Contest - Solve the Modern Tower of Babel

MarkLogic to Announce Contest Winner at Balisage

As part of the Balisage 2010 Conference, MarkLogic has put forth a challenge in the form of a contest. The goal of the contest is to encourage markup experts to review and to research the current state of wiki markup languages and to generate a proposal that serves to de-babelize the current state of affairs for the long haul.

Wikis: Solve the modern tower of babel

Contest Description: In the past few decades, as a planet, we've succeeded tremendously in standardizing a number of technologies (yay us!). Wiki technology (other than its underlying use of web technologies as a platform) is not solidly in this list. There is a lot of content available today in a variety of wiki syntaces. This syntax is not standardized. Some argue it shouldn't be. Go beyond the existing debates, diatribes, and arguments. Put us on a practical track to fixing this and ensuring we will have access to this content for the long haul.

To enter, you must propose a set of concrete steps (organizational, social, and/or technological) that will enable wiki content interchange, a real WYSIWYG editor, and/or wiki syntax standardization.

Entries will be evaluated based on criteria that includes:

• How well does the entry understand the current state of the art?
• How well does the entry identify key stake holders and actors (including history, motivation, and so on)
• Is the entry clear on its objectives? (The summary allows for some variance here).
• Is the approach/vision elegant, clever, or mind-changing?
• Are the set of steps actionable and implementable?

Guidelines, rules, and prize:

1. Please no more than 10000 words.
2. Entries should be submitted by July 15th to:
   balisage-2010-contest at marklogic dot com
3. Author(s) retains copyright and grants MarkLogic a non-exclusive license to publish the winning entry.
4. The winner will be announced on August 3rd at the conference and will take home a choice of
   • Apple 15" (i5) MacBook Pro
   • Apple MacBook Air or
   • USD $2000
5. The winner will be strongly encouraged (but not required) to give a brief summary (~10 minutes) of their winning entry at the conference on August 3rd.
6. Employees of MarkLogic are not eligible.
7. Judges decision is final.
8. Contest-related questions may also be submitted to:
   balisage-2010-contest at marklogic dot com.