User talk:Luisgoncalves

Not sure exactly what the purpose of a 'my talk' page is.

However, let me say that I registered on the wikipedia because I think it is an interesting concept, and I hope to be able to contribute.

I am particularly fascinated becasue I believe that there is even a lot more that can be done to disseminate information clearly, and optimally.

What I would really like is some sort of community forum, where someone poses a question, and the community answers it.

I would like this to be done in a manner much more useful than the usual posting thread.

Instead, I envision a single document, similar in some ways to a wikipedia entry. One main difference, I think, would be the way the information is organized.

On most websites, including the wikipedia, hierarchy is not visible. You can create links, and thus navigate from one topic to another, but you can't see 'the big picture', as it were.

One alternative, with which I have been experiment, but which I still don't know how to implement easily for a browser (i.e., as html???) is the concept of a collapsible hierarchy. Emacs and Vim both allow a file to be view with so-called "folding", where entire paragraphs or sections of the text can be "folded" out of view, or opened up for viewing.

The folding mechanism has several advantages:

- an entire topic can be described in one page

- the high level concepts can be easily seen at a glance when everything else is folded away

- it's easy to find specific infomation on any particular part of the topic by opening up the folds

- a sense of scope is provided by seeing the hierarchy

- writing on a topic in a hierarchical fashion encourages logical thought, and clearly written documents

- writing on a topic in a hierarchical fashion delivers information in an optimal fashion, where one can easily read to whatever depth of interest one desires without having to wade through pages and pages

I wonder if such a concept of a folding hierarchy can be incorporated into wiki?

--Luisgoncalves 07:26, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)