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October 7, 2008
The public (read-only) SVN server for NNexus will be up soon. NNexus version 1.1 has been released. Download
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NNexus
NNexus is the name of the stand-alone, generalized version of what was originally Noosphere's automatic linking system. The acronym roughly stands for "Noosphere Networked Entry eXtension and Unification System".

What does it do? It best handles "definitional" linking between entry objects and separately-declared concepts for standardized bodies of knowledge being maintained collaboratively. What does that mean?

  • "Definitional" linking means that as you invoke a concept by name in the body of an elaboration, that reference should in turn become a hyperlink to that concept's elaboration. This usage of hyperlinking is actually rather recent; most of the original hyperlinking on the web was referential (e.g., "here's a related site" or "here's another area of this site") as opposed to semantic in the present context.
  • "Standardized" basically means that everyone is using the same set of concept labels (natural language strings) to refer to the same underlying concepts. While you may have synonyms, you generally will not have people just "making things up" as they go. This is in contrast to the more classical wiki mode of ad hoc naming, which fits better to "brainstorming" type work.
  • "Being maintained collaboratively" means that there are many individual contributors to the knowledge base. They are acting largely-independently, asynchronously. Some ramifications of this are discussed later.