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So Tangler is great for adding content into a flowing conversation but as for 'one right set of information' it's not great.
So how about a Tangler Wiki?
I'm all for it
I don't think I quite understand what you're talking about. Do you mean a Wiki built off the Tangler platform somehow (like Tangler Chat and Tangler Wiki) ?
I would think each group would get a new wiki tab that the community could maintain and link to from tangler topics and externally. Likewise, the wiki could link or embed topics, if needed.
I would think each group would get a new wiki tab that the community could maintain and link to from tangler topics and externally.
^^^
I'd love this feature! It's always nice to be able to run a community and manage its wiki at the same virtual place.
Hmmm. I was just playing around with a wiki at http://www.netcipia.net. Very cool program. Only 20 gigs total storage, which I'm sure Tangler would burn through quickly - but if anyone is feeling wikified, head on over and get your wik-on.
To answer your question: Yes, I think it would be great to have a general, Tangler wiki - the ol' timers could point newbies there for info. I like fredmedlin's idea of a group-specific wiki tab approach too - which could be accessed from the About tab.
Um... I'm of the "don't reinvent the wheel" camp. There are lots of mature, good, useful, well-supported wiki software packages out there already. If you want to wikify your community [which has a Tangler forum] just use the normal wiki software somewhere. Or Tangler can setup a wiki.tangler.com with MediaWiki or DokuWiki or whatever software, and then people can use that by setting up their own community pages within it.
I think Tangler devs could spend their time in better ways than reinventing the Wiki wheel. A wiki doesn't need integration with forums. I think Tangler has most of the integration it needs already: the URL linking facility. 
My 2 cents...
I like the idea of some kind of integration - I like the idea of having a tab at the top to the group's wiki. However I agree with Pistos - no need to reinvent the wheel - there must be a way to integrate an existing piece of wiki software (probably one of the simpler ones).
what's wrong with reinventing a wheel every once in a while?
Fred - that's an interesting idea. I like it.
BJ - it can be something intergrated like Fred mentioned, but I think we also need a general wiki to explain what Tangler is and how to use it from the communities point of view.
There are at least a couple things wrong with reinventing a [good, mature] wheel:
1) Other people have already done so much work which you would end up doing also, merely to arrive at the same place they were at yesterday, except you arrive there n months or n years later. A rather horrific waste of time, IMO.
2) Said people from point (1) would still be doing lots of work on that wheel from the point in time you decided to start reinventing their wheel. You would be perpetuating the horrors of point (1) by duplicating [some] later work as time went on. More time wasted.
In the open source world, some reasons you might reinvent a wheel:
1) personal practice as a developer
2) the current offerings are just so horribly bad, wrong, or unfitting for your purposes that it would save time if you rewrote yours from scratch
3) The undertaking is so easy to develop that writing from scratch wouldn't take that long, and so you'd gain the advantage of working with your own code vs. someone else's.
None of these points apply to the issue in question (Tangler wiki).
I think I've said way more than I intended to. 
pistos, most likely you're right in this case.
it's just that when there are so many products or services in a space, often it means that space hasn't been done well enough for consolidation to happen.
If there is something truly different about Tangler, then maybe wiki isn't tweaked in a form would complement it yet.
I think the wiki system would have to be very open for Tangler to integrate an existing one. The wiki should probably tie in with the discussion side, which is why it might be beneficial to make a wiki from (mostly) scratch. It would probably be beneficial to use a pre-made/tested wiki framework, but a system that is at a low level and can be tied directly into the system. (something like Instiki on rails.
The Wiki has been setup - nice one Marty!
Go for it.
If we get it cranking by Monday we might be able to add a link to it in the next release.
pistos wins
LOL
I run a mediawiki site, and have been contemplating if it would be possible to replace Mediawiki's discussion tab with Tangler. Do any of you see this as being possible?
If Tangler is embeddable, then why not?
Yep, we're looking at building out the embedding so you could integrate it more tightly.
A few issues at the moment.
1. The embeddable component is a bit heavyweight, so it will generate a lot of load for Tangler when people are often just viewing it as part of a web page. We need to accommodate a lighter mode that reflects that usage.
2. We don't yet have tools to automatically create/link topics to pages. So it would be clunky right now to integrate with something like a wiki. We'll get an API out to fix this.
Oh, and authentication is a little clunky for this as well.
