As the current Wiki Way cannot scale past a certain amount of interactions (see Wiki Mess), the (approximately) 2.3 dimensional wiki hypertext must ultimately give way to its fulfillment of 3 dimensions. Call it Web Dot Infinity. This is actually a problem with all community-driven sites. There's a scaling problem after about a hundred items. There is no algorithmic solution to the issue of combining "Most Popular" with "Most Recent". The only way to solve it is to add another dimension.
Why is "Most Popular" an issue? It is for everyone to find their own interest. On this site the most edited can be found through New Recent Changes, which reflects either on constructive debate (all positive) or a delete war (positive and negative alternating). -- John Fletcher
[Because some people visit only occasionally -- what will inform them of an interesting set of pages from months ago? The other reason is for scaling. On many sites with high daily activity, Recent Changes gets overloaded and no one can tell what is interesting.]
The Wiki Pedia solution to this is a Watch List per user.
Here there are Wiki Gnomes who put a tag for the month on popular pages. Those are retained.
Recent Changes is also moved to a page for changes in the month, also retained.
The above is true whether your data is the Internet or your Operating System desktop. A 3-d data visualization model will obliterate the desktop metaphor of interacting with your data and make a Killer User Interface. A Unified Data Model will reinvent the Operating System and unite the Internet. Forget RDF and XML, a 3-d visualization layer will let your visual cortex do the work of making relationships between data.
Work is in progress on a Grand Unification. Visual Python -- the best hope for Language Is An Os -- let the data landscape be your GUI interface.
Re: Killer User Interface and 3D -- Careful, you might put an eye out.
See also Pangaia Project, Wiki Version Two, Unified Data Model, and the Glass Bead Game. Vive la Révolution! --The revolution got killed in Nebraska...
See original on c2.com 