My thoughts on wikis

First: Don't get me wrong; as is obvious, I do love the idea of wikis, but I think their design could use a bit of extra work.

Today I saw a really great picture on Wikipedia ([a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:USS_Shenandoah_Bau.jpg]this one[/a]) and I thought to mark it as a featured picture.
Then I was stricken by a reminder of a big flaw with the Wiki concept that needs to somehow be addressed.
On Wikipedia, to mark an image for being a Featured Picture you have to give it a tag and add it to the list of other featured pictures.
There is a scary amount of power there - I could theoretically erase all the others so mine wins, assuming noone checks the history. (Of course people do and that wouldn't work, but that's not the point).
It also feels a bit weird: A human reads text written straight onto this page? It feels like the request should be submitted in a uniform manner to some place that the moderators look at. Automation is a wonderful thing, and it's surprising that it doesn't happen there since it could make things a lot easier to work with!

To add to a Discussion is even more uncomfortable, since I could easily remove someone else's comment or dump mine in the wrong place. There are no helpers to guide my hand to where to put a comment, and nothing that automatically gives me the appropriate formatting to respond to a particular comment or sub-comment. I suppose I could use the little helper buttons, but those still require brain power to think "Ok, this is a sub-comment so I need a bullet of a bullet".
Starting a new comment is the same, since noone knows whether they should go on the top or on the bottom o_O

To mark a featured picture/article, there could be a little button: "Mark featured article" (or something more grammatically correct) which adds a tag to the article saying it's been marked and submits a message to a discussion board somewhere else.

The openness is wonderful and all, but it has to be a bit more helpful to work with.

Of course, there are a lot of cool helper functions like the Contents list, and all those template messages like "This Picture has been marked as a featured picture" are actually done with simple little commands, but there need to be more and they need to do more.

I guess the problem I'm describing isn't really all wikis for the most part (since the featured picture stuff isn't a part of the wiki software), and it's not really a problem, but rather it's a bit of bother with the discussion system, and how automating it could at the same time allow for more helpful operation of other features. If the press of a button could submit a message to a discussion board built into the wiki software and tag an article (could be easily done already), then all sorts of possibilities would appear.

Therefore, are there any ongoing projects for an enhanced Wiki that makes things easier to use and more difficult to screw up? (Or something already available?)

If not, I think someone should. A more meaty solution would get lots of attention and ad revenues ;)

Other, more responsible people, will likely come around and fix what you messed up.

People do these things all the time, changing things, defacing it... It holds together pretty good.

well, did you try to screw something up? you would be impressed of how fast it gets undone ;)

and for your other question: did you know? there's an invention called '[a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents]Help[/a]'. there you can find a lot of answers to your questions! amazing, isn't it?

no offense, just wanted to be a bit pro-wiki ;P

in fact, wiki's are really easy to handle if you get more experience. the simplest wikipage is really just like posting in a forum; a wiki just gives you more complexity if wanted! also, my opinion is, that making a formated wiki-entry is much much more easier than for example posting a formated post over here in the blitzforums, because wiki's usually have a toolbar (just like, e.g. 'word')...

This is true, there is a toolbar and it's easier to handle than a forum. (Wikipedia's even works with Links!)

And the help page, of course, helps along with the Sandbox.

I'm just thinking that there may still be a big learning curve here scaring away many users, and there are some things which could do well working at a higher level at first while being editable in the usual low-level way.

I go under the rule that simplicity and uniformity is important, though, so the way that it works is great from a technical standpoint.


Edit:
Edited my previous post. My opinion came out different than intended for some reason, and I wasn't very constructive... I think it's this theme. I'm switching back to Freddy :/