Wagn: co-creating advanced web systems with simple wiki building blocks

Abstract

Wagn is a free and open-source software platform that enables non-programmers to create sophisticated web systems. Using simple wiki-inspired building blocks called "cards", a built-in query language, and an elegant rules system based on set theory, nontechnical "Wagneers" can collaboratively engineer powerful web systems. A recently introduced "mods" API makes Wagn a complete web-development platform. Wagn has been hailed as "advancing the state of the art" for wikis and was described by Ward Cunningham as "one of the freshest contributions to wiki since I coined the term". In the 90-minute tutorial slot, we will introduce Wagn and discuss current and potential Wagn applications, its core design principles, advantages of atomic data and set-based configuration, its simple queries, its architecture, called MoVE, improvements slotted for its rebranding release: Decko 1.0, and future directions The remainder of the half-day class will be participatory. Attendees will collaboratively create a website for tracking OpenSym presentations and other events. We will begin with a fresh Wagn installation (or "deck"), and proceed to build a web system together from scratch.