History: Wikipedia content guidelines and how they relate to Tiki software features

Wikipedia is about building an encyclopaedia (content and knowledge). (Mission statement)

Tiki is about building a tool to manage information & knowledge. (An encyclopaedia or anything else)

Wikipedia has policies and guidelines for vast collaboration. How do these correspond to Tiki?

Neutral point of view

Make features generic and use sensible defaults.

Tiki options, settings and preferences are like representing various points of views.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NPOV

Notability

In Tiki, we must also decide which features are added and removed. Since we are not limited to making an encyclopedia or to a specific use case, in our case, usefulness is the main criteria.

Does the feature work?
Are people using it?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Inclusionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability

No original research

"Wikipedia does not publish original thought: all material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source. Articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not clearly advanced by the sources."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research

In Tiki, this could be interpreted by: use existing code when possible and when it makes sense. Partners

Verifiability

Does the feature work? Is anyone using it?

Let's see some documentation, screenshots and live sites!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability

Merging

"A merger is a non-automated process by which the content of two pages is united on one page."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Merging

and if there can be confusion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Disambiguation

Similar to how pages are merged in Wikipedia, similar features in Tiki can be merged to avoid duplication of effort and to make it easier for the end user.

Article titles

In Wikipedia, "The title serves to give an indication of what the article is about, and to distinguish it from other articles."

In Tiki, feature names are descriptive because there is only one of each. In other web apps, there are commonly several extensions/plugins/add-ons for similar functionality, and thus, they come up with creative names to distinguish theme. And sometimes, the extensions/plugins/add-ons name doesn't convey what the feature does.

In contrast, in Tiki, we pick the feature name to be as descriptive as possible, much like Wikipedia article titles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_titles

Not a bureaucracy

And this one is important to remember 😊 Tiki is not a bureaucracy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules

• SWOT
• Model
• Wikipedia also needs software and is behind the MediaWiki engine. See Tiki vs MediaWiki.

• Wikipedia guidelines and how they relate to Tiki features