OnePlaceForEveryIdea

One Place for Every Idea

What It Is

The idea that every idea should have a CanonicalPosition.

Why?

To produce the richest knowledge possible, by maximally focusing the interests of all people interested in the idea.

Another way to say it, is to greatly reduce IntelligenceFailure.

What it isn't

It isn't dogmatic. There will be plenty of error. And this can only work if we are practical.

This isn't naive: There won't (not even ideally) be just one entry for, say, "Capitalism."

There may be only one encyclopedia entry on Capitalism (encyclopedias having their own particular orientation), but there will also be "Capitalism from the perspective of a Libertarian" and "Capitalism from the perspective of an Anarcho-Socialist" and "Capitalism from the perspective of Adam Smith." Each of these ideas should have a CanonicalPosition, and only one canonical position.

Nor do we believe that all people will "just get along." Politics and policy differences exist. Some communities forbid pseudonyms, some sites are prejudiced, some sites want to work by a process that others find too troublesome. Parallel sites with similar subject coverage will exist side by side, over these differences. However, we hope that it will be only by these differences, and that the sites will link to one another. Furthermore, we hope that sites will follow RecommendedCopyrightPolicy, so that site content is interchangable, thus retaining the integrity of knowledge, while allowing people to do things their different ways.

Nor is this meant to force conceptual conformity. There will be differences. However, differences are ideally mapped, and the map will not feature the same idea twice.

How Wiki Makes this Possible

It is practically impossible to have one place for every idea on static web pages, because people cannot fix, amend, and extend static pages. If you come across a web page on the static web, and discover an error on the page, the best you can do is create another web page on the Internet, describing the correction, and hoping that the author will link to or incorporate your correction. This takes a long time, and interrupts the work of many people. With wiki, you can just make your correction on the spot. Thus, the need for hundreds of places dedicated to a single idea is alleviated.

Discussion

EdwardKiser mentions this at OnceAndOnlyOnceIsNotJustForCode. -- DavidCary

David- in your edit comment, you wrote: "link to same idea, different wiki. Ironic, yes ?"

Actually, it's not!

Ideas are never considered alone, but always in a context. More properly, we should perhaps call them "reflections," and say "OnePlaceForEveryReflection." (See IdeasHaveContext.)

This results in ProductiveWikiOverlap.

What this page is properly about, is the idea of having OnePlaceForEveryIdea, from the perspective of WikiNodes.

Interesting, no? -- LionKimbro

Yes, interesting.

Taken to an extreme, this would seem to justify putting (a local interpretation of) *every* idea in *every* wiki. Making each wiki a copy of Everything2 except with its own local culture, context, and bias.

Does every wiki really need its own "interpretation" of every idea ?

I think the general principle of "Once And Only Once" can be the *same* (or at least not significantly different) in many (if not all) wiki, and it just seems redundant to re-explain it every time. I would prefer to stick (the master copy of) that page on one wiki and then just point at that copy from all other wiki.

On the other hand, "Once And Only Once" can be violated in many different contexts (code, work automation, communication protocols, data compression, wiki text, encyclopedias, paper filing cabinets, ... ), each one with its own (usually bad) consequences and each one with one or two ways to fix the violation, ways that don't make sense in other contexts. I agree that only some of them are relevant to any particular wiki.

-- DavidCary

• Does every wiki really need its own "interpretation" of every idea ?

No.

I mean, a wiki doesn't neeeeed anything.

Having a place for an idea doesn't mean you necessarily use it.

And there are many places that probably won't be used. For instance: What does "a flower" mean to the Apache wiki? Probably nothing at all.

If there is a page that is really the same on many wiki, than it probably is part of some sort of abstract system that can be described on another wiki. (I'd really like to make an "abstract systems" wiki, for discussion of systems in general, as well as a "patterns" wiki, for meta-discussion about patterns.)

-- LionKimbro