Wiki Life: Windows 8 TechNet Wiki Widget - Ordering Organised Chaos

TechNet Wiki life is "organised chaos"

 

"Chaos"

Anyone can add anything they like, whenever they like, however they like!

However, many people don't include a table of contents, follow the style guidelines, understand how to use the Editor or include the common tags

Some articles are pure advertising spam, some are outrageous plagiarisms, some are invaluable - but disorganised.

 

"Organised"

There is a growing army of TechNet friends getting noticed for their tireless work tidying other people's contributions.

They add tags, the [toc] marker, spellcheck, remove spam, format, comment, and translate the article into many other languages.

Most articles come with at least a set of tags that help to index the actual content, but there's often more you can add.

More and more articles are getting linked together, creating a true ecosystem of information for every subject imaginable.

 

The TechNet Wiki web site has done a great job of organising this flood of content into top level lists.

However, other than the My Pages link, there is not much customisation to the delivery of the flood of content.

 

TechNet Wiki Widget adds more order to this organised chaos

It is a Windows 8 app, in response to a recent call-to-arms by Peter Geelen.

I have begun documenting the TechNet Wiki Widget here, plus I am very honoured to have recently been interviewed about it here.

My hope is that, as more of you pick up Windows 8 on your phone, slate, laptop or desktop, then you will join me in shaping an app that is truly useful.

Currently, TWW collects the most useful RSS feeds and presents them to you.

Unlike a regular RSS reader, I am able to tailor the feed presentations and promote the different fields they use, those that are most relevant to the reader, for that feed.

For example, for "article updates", I want to link to the revision changes, not the revision itself.  It is the highlighted differences that show me how the article has changed.

The "article updates" feed only provides the actual revision article link. I take that revision number, and instead link the user to the awesomely useful "version compare" feature of TechNet Wiki.

TWW also allows you to Tweet an article URL to your Twitter account. In this way, you can help us promote TNWiki articles to other networks.

These are some of the ways I hope to help you, in your wiki life.

  

And this is where YOU come in...

I hope to make this app genuinely useful to YOU the people who regularly use TechNet.

What I need to understand is how you USE TechNet.

 

What kind of searches you make regularly?

What RSS feeds do you already subscribe to?

What sections do you browse?

Which stats are of most interest?

 

These and many other questions will help us all better define how best to organise and consume TechNet Wiki contributions.

 

I am building the TN Wiki Widget for YOU, so feel free to let me know when you think of a feature that would help you, in your wiki life.

 

Please post your ideas and comments below, or on the wiki article, or just in reply to future posts about updates.

 

Here's hoping Santa stuffs your stockings full of Windows 8 devices this Christmas!

 

Pete Laker (XAML Guy)
(Yes, I'm English, we spell organised with an 's' ;)

 

See Also