WikiNames vs. Normal Titles

From W3C Wiki

This Wiki has two simple link syntaxes:

  1. WikiName style, where you JoinCapitalizedWords to show that it's the name
 if a Wiki document (or object about which there is a Wiki document?).
  1. "Normal Titles" style [ "Like This"]

Which is better?

Advantages of WikiName's:

  • They are very easy to type
  • They are somewhat distinctive; you might recognize something as a WikiName
 even in another context.   Probably not, though, now that such names are
 seen practically everywhere
  • They map to URIs and thus SemanticWeb identifiers easily, once you know
 the appropriate namespace/prefix.

Advantages of Normal Titles:

  • You don't need to mangle terms like W3C, RDF, XML, and HTML to get them into a name
  • It makes Wiki pages more like other web pages; why should there be a big differences?

In general, web page identifiers are not a function of the title. You can change the title without changing the URI. Not so for titles-used-as-wiki-names.

The WikiWikiWeb medium takes away this degree of freedom as a conscious choise, I think. -- DanConnolly

Actually, you take away this choice yourself, since it's just the combination of "free" wiki titles and then again using "free" link texts that is hard (not impossible) to add. Free link text is done by this page refers to itself, and this example also shows the combo of both things being "free". -- JürgenHermann DateTime(2003-03-29T08:37:35)

I'm leaning toward using WikiName's for topics that contribute to the pattern language we're building, but since we're doing lots of stuff besides building a pattern language here, there's not much reason for using WikiName's for things like CwmTips; might as well be "SWAP and cwm support". The limitation about acronyms seems like something we shoulf fix, one for MoinMoinToDo. I find it kinda annoying that DanC isn't treated as a topic name. (See AcronymsInWikiNames.)

-- DanC

Another option is UseInterWikiNamesEverywhere.