Check your Wikis

[Martin Maney]

Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.net> wrote:
> I know that it's "against the Wiki way" or <insert other devotion
> statement to arbitrary principles here>, but is it really that

The Wiki Way (as I understand it) isn't arbitrary.  Idealistic,
certainly, maybe a bit unrealistic by modern hard-headed standards,
but... you don't get results beyond hope unless you trust beyond
reason, you know.  :-)

> intrusive to insist that people register to edit Wikis containing
> useful and important information?

Yes, but it may none the less become necessary.  Up until now, wikis
have had nothing your average neo-barb wanted, but if they should
actually work as a way to get better placement on search engines, well,
there are a lot of people out there who seem to think that being able
to boost one's placement on Google is worth just about anything.

But maybe not.  What these vandals hope to get is the search-engine
karma from being linked to by lots of other sites, but any wiki whose
link is worth much will probably have folks watching who will undo the
damage.  If that is the usual outcome, and assuming that links from
small, dormant wikis aren't of much value, then this practice will
probably be abandoned, at least by the majority of pond scum.

All of which makes me a little more hopeful about the fate of a
possible wiki-to-be that some of us have been talking about recently.

-- 
C makes an art of confusing pointers with arrays and strings, which
leads to lotsa neat pointer tricks; APL mistakes everything for an array,
leading to neat one-liners; and Perl confuses everything period,
making each line a joyous adventure <wink>.  -- Tim Peters