A Simon Grant – his wiki

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//A suggested [[wiki:requirements-commons|requirement]] for a living knowledge commons wiki//

====== Separation of page content from page metadata ======

The page content and the page metadata need to be separated, at least in principle, however it is implemented.

===== Why is this desirable? =====

Readers need to be able to browse content without the cognitive load of having to read or skip over metadata. Metadata and other semantic material needs to be available not only to machines (as already enabled by e.g. RDFa) but also by people. Metadata can’t always be sensibly represented as content, but is really useful for various reasons.

===== How it could work, and issues =====

I envisage a separate metadata page, including the kind of information that is currently shown in “View history” pages; backlinks if they aren’t displayed on the page itself (should be one or the other); permissions; etc. Viewing and [[edit history]] are treated separately.

===== Evaluation, or existing implementations =====

Patchy. **MediaWiki** is not clean about this, and that may be producing usability problems.

**Fedwiki** displays the JSON corresponding to the page on demand. The JSON seems to include the totality of information about the page. And it is all displayed one way or another when in wiki writing mode.