Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

As most people deeply imbedded in Web 2.0, I am an avid Wiki user. I have become a complete devotee of Dokuwiki, which I use locally on my laptop, for my to do lists, notes, etc. I love it because it’s really easy to set up and back up (it’s all files, not in a database,) and it’s has draft autosaves (yay!).

I have two other wikis (a public and private wiki) that are in Mediawiki, on my web host. And I contribute to varied other wikis, which are on varied other wiki platforms.

And none of these have the same syntax - they are similar, but slightly different. Different enough to drive me crazy.

A while ago, when I was still developing web applications, I wrote a wiki plug-in for this behemothic open source CMS/Web database system that I wrote, and has (mercifully) died a slow death (there are still a few installations of it in use, hopefully soon to be retired.) I didn’t get so far into coding the markup, but I had decided that I’d follow MediaWiki’s syntax, since it was the most popular wiki software.

I just wish that somehow, the  gazillion wikis out there could decide on syntax they all would agree on. I doubt it, but it would be nice.