User:Alan Liefting/Essays/Wikiworld

''Wikiworld

The planet that we call Earth is our World in the Universe. Here on our planet we sometimes talk about the fashion world and cyberspace. In recent years cyberspace has had - to carry through with the cosmic analogy - a "Big Bang" of Wikis. A veritable "Wikiverse" if you like.

This Wikiverse has a number of distinct "Wikiworlds" within it. Computer programmers are beavering away in their own world of XML and HTML and programming on their servers. Another world is that which is inhabited by a species called Wikipedians with their own language of wikitext. This is a world of communities interacting together to build the most popular of all wikis - Wikipedia.

The Wikiworld of Wikipedians works behind the scenes to create the content of Wikipedia for the readers. In order to facilitate the travels of the reader though the pages of Wikipedia it is best that the Wikipedians and their particular world are hidden from view. A sort of spirit world that the reader may know about but never sees. The difference between this spirit world and the spirituality experienced by humans is that something (digitally) tangible is produced.

We must generally maintain separation between reader and Wikipedian. A notable exception of course is the page "discussion" tag. One of the ways of building Wikipedia into a world class reference is to accept this world view.

Alan Liefting

July 2010