Everything Two

http://www.everything2.com/

The next generation of EveryThing, originally a side project of the SlashDot folks that attempts to create a discussion environment about, well, everything. Kinda like here. They still need to work out a few problems, though.

JeffGrigg mentioned in WikiMines that "everything" adds links between pages based on how often people navigate between those pages.

You can make any phrase a link. MissingLinks look exactly like regular links, but when you click on them, you are presented with a sorted list of likely candidate pages. ThumbsUp (this wiki should do something like that to prevent new pages from being generated that are actually close to existing pages).

The biggest problem with Everything is the content. The writers are all trying to be clever, but few of the pages can be taken seriously. So, it is ok for some entertainment, but is not the place to go for enlightenment. Wiki is orders of magnitude better, even though Everything looks flashier. -RalphJohnson

I disagree. The content on Everything, like on WikiWikiWeb, is exactly what you make it. If you want enlightening content there, type some in.

On the other hand, if you go there and search for "The Node Linked to All Others", you'll see that there's an awful lot there. Lots of it is nonsense, but still. It's a sort of "fast food", I guess. -- Canis.

Wiki is more the community than the form, I think. Although the form is important, the same people actively participating in anything would be enlightening. Plus Ward is such a good host, and all the Wiki Masters help create a unique ambiance. -BobHaugen

One of the features that they are working on is EverythingBridges? to link everything sites together. I wish that there was an easy way to upload large amounts of information to everything. I would like to upload each GtkPlus function, type, and widget to everything, where people could then write definitions in a more casual manner than having to write them out, and then email them to the doc maintainers. Then other users could vote on which definition they found more useful, and the one with the higher number of votes would become the one presented until a new challenging set of notes was presented. I think this would be a great way to generate documentation for many new programming toolkits, and maybe even user programs.

It seems they have found a way to upload large amounts of info. Many entries for obscure words link you to an imported dictionary definition.

A WikiLikeThing.

For those who haven't gotten into the site, a quick explanation of the model: Each node (much like a WikiWord) basically contains zero or more articles that are created, edited and permanently owned by individuals, one writeup per individual per node. They are community judged, but will only be deleted by administrators for very good reasons. So, much more so than Wiki, the content is characterized by the varying standards, intent, attention and expertise of individual users.

Unfortunately, conversation on E2 is even more schizophrenic than on, say, Wikipedia. The only medium for public discussion is the writeups, so even mildly controversial subjects can turn into a giant mess of scathing replies to poor and non-existent articles. See http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=682479 for an example. This is discouraged, but not really prevented.

There are other parts like the experience system and softlinking that are completely subvertible by design because they aren't considered vital.

On the other hand, getting 'chinged' is a lot of fun, or even addicting.

Among the other microscopic differences, EverythingTwo sports a wide variety of odd AllYourBase? style jokes that mostly appear in soft links. Search for "I will REMOVE" and see what comes up. --JesseMillikan

I view e2 as the closest (and most successfull) thing we have to an actual HitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy.