Talk:Structured wiki

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[edit] Searching for a better definition of Structured wiki

I decided strongly modify the previous structured wiki definition because it wasn't a definition in it self. If you make a definition try to define the concept, avoiding as much as possible minor implementation aspects. Front my point of view: a structured document (as a wiki document) means that its contents have an index and sub-index (as a book).

M.F. -- 16:37, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I decided to roll back the article to the previous version. Structured wikis are not about hierarchical structure in a wiki; a structured wiki is a platform that has a database where users can build applications. Nothing in the WiClear features page at http://wiclear.free.fr/?Features indicates this main structured wiki element. -- User:PeterThoeny PeterThoeny 00:39, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
  • From my point of view, a lot of people is searching for wikis that can help them to build structured documents. Several wikis are not designed to build structured documents (Mediawiki can not) and several wikis (see Confluence wiki) offer SQL queries in their pages. Your own definition of a structured wiki is very confusing. May be, we can accept the two senses and add the two entries at the same page. Nevertheless, in order to help to the general public understanding your definition needs to be improved. M.F. -- 15 June.

[edit] WiClear

WiClear IS a structured wiki. See [1]. Its main features are: easy themability, hierarchical structure, multi lang supports (not only UI but content as well), and a plugin architecture.

M.F. -- 16:37, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Page move

Can this page please be renamed from "Structured_Wiki" to "Structured_wiki"? Ward prefers that "wiki" is written in lower case. I do not know how to rename pages in Mediawiki. -- PeterThoeny 01:36, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Never mind, found out how to rename... -- PeterThoeny 06:41, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Cathedral and the Bazaar

I changed the links: cathedral and bazaar in the table to both point to the article that explains how Structured wiki uses the terms: The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Directing readers to the regular cathedral and bazaar articles was less informative than it could have been, by not explaining the specific analogy alluded to. --Teratornis 23:04, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Structured wiki vs. semantic wiki

Is there a difference between structured wiki and semantic wiki, or are these designations interchangeble? --Andrewok 18:40, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

They are actually quite different. Semantic wikis basically try to make sense of content with context around linking (within the wiki and external); whereas structured wikis try to organize content within the wiki with a database approach. -- User:PeterThoeny - 02:09, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Here are some quotes from the respective articles that seem to muddy the distinction, at least from a user perspective:
  • Structured wiki - Structured wikis provide database-like manipulation of fields stored on pages, and usually offer an extraction and presentation language or markup with functionality somewhat similar to SQL.
  • Semantic wiki - If the wiki exports all this data in RDF or a similar format, it can then be queried in ways a database might - so that an external user or site could, for instance, submit a query to get a list of all fruits that are red and can be baked in a pie.
These two excerpts make it sound as if the two wikis represent two different coding approaches to achieve similar results from the user's point of view. The structured wiki uses an off-the-shelf database management system to represent structured data, whereas the semantic wiki represents the structured data with a machine-parseable formal language, with the database-y parts smeared out across the markup of many pages. Perhaps that oversimplifies things, but it's hard to tell by reading the two articles. The respective articles should elaborate more on the differences between the two types of wikis, not just in terms of how programmers code them, but also on the functional implications of those differences. What can a structured wiki do that a semantic wiki cannot do, and vice versa? What kinds of tasks are appreciably easier in one than in the other? Examples would help here. Someone who has sufficient experience with both types of wikis should write a section explaining how they really differ. --Teratornis 17:23, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I actually wrote the sentence you quoted from the semantic wiki article, so I should probably interject here. The difference between structured wikis and semantic wikis isn't as large as you might think. Semantic wikis can be made to behave like structured wikis through the use of templates and forms, to abstract away the formal semantic language; done this way, a user of a semantic wiki could be fooled into thinking that there actually is a table in the database representing, say, fruits, even though all that exists are semantic relations. You can see Archiplanet and my own site, Discourse DB, for two examples of a semantic wiki acting as a structured one (both use Semantic MediaWiki). Internal querying/aggregation and external querying (using, say, SPARQL) can work quite similarly in both. The big differences, as far as I can see, are that semantic wikis are somewhat easier to use, while structured wikis offer business logic; if this event happens, do that. But that's my own interpretation. Yaron K. 03:51, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] JotSpot

Looks like with Google Sites, Google has de-wikified JotSpot. Remove? --John_Abbe (talk) 19:50, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that was my impression too. Someone just added Google Sites to the list of structured wikis. I suggest to remove this in a day or two unless we hear arguments against it. -- User:PeterThoeny - 04:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
No arguments against, so I removed Google Sites, which is a de-featured JotSpot, no longer an application wiki -- User:PeterThoeny - 00:55, 28 April 2008 (UTC)