[topicmapmail] Wiki/WebLog application built on top of topicmaps...

[Guy Murphy]

Hi.

I'd like to tentatively announce a Wiki/WebLog application built on the .NET
platform using a TopicMap[-like] back-end, for anybody that might have an
interest.

I've been looking for a while now of a way to bring the benefits of
topicmaps to the "average user" whoever that might be, and Wikis/Blogs seems
to be a good/popular/useful point at which to do it.

I say TopicMap[-like] as the back-end doesn't implement some of the
fine-points of the TopicMap model... associations aren't topics for
instance... but it has topics, occurrences, associations etc.

The application seeks to bridge the gaps between Wikis and WebLogs and offer
each the strengths of the other.

The application is very close to beta now, with most major features being
complete I am currently working on DateTime associations to allow users to
view recently changes resources, and working on back-up topics associated
with the original to provide simple versioning of resources. And lastly once
versioning is done the automatice tracking of citation relationships (which
needs versioning to do cleanly)... once that's done I'll regard the
application as beta and start fixing bugs.... the citation relationships is
a big goal because I feel it will relieve the urge to manually create a lot
of relationships.

Anyhow, for the curious you can find it at
http://eu.webmatrixhosting.net/Fusax/conclave.aspx ... this is a free test
server in Russia which most of the time is really good but occasionally a
router goes out enroute to Russia, and since just before Christmas their
database has occasionally gone down. If you catch it at a bad time, simply
try again later.

I'd encourage people to create an account and make comments onsite if they
feel so inclined.... follow the "UserLogin" link at the top, and then the
"CreateUser" link there, or use the "GO" box at the top to go directly to
"CreateUser".

As a side note if I were to do this application again I would choose an
Association DataModel rather than a TNM one for the reason that I've found
that an annoying aspect about enforcing bidirectional relationships is that
one side can't be uninterested in the relationship. By way of concrete
example...

We have a simple relationship of... created(user, topic)... which is formed
between a topic representing a user and the topics they create.

Now 100 topic creations later, each topic that's created has a single highly
useful link by virtue of the "created" association to the user that created
it... the user on the other hand has 100 "created" associations from their
topic, 95 of which they aren't remotely interested in.... Now I'm aware that
others might be interested in what topics a user has created, but I'm
looking to fulfil pragmatic user requirements not purity of form.

It would seem to me that with an Associative DataModel I can fulfil a
two-way relationship if I (or more normally a user) desires, or simply
exhibit a relationship from one side.... so the created topic can maintain a
relationship with the creator but the user can remove or not track in the
first place the topic they created.... remembering that this is just one
type of example, there are many relationships that fall into this category.

One solution to this problem is to change the relationship of "created"
associations where the user wishes to filter to created(user, blind-topic)..
or similar, and then filter out display of the "blind" relationship... it's
doable but I'm now getting into special cases, and dangerously close to a
hack.

It would seem that the Associative DataModel (such as that used by
Semantica) offers me more choices than the TopicMap.

Any thoughts on the matter would be appreciated. It's easy to loose sight of
things when you're in the middle of them and somebody might have a fresh
take on this that I'm overlooking.

 - Guy Murphy