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2025-10-21
My previous piece dealt with the kinds of page I would expect – and suggest – in an effective knowledge commons wiki serving the commons more widely. Now I'm turning my attention to another important aspect of such a wiki: the internal structure of each page.
The level of ontology in the previous piece is about the kinds of entities that are significant in a commons. This level is more detailed, it is about the attributes and relationships of each kind of thing. Now, of course, different people may see different attributes as significant, but there are choices to be made, and here I'm expressing the choice I am suggesting, to represent what I consider to be the important aspects of the different things we are representing in the knowledge commons.
I'm not doing this all alone in a vacuum. Most wikis or other knowledge repositories have some structure to their pages. So let's start by looking at a few examples of page structures from other knowledge sites — specifically ones that I know personally.
Appropedia has a fairly standard set of parts to its topic pages:
Lowimpact isn't a wiki, but has a standard set of parts to its pages:
Quite a few pages in the P2P Foundation wiki are what Wikipedia would call “stubs”: for instance, just a URL pointing to the information. Others just contain some kind of “Description”. The more fully worked out pages tend to have:
The School of Commoning (inactive for nearly a decade) had a useful Community Knowledge Garden about commons and commoning. The pages are a set of individual essays, grouped by theme, but with internal structure limited to related pages and tags.
While Wikipedia has detailed guidance on page layout, in these other knowledge resources there isn't much standardization in page structure — as far as I can see, it's just what occurs to the creators or contributors at the time. Wikipedia, having a vast amount of content, needs detailed guidance to avoid confusing readers with inconsistency, but Wikipedia's detailed structure is neither necessary nor appropriate for the kinds of knowledge commons under consideration here.
So here, I'm going to set out my own best guess at a structure that will be appropriate in many cases, while not trying to lay down any kind of law. Treat it like a pattern in a pattern language. While not trying to impose a standard structure, it would be good to bear in mind that the more similar pages are in structure, the easier it is likely to be for people to feel comfortable reading them, as they will know what to expect and not be surprised by new features popping up with no warning.
The most useful information sources start by letting readers know if this is the page they want to see; or alternatively, direct them to somewhere else if there is a chance they might have found something related, similar to the one they want. Wikipedia sometimes starts with informing readers about “not to be confused with” pages, or disambiguation pages. This is important, to respect any reader's time and help them find what they want as easily as possible. There is a lot of good practice to follow here, particularly in well-worked resources like Wikipedia itself, where this is called the “lead section”.
In academic writing, this is the function of the abstract. As this feature or pattern occurs in several forms, it's worth keeping in mind as useful.
This is the clearest and most obvious part of a page, as well as probably being the longest part. But, as previously noted, in a wiki it makes sense to have smaller rather than larger pages. This goes hand in hand with helping readers find their own level of information. If they come across terms that are unfamiliar, readers should be able to link from that term to a page where the term is explained at a more basic level.
Also obviously, when another page in the knowledge commons is mentioned or referred to, or where it would be helpful, it makes sense to link directly to that other page. Again, this helps readers move easily to find what they want to know about. Any indication of what the link means may help as well. Current wiki technology can only easily do this in a human-readable way, but I look forward to developments where semantic links can be embedded so that a semantic knowledge graph can be generated automatically, and searched, for example through Graph Query Language.
The main content would naturally include, as appropriate, the Lowimpact parts of “what are the benefits?” and “what can I do?”. But because these are not a natural part of other kinds of page, they are here suggested as subsections of the main content, rather than main sections in their own right.
Most knowledge resource pages have a section for links to related pages, particularly if these haven't come up naturally in the main content. Which other pages are linked, and in what way, differs, and there doesn't seem enough evidence to recommend any particular way of doing this. I would suggest, though, that pages describing categories are similar to other pages, not as MediaWiki does it (at the end, with bare category names) or like in the P2P wiki. If categories are just pages, then the links to them can be given context or explained better; and every “category” can be described properly, rather than simply being a list of pages in that category.
Pages can be related to most other kinds of page, depending on the kind of page. This includes, for example, relating a page to the “specialist” people who have collaborated in the writing and maintenance of the page.
Related pages may be part of the same knowledge commons, or may be outside it, and is a good question whether to list internal and external links together or separately. While I don't see any general rule on this, it would seem sensible to have a separate page within the wiki for anything that is referred to more than once. One advantage of this pattern is that if the remote resource moves, there is just one link to change, and it is quite easy to find.
As mentioned already regarding main content, pages could be related either to pages with more basic or with more advanced knowledge. More advanced knowledge may sometimes be called “further reading” or similar. If the related pages are about the topic as a whole, it would make sense to have them linked either in the lead section at the top, or at the bottom. I try to practice this in my own wiki (here), where I put theme links at the very top of the page, and theme or topic links at the bottom in their own section, sometimes even if they have been linked in the main content.
This is a very well established pattern, both in paper books and articles, and on the web, and it is worth preserving. My personal view is that it is a good idea to clarify, with references, just what role the reference is playing. Footnotes or endnotes, more than just bare references, offer a chance to give context to a reference.
This is the main innovation that I would like to propose here.
In Wikipedia and other MediaWiki systems, there is space for a “Discussion” or “Talk” page alongside the main page, whether that space is used or not. The purpose of the space is to allow contributors to give opinions or reasons or questions around the contents and editing of the page content. In Wikipedia it is expressly not for general discussion of the topic. It is often very useful to look at these pages to gauge how much controversy there is or has been around a topic. Wikipedia is relatively well policed, but outside Wikipedia, if that space were simply open to all, it would rapidly become unmanageable and possibly unreadable — and very probably unhelpful.
The idea here is similar but differs in some vital ways. First, the suggestion is to allow only registered contributors to add their comments. But by making this section on the actual page, rather than separate, it will let other readers see any variety of perspective that there is on any topic, within the body of contributors. The hope is that by allowing different perspectives on a topic, readers are more likely to find comments from people with similar viewpoints, and thus be drawn into a sense that the knowledge commons is familiar, not alien.
The other vital function of a commentary section is that contributors can use it to pose questions that arise for them, personally. Comments in the style of “yes, but what about … ?” can help open up different perspectives, in a way that does not need to be integrated immediately into the body of the article. If there is, as I would recommend, a forum easily available and linked from the wiki, questions that arise can be talked through there. If a good unanswered question comes up, which several contributors feel is a growth point for the knowledge commons, the question can be promoted, first to the Questions section of the page it is on (see below), and if seen collectively as having wider relevance, to having its own page, as outlined in the Question section of the previous piece.
I see a Commentary section as the first step towards working in questions to the knowledge commons ontology, and the broader commoning methodology.
This is another innovation, in the same spirit as having select questions as pages in their own right. Following on from questions brought up by individuals in Commentary, we could have a separate section for questions directly related to the topic of the page, or the main content. This could be an intermediate stage between a question being raised by an individual in Commentary, and a worked-over question being given its own page. In this case, it would be for the group of page editors to decide collectively which questions brought up by individuals were worthy of wider consideration, perhaps after further working over in a related forum. Thus, this section would not be for any individual to edit, but expressly for the page editors collectively.
In every page there will be some basic “lead” material at the top of the page, whether it is a very brief indication of what is on the page, or it is simply pointing to where the knowledge resource is.
For resource pages, all of the sections above are relevant.
For concept pages, a definition can appear at the top of the page, so we may not need a main content unless the definition needs some explanation; or if the concept is defined by example, then it will be needed to set out examples. The related pages probably relate mostly to other concepts, patterns and questions.
For person pages of external people, not contributors, again all the sections could be relevant, with the main content being either biographical or descriptive of their main contribution to commons or commons thinking.
For person pages of contributors, the contributor will have control of what is in the page. It would make sense if they use the main content as (or pointing to) personal autobiography; related pages as ones they have an interest in; and questions as those they have a longer term personal interest in. Commentary from others is not obviously appropriate.
For group pages, all the sections may be relevant, in a way similar to resource pages.
For place pages, the main content can be description and/or history of the place. Related pages can include related resources, people, groups and gatherings. Questions could relate to problems faced by the place, or questions about its future.
For gathering pages, the main content could be a description, plus any outcomes of the gathering. The related pages can be people who attend it, and groups that organise it; also its patterns of structure, organisation or governance. Questions could be both the questions addressed and the questions raised.
For story pages, the top of the page could point to published versions of the story. The main content could be a summary of the story, or the whole story if it has not been published elsewhere. Related pages could include people as authors, groups as publishers, related places. If the story has any patterns of commoning, these can be linked as well.
For pattern pages, the main content could include at least a description of the context, problem and solution. Related pages could be other patterns; concepts that occur in the pattern, or pages of other kinds that embody the pattern
For question pages, the top of the page can succinctly express the question. The main content can explain it, and perhaps the background. Related pages could include interested people and groups, broader or narrower questions.
This raises the question: what are the patterns, not of commoning as such, but the design patterns of knowledge commoning? That deserves separate treatment, and I intend to return to that, later.
A revised version on this post was also published on the Growing the Commons blog.