Int Comm

IntComm is short for the "Internet Public Communications Scratch Wiki." The wiki is made to be a scratch post for ideas about Internet Public Communications.

I believe that the more you work on InterWiki technologies, the more you find that the problems we are solving are not just for wiki, but apply to the entire Internet at large.

For example, people talk about having an identity that can cross WikiEngine boundaries. You go from one wiki to another, and each wiki knows, say, where your personal web page is, what your e-mail address is, and what kinds of settings you prefer. And if we want to trust that a person is who they say they are, then you imagine some sort of public key infrastructure.

But is that really an InterWiki problem? Isn't that really a problem for Internet Public Communications in general?

Or consider WikiNames. Technology like the NearLink makes it so that we can talk about pages on "near" wiki, without even prefacing with the name of the wiki! It's very similar to SisterSites. Or the InterLink?. All of these require information about what is nearby, and what people call things in different places.

On the face of it, it sounds like it's just an InterWiki thing. But is it really?

Perhaps people would like to refer to wiki pages from non-wiki community sites, or from within email, or in the address bar of their web browser, or in instant messages, or wherever.

And perhaps people would like to publish "WikiNames" from non-wiki sources. Maybe a favorite article on KuroShin should have a WikiName. Maybe you want to title your blog entries, and refer to them from the wiki that you frequent.

Hence, technology like the "LocalNameServer?."

• http://intcomm.wiki.taoriver.net/moin.cgi/LocalNameServer ( BrokenLink )

Consider TraceBack?, the blogger's version of the familiar BackLink. Why shouldn't it also apply to bulletin board posts?

These technologies are not just wiki technologies, and they are not just InterWiki technologies. These are technologies for the entire span of Internet Public Communications.

So, the IntComm wiki is a place to coordinate and talk about such technologies. It is a ScratchWiki?, meaning that there is little structure, and strong invitation to contribute.