Is X possible? (Too many Xs :) )
Hi everyone,
I´m not yet a member of the Tiki community. But perhaps I will become one; it depends on the answers to this post. So:
We are a group of academics and students (of German Literature - so, forgive my English ) and want to take a stab at a bit complicated project: We want to write a non-hierarchical and non-linear Literary History. If the project proves to be usefull, it could become a big thing (and thus even propagate Tiki ). Because of that, I thought, perhaps somebody could take the time and tell me: Is it possible to do here what we are planning to do?
We need some special features:
(1) The user has got to be able to make a preselection: Which Wiki-version is to be shown (more on that later)?
(2) The wiki has got to be able to remember the reading history of individual users (more on that later)
(3) The most crucial feature: Not only wiki-sites, but site-paragraphes have to be “tag-able”. E.g., the paragraph “Goethe and literary journals” is tagged “media” and it is an autonomous tag but nevertheless a sub-tag of the wiki-site-tag “Goethe”.
(4) The authors have to be able to create different paragraph-versions (more on that later).
(5) We need typed links: Paragraphs and Sites have got to be linked as “influenced by”, “influence on” and “no influence, but similar/noteworthy/...”. (If at the same time the wiki could create a corresponding backlink (Goethe => Schiller: “influence on”, Schiller => Goethe: “influcenced by”), that would be great but not crucial.)
(6) “bridge-paragraphs” - see below.
The idea is this: Every Literary History in book form has to crucial problems: (a) It can tell only one history and (b) it is forced to break the connectedness between historical aspects. E.g.: The author Thomas Mann was influenced greatly by the philosopher Schopenhauer. But they are of different times and realms, so Schopenhauer would appear (if he appears at all) very early in a Literary History and Thomas Mann very late. That´s a no-go. Or: Author A was greatly influence by author B as regards style, but not as regards motives. Thus, either a literary history connects both authors which is not wholly true, or it doesn´t connect them which is just as little true.
We want to solve this: First, the reader is able to preselect the special history he wants to read, e.g. a Literary History in terms of the history of ideas or a socio-historical literary history (Feature 1) (Either he does that on a start page, or, what would be more ideal, on a sidepanel and can change his selection while reading). But an socio-historical article on Schiller would go completely astray, if it wouldn´t at least remark that Schiller was influenced by Kant. Thus, an article on Schiller has got to contain a paragraph on Schiller and Kant and a paragraph on the “socio-historical Schiller”. But if the reader wants to read a socio-historical Literary History, he is less interested in “Kant and Schiller”. Thus, we want to write two different versions of these paragraphs: an in-depth-paragraph and a shortened one. Depending on (1), the reader sees either the in-depth-”Schiller and Kant” and the shortened “sociohistorical Schiller” or conversely (4). For that purpose, (3) is needed. And, furthermore: Imagine, the article on Schiller contains ABCDEF, the article on Goethe CDFGH. Now, a reader reads the article on Schiller and is (via the link “influenced by”) directed to the article on Goethe. In this case he already has read CDF. But in case of his coming directly to the Goethe-article, he hasn´t. Thus, the article has to contain CDF, but in order to avoid redundancies, if he read Schiller beforehand, the shortened paragraph versions have got to be shown (2). And, last but not least, a Literary History tells a coherent story. But two articles don´t make a story but are mere articles. Thus, we want to write bridge-paragraphs. The reader reads Goethe, is directed to Schiller via an “influence on”-link and the first paragraph is a bridge between the articles (6) (dunno, probably this is only a special case of 2, but I´m no Wiki-whiz).
For an answer I would be very grateful,
DaWalda