text/wiki vs dozens of text/vnd.*.wiki

[Mario Salzer]

There exists an application on top of WWW, which is known as
WikiWikiWeb. It enables users to contribute to sites (without
blinking 'free registration' buttons) almost like TBLs original
idea of the web. Currently users are presented <textareas> where
to insert text in a text format enriched with (often so called)
WikiMarkup (bold text, lists, links and so on).

It looks much like text/plain, and in fact is. My impression of
it however is, that it also would make a good hypertext format,
eventually capable of replacing text/html in a few places (though
there is yet no browser support).

Additionally there is also the idea of a global "InterWiki"
connecting the various Wiki installations - currently it's only
made up of a few links between them, but there are plans to
interchange pages and so on. And then there likely comes the
need for yet another MIME type.

The story gets a bit more complicated by the fact, that the
various incarnations of Wiki implement (almost all) slightly
different WikiMarkups. Convertion between them was probably
possible by a gateway, but then there still was a need for
correctly identifying them, which is only possible with using
MIME types (because there are no integrated document type tags
or such a thing).
However, because there is already a large number of variants,
the list of MIME types could eventually grow very long, and
may get far more than a few dozens:
 - text/prs.cunningham.wiki
 - text/vnd.usemod.wiki
 - text/vnd.usemod.wiki; version=1.2
 - text/vnd.twiki.wiki
 - text/vnd.moinmoin.wiki
 - text/vnd.oddmuse.wiki
 - text/vnd.phpwiki.wiki
 - text/vnd.jspwiki.wiki
 - text/prs.coma.wiki
 - text/vnd.mediawiki.wiki
 - text/vnd.sourceforge.wiki
My fear is, that there likely could be around 100 of them (there
are at least that many different implementations) - rendering any
registration senseless then.

   (But, btw, I'm not sure about the "/vnd." thing here, does it
   really require a $$$-commercial product behind - and is it
   really forbidden for non-profit organizations, like the RFC
   suggests?)   

So, in an ideal world, implementors would agree on a standard,
or stick with a few less. However this is currently unlikely
to happen and there wasn't even one successful standardization
effort in the past.
If there was an I-D attempting so, it could therefore NOT
document an established standard (even though most deviations
look alike), it could merely describe the most widespread
notation standard for say bold and italic text and the currently
most widely accepted notation for lists and tables or "free
links". (The only thing that is really standardized are the
WikiLinks and InterWiki:Links).

Now the question: Does it make any sense on attempting
standardization such an text/plain-alike "hypertext format"
(would become text/wiki) or should the over-registration of
MIME types (which only were minor variations of each other!)
just happen?


Regards,
mario