Merging the functionality of a forum, blog and wiki, without sacrificing anything has been my goal for a platform base. While I have designed ways to have the majority of the combined functionality through a wiki or blog the end result is that I think a forum is the easiest to create my goal with. Perhaps there's an easier way, but that's what I think.
Open Forum Network
The idea here is to make it so there are many seperate forums that all work together for log-ins, posting and general operations. The interesting part is that you are hosting, if you choose to, and in charge of your forum, because it is yours. So others in external user groups can participate on your forum, without new accounts on it.
The initials for it aren't too bad either. OFN sounds like often or oven. Half-baked ideas can benefit by going into the oven. The other is to use it often. There-by you communicate often, collaborate often, research often and more.
However, I didn't want a forum network, but something more functionally robust. That's how I came up with the name Fliki.
Fliki
A fliki is what I cal a Forum, bLog and wIKI. (F + L + IKI) Since the term bliki is already in use it made sense to take the name farther as I was taking the concept farther. Plus it reminds me of flipping through something to find what I want without much hassle, if done right. With a flick of the wrist the info you want is there for you, just like magic. I like it.
Thinking about the PHPBB forums, and what I've seen done with them it should be possible to create something really cool with the free program that does what I envision. A forum performing the functions of a forum isn't radical, but what about a blog and wiki?
For both, the key is to understand the data organization for all three types of programs. The forum has sub-forums and threads. The wiki has categories, articles and talk pages. The blog has tags, posts and comments. They all work similarly, so it isn't hard to mimic basic functionality.
So, for the wiki on a forum, there are two options. The first way is to just a a part of the forums where people keep their own threads clean, code everything and use everything after the first post as a talk page. While this can be done, It's not likely to be pretty. Plus it would require a lot of upkeep. Instead I would make a new kind of thread type, a wiki thread, where the first post shows the last post, each post is an edit and each page has only one post. Then all that needs to happen is to have some way to allow threads in multiple sub-forums and allow guests to post. Then we have a wiki on a forum.
The blog is even easier. A blog is a sub-forum where only certain people are allowed to start threads. Permission options, like would be useful in many places throughout a forum and fliki, determine who can post "comments". It would be nice to have a RSS feed for three types of events; new threads (blog posts), new posts (comments) and new posts an a particular thread (comments for a particular blog post). That gives the functionality of a blog.
Open Fliki Network
Now here is where the fun really starts by creating an open network of flikis, and where the name really gains power. The basis of the internet's power is networking. The same can be said for this idea. School, work, personal; the options and opportunities are there. It is your space where you have admin rights, but all the community of the places your connected to in the network. Perhaps it would work best to have the identities based in only one location or to have it so the identities of different compatible databases are usable, showing a name and the place the identity is from ("IgenOukan from Blogger/Google" would be mine for this post). That's something to be ironed out later, but OpenId could be the solution.
While I'm not sure about the technical details, this seems like a good replacement for the traditional LMS. Forums, wikis, blogs and more can be done without the limitation of the institution. Better yet, the software should be free. If done with PHPBB it has to be free.
Maybe this is the future of the LMS and some other communication and documentation tools, or maybe I'm totally off. Either way I'd really like to see this happen, because it promises so much through one piece of software, free software.
Have fun, spread the word and tell me what you think,
Igen Oukan
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