Test wiki
Hi, I wish to propose here the creation of a mock test wiki, at the same level in tw.org as docs or mods.
The purpose is that by concentrating on a very limited subject, day after day, week after week, it will become clearer to us that certain features have to be created, or made easier, etc.
Furthermore, such a "front-window" wiki would help us to promote TW, by showing potential users that "TW can do that". It would also help us discover that this or that other wiki-oriented can do that and it is useful improving in that sense.
I have been thinking for a while about which subject would be best. I thought about botanics or fish species which would certainly be aesthetically rewarding. But getting deeper into such a scientific field would very soon require specialist notions, roughly speaking of the level of a university degree in those fields, which would leave most of us unable to participate (including me).
Nevertheless I keep the idea that a "good" CMS of the level of TW should be implementable in universities for reports of a scientific level.
I have thought about biographies of famous historical persons. But it seems to me the content would remain somewhat limited in terms of coding (adding date of birth, adding text about historical actions...)
So finally I settled on a wiki about cities. With a wiki on various cities of the world, you can make everybody participate, because everybody is able to understand and add data such as the population, the districts, the monuments and so on.
You can also try out interesting background features, such as keeping a page non published until the country of that city is not specified, sending email to an editor who is in charge of cities in that country, etc.
I wish not to be missunderstood. The purpose would not be to build a REAL encyclopedia about the cities of the world. About ten cities would be largely enough. The purpose would rather be to concentrate on a few pages, and DABBLE with the interesting content and code lines behind them. On the contrary, it is essential that such a wiki remain "inefficient", in order to preserve creativity in the improvement of TW.
I think this would greatly help us to discover that, for instance, photograph insertion is not easy enough here, chapters become so long that they could subsidiary pages there, and so on. I think a wiki about world cities would be representative of all encyclopedic subjects people might wish to publish thereafter.
My basic philosophy in this proposal is that, if the intention of contributors is just to produce plain wiki pages, then plain wiki CMS are sufficient, and there is no need for TW. TW on the contrary is well placed in competition for richer content, or more usability. Such as structures.
This is why I suggest this idea here in Development, because, although it is not exactly a precise feature to be coded, I really believe that trying out a test wiki would help us realize what is wishable, would at the same time trigger our imagination and help our common sense in terms of usability, through practice.
What do you think?
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