The next version of MiniRubyWiki will support a "Nerve Center":

http://minirubywiki.rubyforge.org/theNerveCenter.png

This combines the concept "RecentChanges" and "VisualTour". It's the graph of links between the most recently-edited 20 pages.

Each node (little box in the above picture) is a link (you click on it to go to the page with the same name as the text in the box). Like all links on MRW, when you hover the mouse over a link, it raises a tooltip containing the "change synopsis" for that page.

Consider a boss monitoring 2 teams on their Wiki. Activity in each team's project would appear as clusters on the graph. Items in common between the two teams would appear as bridges between the clusters.

When you click the PenBird in the upper left corner, from any page, you go to the Nerve Center.

WilliamTanksley thought of the name, and PhlIp thought of the graph.
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As an experiment I fetched the list of all recent changes (1 hour) and drew two graphs. The first is all the pages that have changed and the links between them, the second includes pages pointed to by the pages changed. Pages changed are filled in gold, pages referenced but not changed are in white.

http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/images/WikiNerveCenter.png

http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/images/WikiNodeExperiment.png

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''This sounds like it could be InsanelyGreat.''

Thanks. But, please, we prefer the term "mentally-challenged great".

What we hope for is (with future changes such as "minor edits") that folks who wiki keep in mind what the NC is going to look like, and that it will provide an immediate map into current activities. Recall MWR targets in-house wiki needs. Not chat or blogging.

''Isn't there some chance that there'll be 20 pages with essentially no connections between them? You seem to be assuming in the example above that recently edited pages are all related.''

A> we hope to add more systemics (hopefully emergent) to the NC concept. Note that the text above the graph is a normal wiki page.

B> if the NC was all disconnected, what would that tell the boss?
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This also looks somewhat like  "The Brain EKP" (http://www.thebrain.com)
''Yes, but TheBrain lets you drag to relink thoughts, a very powerful feature that is the main reason I use the Personal version as a visual GUI for all the different wikis I access.  By the way, I agree this seems to be a great enhancement. -- hwo.''
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See GraphWiki, WikiStyleSheet