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Given the large number of clones and ports of Wiki, one would wonder: Could a standard, or base Wiki be made? Assuming the answer is yes, what are some fundamental capabilities that wiki developers need in their copies of Wiki?

• Ability to customize how wiki works, using one's preferred language, to make it well suited for particular tasks.
• Portable to a range of variously limited platforms - or, at least, the core pieces can be ported. Should be runnable on a "complete" system, and on ones where certain things (rcs, perl5, etc.) are missing.
• Page changes can be incorporated to a given page in various ways (replacing old page, merging, appending...)
• Preprocessing is done on the file prior to display to the page user. The file can be preprocessed in a variety of (oft-customized) means. Extra things can be added to the page beyond the editable text.
• Hyperlinks can be indicated in a variety of ways.
• What happens when the user clicks the edit or save buttons are often customized.
• Wiki keeps track of additional information about a page besides just the editable text.
• One can perform iterative operations on a set of pages in the site.
• Access to and editing of pages can be controlled in various ways. Wiki knows a little about each user and can act differently depending on who they are.
• Pages can be grouped into one or more "topics", and different kinds of information can be tracked for different topics.
• How would one design things to avoid future forks and fragmentation? see Wiki:AvoidingWikiForks
• What could be done to make it easier to install and configure wiki?
• Does the current wiki architecture support all of the needs listed above? If not, does a particular architecture suggest itself from the requirements?
• Would there be any value in considering alternate licenses besides GPL?
• What should Wiki not be designed to be used for? What are its bounds? (Or are there none?)
• What could be done about "reading in" various other formats (i.e. mbox, mmdf, etc...)

-- ManpreetSingh - 14 Sep 2000