Wikipedia:Heirarchical Linking System proposal

Hierarchial Linking System
Alright this is just a suggestion which I feel can be implemented and which I as a loyal member of Wikipedia and the Open Source Movement would like to make. Note: i had no idea where to put this so i placed it here. Hope you people don't mind

what?
First off I think it would be nice if there was a linking system created in wikipiedia that would alow for visual graphs to be displayed of selected "articles", in terms of dependancies.

What I mean by this is to allow articles to explain that the various links represent. For instance it would be great if you could signify various "parent" articles with "[< example ]]" style links and child with " example >]" style links with "[[ example " reserved for topics related to this or w/e is easier to program.

Why?
Well there are several reasons. Such as allowing Wikipedia to be used more as a teaching tool, giving Wikipedia a more directed effort, allowing for all to learn from Wikipedia and giving wikipedia a greater edge over paper based encyclopedias and other online encyclopedias allowing it to become the next generation of encyclopedias.


 * Sorry - no subpages. An encyclopedia is also not supposed to be read in a linear way. Go to Wikibooks if you like that format. --mav 08:10, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Teaching Tool
As is noted by the beginning paragraph of encyclopedia means instruction. So this for of graphical represtation of the relationship of various articles to each other will help as a teaching tool. for instance:

MATH Addition <-^--->Roman Numbers <---> Arabic numbers Subtraction<--^> multiplication<--> shapes ^-division^ (skip a few) Calculus <^      ^--> trigonometry (skip quite a few more)          Einstein Theory of Relativity <--^^

Would show what you need to know in order to understand division. This would allow for a lot less bloat in many articles as they would no longer have to explain everything from the basics. This would allow for Much more advanced topics to be published even at the PHD level for the task of writing hundreds of pages of (for a PHD) dauntingly simple explanations, would no longer be necessary.

Also most people i have asked find it much easier to understand a topic when they can see how it relates to other things. Nor do things seem as daunting when broken down. A large part of which being why our PHD professor wouldn't mind doing the human task of writing a few paragraphs explaining some mathamatical formula.


 * Most people land on individual articles from search engines. Thus a good lead section is needed to summarize the topic for the average person and hook them into reading the detail (which may require special knowledge). --mav 08:13, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

A Direct Effort
Wikipedia will gain a more directed effort. Holes will be very noticable when any sort of graphs are generated. Over linking should in theory be minimised as only the few required "parent dependancies" will have to be linked to explain the topic, a few "where to go next" links and "related" links would be needed. This i must admit sounds like a lot. But it will allow, especially beginners guidelines as to what they should and shouldn't link to. When all the holes are filled people will also have an idea as to what to start on next with all the unfullfilled dead links. The most important thing being that this kind of changes in links will allow for the many that edit wikipedia daily to do what they like to do best. (i.e. correct mistakes, fill holes, or build upon the foundation ). For me what I found is that i simply don't know what to edit next and so i decide to leave till i think of something, or i wish to do a related topic and can't think of any keywords that would allow me to do such a thing. One day I enthusiastically decided to help with various emotional words, only to find that rage doesn't really have anything specific in it and is a disambiguation page. I wouldn't mind as much if it wasn't a wannabe dictionary definition with the first entree reffering to rabies. After which i decided that i should really propose for the Wikipedia to do something about the disorganisation.


 * A category system is in development. --mav 08:14, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

World Educator
Notice also that the above would mean that Wikipedia would become a real " self learning tool". Anyone from America to Zimbabwe would have access to the worlds greatest self teaching tool provided only an internet connection. There is no reason Wikipedia will not become something as referancable as "the teachers guide".


 * Wikipedia does not educate, it informs. Wikibooks' mission is to educate. --mav 08:15, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * really sorry to liter the talk pages with this then, I just had no idea about the various wiki*'s.. can someone direct me to a site or page listing them?


 * No reason to be sorry. :) See Wikimedia and http://wikimedia.org . --mav

Competitor
Also quite obviously with being a teaching tool and all we would completly demolish our paper ancestors. We would beat them by layout and pure content. Even if we costed the same as they did. However we are free and community driven so any commercial endevours couldn't really hope to catch up with us since no matter how many people they hire, they can never match the free world.

Issue
Now its understood that Wikipedia is already having trouble as its demand seems to be greater than its supply. Maybe its just me, but the servers seem a little slow and the searches that are allowed are limited.


 * It is very fast to me. Yes some features are disabled but that has more to do with the fact that they need to be optimized. --mav 08:07, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

proposed solution
A suggestion which has already probably crossed the minds of many a wikipedia developer is to make it distributed. For instance as Wikipedia is For the people and Of the people. Why not let The People host it as well. It should not be too hard to do, many sites already mirror a lot of there work over a large amount of servers. Wikipedia with its considerable size could distribute sections of itself over the internet, allowing them to know about sections such as themselves notifying each other about them. Also understandably they would h ave to link to others, and they could link directly to those that are their "parents", "children", or "related" article groups. All of this is not overly difficult to implement (if your worried about security simply encrypt). If a user wishes to use the CPU draining faculties of "graphing" then they would have to install this partial mirror of wikipedia and they would be all set. I don't want to go into length about the topic in this article so please ask if you need it or maybe if requested i'll throw up some message board somewhere. (BTW I'm quite willing and eager to help with this networking implementation, I'm CCNA certified)

Yes I know its evil to not let people use graphing if they don't download so you can simply make them register and give them a limit of 5 graphs a day.


 * We have a server farm that is set-up with squid proxy and already have a long list of places lined-up to act as near real time seemless mirrors to offset reading load on the Wikimedia servers. It is just a matter of time before a squid opens up near you. --mav 08:04, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)