[drupal-devel] Jimmy Wales

[Jonathan Chaffer]

Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia) was across the aisle from me and directly ahead 
of John and Matt on the way back from DrupalCon. We had a nice 
conversation. Some of the highlights:

- He is interested in taxonomy, especially the possibility of 
syndicated and synchronized vocabularies.
- He said it would be great if we had the ability to make a special 
syntax like double-brackets link automatically to Wikipedia. I briefly 
explained our filter system, and said that if he wanted we could knock 
out such a filter in an afternoon. Looking in contrib, it looks like 
interwiki.module can do this already; maybe it's just a matter of code 
review.
- If we have need for writing-based tasks (like translation), he may be 
able to provide some manpower for us in that area.
- "So, could I use this for my blog?" "Yes!"
- He talked a bit about Wikinews, and how it's silly to have a news 
site without RSS, but the wiki format causes updates to be too frequent 
to make RSS sensible. He wants to move finished articles out of the 
wiki and into another system, and mentioned Drupal as a possibility for 
this.

We may be getting a follow-up email at info at drupal.org.
--

Jonathan Chaffer
Applications Developer, structure:interactive
(616) 364-7423    http://www.structureinteractive.com/