Wanted Wiki Links

The following proposal for a new way to add WantedWikiLinks:

If instead of entering WantedWikiLinksExplained? you enter wantedWikiLinksExplained you encounter the following:

When the page is displayed the first is displayed with a trailingQuestionMark. The second one however on this wiki will generate a misspelling and be listed with the unrecognized words when the page is updated.

This presents an opportunity for a slight modification of wikiSoftware to display these links either at the end of the page, or on an indexPage indicating the desire for the creation of such a page.

Another possibility is the downloading of the page and a localHandling of the text to present the display or record the desired pages.

To illustrate, modify the following line by incrementing the number by one and then save the page.

Testing 7

You will see the WantedWikiLinks within the misspelled word list:

URL Wiki accidentalLinking camelCase http indexPage interWikiLink interWikiLinks intraWikiLink intranet introducedTopic localHandling localWikiLink meatBallWiki myEditingPage myIntranet myLocalLink nameIndicated pageName prosAndCons remediated trailingQuestionMark wantedWikiLinksExplained wiki wiki's wikiGrammar wikiRevolution wikiSoftware wikis wordPhrase

(200304201342 CST)

-- DonaldNoyes (20030416)

See as another example the page WebServicesDescriptionLanguage

Discussion

It's an interesting idea, but it raises a few questions:

What problem does it solve?
Why not check a page's WikiNames against a list of existing pages and build the WantedWikiLinks list from the result?
Using camelCase makes creating a new page more difficult. To create a new page, you either have to edit the URL manually, or first modify the existing page to turn "camelCase" into "CamelCase", then follow that link to create the page. Is the benefit worth the cost?
When someone creates a CamelCase page, what happens to "camelCase" on other wiki pages? Are they automatically converted to "CamelCase", or must they be fixed manually?
Wouldn't this do away with AccidentalLinking?

"What problem does it solve?"

It eliminates the question mark. It would be a way of indicating that an intention (not immediate) to create a page by the nameIndicated in the near future exists with the maker of the camelCase page name. (I have always thought that if someone creates a PageName which generates a question mark, that work on that page should be completed very soon if not within hours of its creation)
- A better solution would be to give the missing link a different style (red text) and link to the Edit page for that WikiName, doing away with the annoying question mark altogether. Most other wikis do this.

If you don't intend to create a page, and don't want your pages filled with question marks, you can opt to not use a WikiName. You can leave the words separate, or mash them together with SixSingleQuotes.

It would make many classes, methods and objects in code listings into WantedWikiLinks when displayed within a wiki page. (A sort of documentation and indexing scheme if the wiki engine could be made to recognize them as links of a different sort)
It could be used to refer to links which are not pages on this wiki, such as interWikiLinks where pages do exist on other wikis. (I realize that InterWikiLinks exist on some wikis, but that no universal scheme exists yet - this would be a simple solution, that a camelCase pageName indicates a page not yet existing on this wiki, but which exist elsewhere. (thereby making all the pages which state This pages exists only on SisterSites unnecessary)
It can refer to links which may exist on a local intranet wiki but do not exist here, and you have copied either the entire page or part of it to the local intranet wiki.

This implies that these types of links (InterWiki, local intranet wiki) would be different from regular wiki links. Is that correct? If so, once a page is created on the local wiki, what happens to the Interwiki/local intranet wiki links?

The wiki engine would recognize that the link exists and then convert all such links to fully qualified links.

It can serve as a way of marking links wanted which can be discovered by this wiki's spell checking.

The WantedWikiLinks do not have to be a universal wiki-wide list, but just those of the page of interest. In fact a universal list of the WantedPages is available. Also a script to list all 710 pages exists as http:wantedWikiPages. Interesting enough, the script name uses the camelCase. It is run once a day. The method employed on a single page using the camelCase can be run every time a page is saved.

The WantedPages lists AnotherMikeSmith as a wanted page 4 times, but the page was deleted and replaced by MikeSmithNameChange. It is really not a WantedPage, but will remain there until the accidentalLinking is remediated, perhaps by the six Quotes between words.

BlackHat: This adds another convention to Wiki, abolishes AccidentalLinking, and makes pages harder to create. Also, it requires more server-side processing when a new page is created, as all pages have to be searched for the camelCase version of the new page's name. To make it really useful would require modification to this site's WikiEngine, which ain't likely to happen. This solution to DanglingLinks is worse than the disease.

See WikiGrammar