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Sure, it would be amazing if the knowledge on Wikipedia could be presented to me in a more interactive and enlightening way. But there are a lot of hurdles bet

Sure, it would be amazing if the knowledge on Wikipedia could be presented to me in a more interactive and enlightening way. But there are a lot of hurdles between here and there. Interactions take a lot of talent, skill, and work to design -- will Wikipedia contributors have this skill? The possibilities are much more open-ended than a simple encyclopedia article, will Wikipedia contributors be able to collaboratively design and refine such a thing as easily as they write and revise a simple article? The code that implements those interactions needs to be sandboxed -- how do you prevent a random Wikipedia contributor from modifying the interaction's code to steal the viewer's Wikipedia credentials? I'm all for Alan trying to make his vision a reality with the STEPS project, and I truly am interested to see if he demonstrates a new way of thinking about computing. But when it comes to ideas, the proof is in the pudding: the web is enormously successful, Wikipedia is enormously successful, so his criticism of them rings hollow.

eterps 14y ago
will Wikipedia contributors have this skill? The problem is that right now it is simply to hard to create this kind of interactivity. But in my opinion it does not necessarily have to be more complex than creating or maintaining a corporate spreadsheet. will Wikipedia contributors be able to collaboratively design and refine such a thing as easily as they write and revise a simple article? Absolutely. how do you prevent a random Wikipedia contributor from modifying the interaction's code to steal the viewer's Wikipedia credentials? The same ways as you would for text or image based content. and I truly am interested to see if he demonstrates a new way of thinking about computing Even when he is unable to demonstrate a new way of thinking about computing, I am sure we all can agree that a lot of things can still be improved. It would be a shame if the best we can do on computers is presenting information like we do on paper.

eterps 14y ago

will Wikipedia contributors have this skill? The problem is that right now it is simply to hard to create this kind of interactivity. But in my opinion it does not necessarily have to be more complex than creating or maintaining a corporate spreadsheet. will Wikipedia contributors be able to collaboratively design and refine such a thing as easily as they write and revise a simple article? Absolutely. how do you prevent a random Wikipedia contributor from modifying the interaction's code to steal the viewer's Wikipedia credentials? The same ways as you would for text or image based content. and I truly am interested to see if he demonstrates a new way of thinking about computing Even when he is unable to demonstrate a new way of thinking about computing, I am sure we all can agree that a lot of things can still be improved. It would be a shame if the best we can do on computers is presenting information like we do on paper.