocabulary are likely to be useful. As a sister, you should feel just the right amount of pressure to call a thing that we share by the same names. It is a subtle thing, but very powerful when scaled. -- WardCunningham
Ward's pdf of tips on implementing SisterSites: http://c2.com/doc/TipsForSisterSites/sisters.pdf
There are currently six SisterSites.
Other related wiki, but not so closely related as to be SisterSites, are listed at WikiNode.
How about adding a couple of one-way links to, say, WikiPedia and BookShelved, and calling those a HalfSisterSite? or perhaps a SecondCousinTwiceRemovedSite?? That way, perhaps, some of the OffTopic discussion can move there, instead of having a JimiHendrix? page created here just because someone smashed his name together. It could be a first step in pushing some of the material there. -- AalbertTorsius
A similar concept in the OddMuse WikiEngine is NearLinks and the NearMap.
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