BlogThis from within a wiki system: Enhanced threading and categorization across blogs?
We normally see that wiki systems have some "active" users who do the editing, while most others only read the contents; and are afraid to contribute because they are afraid to edit the topic (for lack of wiki markup knowledge). They will more easily contribute in the comments area immediately below the topic.
So why is that we don't have buttons such as "BlogThis" (i.e. add your comments), "View all comments" buttons below wiki topics, but these aggregate information from blogs and provide a threaded view? Essentially, a well-integrated "blog-this" approach that allows users to comment on articles and wiki topics. Main area of such a wiki would be organized information - in form of a well laid out document, tables, checklists, tasks etc., and not really involving comments.
The interesting part is the granularity of where you can seek comments in topic. Usually you seek comments at the end of the topic. But in this model, you can place a number of "BlogThis" icons anywhere in the topic. For example, one for every task defined. How to interleave comments (dynamically read and cached from all the blogs, retaining the threaded structure) is upto the UI of the wiki interface. Usually this can be a a #ref to a (automatically generated) comments section at the bottom of the topic.
This integration can also make sure that (1) Categories are automatically added - possibly from dmoz and, (2) Timestamp is provided, which can roughly be used to order the comments. (3) Template for things like votes and form fills.
Within an organization, this has very interesting implication: Users can have a blog without realizing they have one! (Since they never need to use standard blog interface). Votes and form-fills can be integrated with RSS blogs in much simpler manner. Of course, existing blog interfaces will need to be enhanced for this.
I am thrilled! A good mechanism to reduce email overload using blogs!
