Webs are useful to use, not things to be feared

Besides a (hopefully logically) name, which gives a clear starting point, each web has or can have its own:

aspect	purpose	real web	virtual web	classification scheme
namespace	where different users use the same term for different purposes, and those users do not want to have to use fully qualified names		no	no
settings	"variables" defined for a given web		no	no
access control	Controls who can view and change topics in the web			no
top bar	different images, text, navigation		no	no
left bar	Easy access to vital entry points and actions		no	no
enabled forms	database-like fields and sets of logic to aggregate and filter on those fields
template topics	default content for new topics		no
skin(s)	distinct look and feel		no
search space	searches constrained to a set of related topics		no	requires search topics
container	for sets of topics that need to be changed together.			no

So-called "virtual webs" don't have these, nor does any classification scheme give you any of this. So while webs should ideally be well organised and easy to navigate, talking merely about organisation and navigation ignores these often very important properties of real webs.

-- Contributors: MeredithLesly, MartinCleaver, LynnwoodBrown

Discussion

Think of webs as sub-wikis That's how I explain "webs" most of the time and people tend to understand that easily even though they use "web" for "internet" before. Heh, where's WhatsTheMatrix?

-- MichaelDaum - 11 May 2006

I agree that webs have their place. SplitTheTWikiWeb, PleaseCreateNewWeb and - to a lesser extent some of the comments that ensued on RenameTheMainWeb show that webs have their purpose. I added above the notion of container, and turned it into a table.

Let's not confound the notions of webs for TWiki.org and webs in general.

I am not sure what you mean by a virtual web.

-- MartinCleaver - 11 May 2006

I'm not sure either. People have thrown that term around. I think it may have to do with classification, or tagging, or any distinct-in-some-way subset of a real web.

-- MeredithLesly - 11 May 2006

I changed several of the cells in the chart above under Classsification Scheme. Having worked with this area a lot with TopicClassificationAddOn, I assert that it is very possible to have "enabled forms" as defined there, as well as "template topics" and "search space." And given the skin can be specified by the template, I would say you could also have distinct skins associated with classified topics, although I have not played with that much. But come to think of it, that is essentially what is being done with user topics in Dakar.

I don't understand what is meant by "container - for sets of topics that need to be changed together." Could someone give me an example to illustrate what it is refering to.

While I really like webs, I believe a lot more can be done with classification frameworks then often is - which is why I created TopicClassificationAddOn. Personally, I find it sufficiently useful that something like it should be added into the core, precisely so that one doesn't have to resort to adding new webs to get some of these capabilities.

-- LynnwoodBrown - 11 May 2006

> "container - for sets of topics that need to be changed together."

Consider webs that you take from a distribution. They work as a unit. So you can throw the whole thing away when you are done and replace anew.

-- MartinCleaver - 11 May 2006

OK, so you can't do that with classification schemes, at least until we get some mechanism for manipulating/changing multiple topics at once within TWiki gui.

-- LynnwoodBrown - 11 May 2006

"Let's not confound the notions of webs for TWiki.org and webs in general."

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Certainly this is a broader discussion than just what to do with twiki.org, but it's certainly relevant when non-web-based solutions preclude using the benefits that webs offer that classification, etc. doesn't.

-- MeredithLesly - 11 May 2006