Try to avoid having two sets of information which can fall “out of sync”. If you must have them, arrange things so that someone who changes information in one place can immediately and easily change it in the other(s).


See also Wiki:OnceAndOnlyOnce, WikiNodes:OnePlaceForEveryIdea, ConsolidateInformation.



There are a lot of complexities to OnceAndOnlyOnce. I am a strong proponent of the idea. However, carried out wrong, it could be bad.

Remember that what we generally call “ideas” become “reflections” upon closer inspection. (WikiKM:IdeasHaveContext?.) “Capitalism” sounds just like “Capitalism.” However, we do not see that we are filtering it through our particular context and perspective. When we think of the idea “Capitalism,” we are actually seeing a reflection of the idea “Capitalism.”

We want to make sure reflections are properly placed, and properly interlinked. The idea “Capitalism” probably spawns zillions of reflections. Do we really want to interlink all of them together?

In many cases, you don’t want to interlink reflections at all..!

Consider the number “one.” We could have all sorts of pages that have to do with “one.” For example: OnceAndOnlyOnce.

However, we don’t necessarily want to connect that idea to “OneDayAtaTime?,” or “OneGod?,” or “OneTon?,” or whatever. We only want to connect it when it is enlightening to do so.

Consider OnceAndOnlyOnce:

  • In programming, this generally means that you isolate functionality to one place in code.
  • In wiki, this means that you want to isolate elements of documents, for integration.
  • In inter-wiki, this means that you want to make a dedicated place for talking about any given topic, for similar reasons.
  • In wikinodes, you write about how the wikinodes system helps meet the inter-wiki goal.
  • In abstract systems analysis, this means that it is a discussion of the tradeoffs involved in isolating functionality in one particular location.

The programming, wiki, interwiki, and wikinodes pages would ideally all point to the abstract systems analysis page.

None of them, I would think, would link to their peers. But, the abstract systems analysis page might link back to a few of the others, for the sake of providing examples.


WikiGoogle (or perhaps better GoogleWiki) is a system, which is totally build as OnceAndOnlyOnce . as you can see, each word and each combination of words exists only one time . if a word or a combination of words has backlinks to context A and context B and you want only change (delete) it in context A, then you must need a function (an algorithm) which, given A, manipulates only the backlink to A .

Define external redirect: IdeasHaveContext OneTon OneGod OneDayAtaTime