Today three things landed that belong together: a wiki format that is just a folder of Markdown, webrings you can browse like a TV channel, and both of them saying who made what, in the W3C's own words.
OpenWiki: a wiki that is a folder of Markdown files
There is no open wiki format. MediaWiki's wikitext is one engine's shape, WikiCreole stalled in 2007, and what everybody actually uses now is Markdown files linked with [[Page]]. Obsidian, Logseq, Foam, Quartz and a dozen others read that, and none of them agrees on what goes above the first line, how a link finds its page when the case differs, where the history lives, or how another program finds out the folder is a wiki at all.
OpenWiki writes it down. One Markdown file per page with a small optional front matter (title, aliases, tags, summary, author, made_by, disclosure, license, redirect). Wikilinks resolve in a fixed order: exact name, loose name, alias, folder path, then "wanted". One address with three forms: the page rendered, the file as stored with the revision id as its ETag, and any past revision. A history file per page says who made each revision and whether a person or an AI wrote it. The wiki serves one descriptor at /.well-known/openwiki.json with the page index, an Atom feed of changes, the git repo, and who may edit.
Editing is a PUT of the same file with If-Match on the revision you started from. An agent editing a wiki is a program reading a Markdown file and putting it back. That is the whole API, and it is the same one your editor uses.
An Obsidian or Logseq folder is already the page format. Two JSON files make it a host. The full specification is at logicsrc.com/docs/openwiki, CC BY 4.0. The first host, goviral.wiki, is being built on it.
Webrings you can browse, make, and score
OpenWebring went live yesterday with rssamplifier.com as the first host. Today the host grew up:
- Every topic is a ring. rssamplifier.com/ring/software is the software topic's feeds as a ring, computed from the same data the topic page uses, with hops, an OPML and a ring file. Nothing is stored until a site links back.
- A viewer. rssamplifier.com/view/business frames each member site under one slim bar: previous, random, next, the ring before and after, position, who makes the site, like, share, follow. Arrow keys work. Sites that refuse framing get an open button instead of a blank frame.
- Your own rings. Signed in, rssamplifier.com/ring/new takes a title and a list of sites, and the ring is public the moment you save it: on the index, on the host file every directory reads, with hops, OPML and the viewer. Edit it any time.
- A leaderboard. Every action with a ring is a fact with a time: a site viewed, a ring shared, liked, a member followed, a site added, a ring made. rssamplifier.com/ring/leaders scores people and rings from that log, sharing worth the most, because a share is what brings the next reader.
- A directory. nichedb.dev/c/webrings reads every ring across hosts: 22 rings and nearly 2,000 members on day one.
Who made it, in the W3C's words
Both specs carry the W3C AI Content Disclosure vocabulary verbatim: disclosure (none, ai-assisted, ai-generated, autonomous), plus ai_model, ai_provider and ai_prompt_url, beside a made_by of human, ai or both. A site says it once in its descriptor; a wiki says it per page and per revision; a host renders it as the group's own meta tag and attributes. Absent is unstated, never assumed.
The specs are open, the hosts are running, and the data is crawlable. Join a ring, make one, or put two files next to your notes and call it a wiki.
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