A place to record wild ideas (for posterity) then ignore them :)

• "upload image" facility that uploads to Google pages and inserts a link in the current page

• automated "tag" facility -

In my mind, there is a similarity between the categories that we've been using on the wiki, and the concept of tags that other sites use. There are differences, in my opinion, that, if implemented, would benefit the wiki community. The difference in concept, in my mind, between tags on this wiki and categories could be this:

1. The hyperlink for a tag would result in the same action as clicking on the title of a category performs - a search on the term.

2. Why, then, have tags? My idea would provide two pieces of functionality for tags that isn't present in categories.

3. tags would be a controlled vocabulary and the users would have some sort of "select only" entry - that is, a user wouldn't type the text for the tag, but select it from a fixed list . New tags could be suggested and the best items would be chosen.

3. Near the bottom of the page (maybe beside that minor edit check box) would go an entry field. For browsers without javascript (lynx, phones, etc.), I suspect one would need to provide some sort of dropdown menu for selection. For browsers with javascript (rest of the world), perhaps some sort of "auto creation of fixed vocabulary" or something. Of course there would need to be some way to remove tags which are accidentally selected. Tagging a page only would automatically be treated as a minor edit.

4. The other piece of new features would be some sort of once a hour/day/ week/month/quarter/year script run, offline, that would read pages and generate suggested tags for the pages. This would reduce the need for one category of massive minor edits - people going through and adding new category links.

Note that the category links could stay, at least initially. If the community takes to the new idea, and categories tend to become less used, then we could discuss at some point removal of the pages.

• Automated link checking - set up a process by which 1/365th of the pages are checked each night for broken URLs, and, if one is found broken, a special icon is added to the page (with some sort of timestamp). The next year, if the URL is working, the icon is automatically removed. Of course, more frequent checks could be done... just didn't want to overwhelm the system. Right now, less than 50 pages a night would be checked - that shouldn't be too much of a load of the system.

• remote syncing of wiki pages... this would be a mechanism whereby one could have their own copy of the wiki's pages. Any changes they would make on their site would be merged/synchronized with the main server on demand. The purpose for this would be for those who have the pocket computers like palms, ipaqs, etc. which are growing in capability, and which use wifi for internet access. Having a local version of the wiki would allow developers reliable access to the information. Having syncing capability would allow someone to read, add info and questions, then, when wifi becomes available, sync up with the main database to get the latest updates as well as to provide updates on what is being worked on.