This page will have records of my ongoing thoughts on fedwiki. I (san) stumbled upon Fedwiki when I was looking for note taking tools or methods.
Fedwiki has two obvious and important things going for it, one is Wiki, another is UI.
Wiki is such simple and popular creation, my take is, in English there are popular dictionaries available like Oxford or Cambridge, Wiki is in a way allows you to create 'Your Name' dictionary. You give meaning to word or phrases of your choices to define your take on what's happening on outside world in a way that is very personal to you and when you share it it allows other to take a new look at the same things they were looking too, viewing things from some other's mental perspective will have effects such as surprises and allows one to gain new insights, or if the topic is new to someone their gain is immense, so in a way, Wiki makes you an author and contributor. Fedwiki by design makes sharing the center of its design.
UI, fedwiki has well thought out interface, writing reading, sharing is pleasant experience. No clutter or noise anywhere; menus, wizards, buttons, forms or many layouts are all absent, it reminds me of Vim, Vim is notorious for locking out new users in a barren and brazen interface, I would say Vim will also lock you out for life once you learn it, it is such a nice crafty tool, once you learn it you will not be without. At this point I should dedicate this post to Vim Moolenaar, Vim Dictator for Life, he passed away this year, whom I never met but the tool he made is very personal and rewarding experience for millions of users every day including me.
unfinished / waiting for
To Ward Cunningham, who introduced Wiki to the world, and now fedwiki, I have two queries:
i) How you came up with clean design?
ii) Discovery and interesting way to do things seems to be the theme, where did you learn it? Example would be using icons and colors to useful and tasteful effect, drag and drop to add Page Context / Synopsis or Full page import, plugins like Roster for neighborhood concept, shift double click to view configuration / json data. The underlying theme seems Encapsulation (since I was from Java background) in UI design, so much is hidden yet possible to configure with interesting gestures or features.