Slide 1

IntroductionJani Patokallio

Wikis were designed for encyclopedia-type spaces, where articles are arranged in a flat, alphabetical list.

How can wikis be adapted to structured and hierarchical products like a book, while preserving each page's context and allowing editing in linear order?

Context and Linearity

7 July 2010

Background

Lonely Planet is the world's largest travel publisher

Our content is updated by many people and changes rapidly

How can it be centralized and managed, yet used to create structured, well-organized products like books and applications?

7 July 2010

MediaWiki

Built-in features for structuring content

Links

Subpages

Transclusion

Categories

7 July 2010

MediaWiki core:
Links

Good

MediaWiki's core structural unit

Easy to create and modify

Bad

One-way only

Page names must be unique

Not metadata, but within the content

Poland:

[[Gdansk]] is in Poland.

Gdansk:

There is [[Eating|food]] in Gdansk.

Eating:

Mm, pierogis!

7 July 2010

MediaWiki core:
Subpages

Poland/Gdansk/Eating

Good

Represents fixed tree hierarchies well

Easy navigation up (but not down)

Bad

No way to see context of page

No way to see what children there are

Moving Poland/Gdansk to Poland/Danzig does not move Poland/Gdansk/* anywhere

7 July 2010

MediaWiki core:
Transclusion

=Poland= [[:Gdansk]]
==Gdansk== [[:Eating]]
===Eating=== Pierogis!

Good

Can show an entire tree or subtree at once

Moving content around is easy

Bad

No navigation

Can't include a page without including all its children as well

Headers embedded in content

7 July 2010

MediaWiki core:
Categories

===Eating===
[[Category:Gdansk]][[Category:Eating]]

Good

Can slice content many ways:

All articles about Gdansk

All articles about eating

Reclassifying content is easy

Bad

No context, all category members equal

No order within categories

7 July 2010

Extensions to MediaWiki

Breadcrumbs

Semantic Mediawiki (SMW)

Collections

7 July 2010

Extensions:
Breadcrumbs

Poland -> Gdansk -> Eating

Good

Handy navigational tool

Can be extended

Bad

No structure in itself (can be added via eg. RDF though)

Only shows ancestry of current page, not children

7 July 2010

Extensions:
Semantic MediaWiki

==Gdansk== [[Place::Poland]]
===Eating===
[[Place::Gdansk]][[Type::Eating]]

Good

Properties can be set and queried

Inline queries for dynamic page generation

Bad

Query results are unordered, no way to ensure that Getting there comes before Eating

7 July 2010

Extensions:
Collections

Good

Designed for creating books from wiki content

Can arrange content into many different collections

Bad

Structuring limited to chapters

{{saved_book|

title=Poland}}

==Poland==

; Gdansk

* [[Eating]]

7 July 2010

Case studies

Wikitravel

Wikibooks

7 July 2010

Case study:
Wikitravel

Fixed geographical hierarchy {{isPartOf}}

Breadcrumbs+RDF

Names flat, subpages only for city districts

Poland, Gdansk

Singapore/Orchard

Related articles {{isRelatedTo}}

RDF, articles show up in toolbar

No navigation templates

No categories

Printed books through Wikitravel Press

7 July 2010

Case study:
Wikitravel

7 July 2010

Case study:
Wikibooks

Main book page links to other pages

Subpages used extensively for structure

Algorithms/Chapter 5

Printable versions are separate pages that transclude all subpages

Navigation through optional table of contents (TOC) templates

Categories also used

Printed books through PediaPress

7 July 2010

Case study:
Wikibooks

7 July 2010

Brewing at Lonely Planet Labs...

What issues are we looking into?

Include parser extension

Expand special page

7 July 2010

LP Labs:
What we're building

Content management system for travel information

More structured than most wikis

Limited to Lonely Planet staff

Different roles for different users

Author, editor, curator

Geared towards producing multiple products from content

Country guide, city guide, continent guide, iPhone app, iPad app, ...

7 July 2010

LP Labs:
Our interests

How can authors view content in linear sequence?

Seeing multiple pages at once

How can editors view pages in context?

Navigate up (parents), down (children), sideways (siblings)

How can existing content be remixed into multiple products?

Not just one structure or order

7 July 2010

LP Labs:
Include

Parser extension for hidable links

Can render as a list of links or be hidden from view and processed automatically

Poland:

Beautiful place.
{{#include:Gdansk}}

Gdansk:

Wikimania city. {{#include:Eating}}

Eating:

Pierogis, yay!

7 July 2010

LP Labs:
Expand

Special page for transcluding #include links

Creates headers dynamically based on starting point

=Poland=

Beautiful place.

==Gdansk==

Wikimania city.

===Eating===

Pierogis, yay!

7 July 2010

Questions?

Jani Patokallio

7 July 2010

Top 10 Priorities

Click to edit the title text format

7 July 2010

Top 10 Priorities

7 July 2010

Top 10 Priorities

7 July 2010