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A page with no inbound links from other ToothyWiki pages.

These have been increasing in frequency since the ToothyChat (is it called that yet?) service started converting WikiLinks into WikiLinks?, prompting the creation of many pages, like VoiceMail (which would be an OrphanPage but for this link).

Bobacus thinks all pages should be reachable from ToothyWiki, and wonders how many disjoint sets of pages there are (using forward-links only). Hmm. Forward-links aren't symmetric, so "disjoint set" probably isn't well-defined. OK, I think I need a MathMo to help here!
Sounds like you're talking about a [directed graph]... --AC
Yes, but with ToothyWiki as a root node. I don't mind not being able to forward, but I do mind not being able to go back. How about a directed-graph of pages/forward-links + a link to ToothyWiki from each page. Let that be strongly-connected. --B
Hmm. I see the desire, but I'm not totally sure I'd set it as a requirement. There's a significant sense in which navigation via Categories is the (or at least a) recommended means of navigation, which involves backlink searching. I believe I mentioned on CategoryTheory the model of ToothyWiki as a (mathematical) category, with pages as nodes and sequences-of-link-clicks as arrows: this requires you to allow backlink searching in order to have a sensible identity element. --AC
I see your point about navigation via Categories. I think my motivation is that I used to be able to do a backlink search to find the context within which a page was reified. Since ToothyChat, there are now many pages popping up originating from transient chat sessions. I feel empty when I can't see any backlinks. As for CategoryTheory, I still haven't quite got my head round it in spite of probably-multiple explanations from you with diagrams (well, I was even rusty on GraphTheory? so it's not surprising), so I don't currently know what you mean by an identity element or why it matters. --B
Hmm, it probably doesn't matter especially in the context of the current discussion :) I agree that pages with 0 backlinks feel wrong; they've actually been arising for some time before the ToothyChat, because a very similar phenomenon occurred with TodayIAmMostly and YesterdayILearnt. All it really means is that the originating context is no longer available. In the original WikiWiki?, this wouldn't have been such a problem, because pages were rather more consistently being refactored than ToothyWiki sees :) --AC
The identity is the 'do nothing' element, which in this case would be 'going to a page then going along its backlink results in staying still' - which isn't particularly useful when applied to a wiki, anyway.  (Although, madly, 30% of users never use the back button, apparantly...  But then, the link to 'RecentPages?' is just up there...)
...and everything's reachable via the Random Page link :-) --B


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Last edited April 26, 2006 7:15 pm (viewing revision 10, which is the newest) (diff)
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