There is interesting space at the merger of weblogs and wiki's, most effectively demoed at webseitz [1] and in consideration in the wiki implementation UseMod [2].

The notion has some headway in the toolset. RadioUserland provides a glossary system, and TinderBox implements actual WikiLinks.

In WeblogTheory, it seems that even in an episodic flow there exists the need for persistence... whether it be of themes, projects, or simply biographical information.

--AndyEd

There's been a lot more headway than that in the toolset. See http://ourpla.net/cgi/pikie?WikiWeblogs (many wiki-weblog software links).

Weblogs automatically put posts in the context of time, which provides one way to find things ("I don't remember the name of that book, but i remember i blogged about it in February or March..."). When you look, you will also see other things you were writing about at that time.

Wikis provide context by page name, and by the links among pages ("I don't remember the name of that book, but somebody connected it to something about weasels..."). The first page you go to may not be the right one, but it's probably only a link or two away. While you look, you will also see other things that you (and others) have written about weasels.

One kind of wiki-weblog integration still to be tried is allowing -- or requiring! -- normally-named wiki pages as weblog entries. -- JohnAbbe

We're trying to do this at SnipSnap. Right now weblog entries are named wiki snips (ala vanilla). But we are considering adding labels to (or in) the wiki to get it in the weblog.

-- StephanSchmidt

SnipSnap weblog entries have names like "2002-07-17" (similar to WebSeitz, where weblog entries have names like "z2002-07-23"). What i'm interested in is weblog entries that are regular wiki pages and have text names like "NewWikiLogs" or "Banana Bread Recipe". This allows a single entry to be posted to multiple weblogs (for wikis that handle multiple weblogs), and makes it so that someone who updates the page is updating the entry in whatever weblogs it appears. The unanswered implementation question in my head is where/how to put the date metadata. Of course one option is to just not have date metadata! That would be the wikiest. --JohnAbbe

We are considering two ways:

- Adding "labels" to a wiki page with meta information (type, value) e.g. ("author","stephan"), or ("weblog","stephansblog") http://snipsnap.org/space/Label

- Inserting this metainformation into the wiki. We support macros of type {macroname} and could insert into metainformation ala {@weblog:stephansblog} anywhere in the wiki page.

Suggestions are welcome --StephanSchmidt

Sounds good. One could maintain MetaData on the weblog page (e.g. in SnipSnap notation a list codes like {weblogentry:XmlRpcInMacOsx}), and as you've suggested something like {@weblog:stephansblog} on the wiki page you want in the stephansblog weblog. When a page is saved it's scanned and if such codes have been added, deleted or changed, you'd alter the relevant meta-data attached to the other pages. Something about this seems un-wiki, but i don't have any better ideas yet.

What about dates -- just use the wiki page's last-modified date? Edit a wiki page and it becomes the top weblog entry. Otherwise we need more meta-data. (Regardless, this certainly allows one to refactor the RecentChanges code!)

How to handle archiving? The wikiest way might be to just drop the Nth oldest weblog entry from a weblog when a new one is added. Permalinks won't break because they go straight to the wiki paage anyway. Any problems with that?

I really appreciate wiki simplicity and transparency -- they can be implemented with pages as plain text files, and no meta-data other than what's in the filesystem (blosxom takes this approach for weblogs). BeOs let developers add attributes to the filesystem. Alas, this feature has yet to make it into MacOsx, or Windows or commonly-used Unix filesystems as far as i know. --JohnAbbe

Also see http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiLog

How does Fear Blog and Love Blog:

http://www.potlatch.net/MoinMoin/moin.cgi/FearBlog http://www.potlatch.net/MoinMoin/moin.cgi/LoveBlog fit into this discussion. I am new to this and interested, best, MarkDilley

They're using MoinMoin, with the http://www.seapig.org/BlogEditCode extension. If you edit one of the pages you've linked to above you can see how they've implemented wikilogs. It's basically a bunch of markup around the weblog entries' text, all of it right there on the page. Archiving is accomplished by copy-and-pasting old entries onto another page.

They also have those two weblogs side-by-side on the site's front page; seems to be outside the wiki altogether -- http://potlatch.net/

-- Last edited November 6, 2002

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