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RFC: Integrating ZWiki with Squishdot

Squishdot is a completely different design for getting community input. It has many advantages over Wiki in its News-like format and full support for threads, but it has the disadvantage that pages are fairly static.

Why not join the two together? Read more to find out details of this proposal.

I assume that many people use Squishdot for, among other things, distributing "Request For Comments" type documents and getting feedback on them. I use it that way, and it works fairly well.

A Wiki works in a very different way. The idea is that no one owns a document. You create a web page and anyone that comes after is free to correct spelling mistakes, improve wording, or even correct conceptual and logical errors. The document has the ability to evolve, which works especially well with design documents.

You also create the potential for new web pages by defining the name of a web page without actually writing it. People who come after can easily add that web page and your original page that defined the name is linked to it automatically. This is a phenomenally powerful mechanism.

I was delighted to discover that there is a Wiki written for Zope called ZWiki. And then I got to thinking: What if Squishdot posting could also be ZWiki pages?

That would allow someone to post a message saying "I think Squishdot should support ZWiki pages because then the postings could be dynamically updated by anyone." Someone coming along later could add five different benefits the original poster hadn't thought of or list some negatives, and define a new web page for detailing how the implementation would work but without actually writing it. A third person could come along and fill in the details page.

Of course, we can do all of that now with comments, but comments don't alter the original document. And sometimes that is really what you want to do.

Not all Squishdot postings are going to be appropriate for putting into a Wiki, though. Only those postings that would benefit from Community editing and expansion would work. There should probably be a flag on the posting indicating whether it is Wikiable or not.

So what does everyone think? Is this a good idea or not?

Note: I realize that an appropriate response to an idea like this is "Shut up and show me the code", but I am very reluctant to do anything with the code until the major architectural change integrating ZCatalog is finished. I've really just put this idea out for comment right now.

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