I have an interest in a new feature for Wiki's: a sidebar for comments / counterpoints. If there is already something like it, please point me in that direction.
Specifically, I would like to have wiki where essentially a comment or counterargument could be attached to any paragraph (or phrase?) in the main article, and the comment (or a portion of it) would appear in a column to the right of the main article. (A rough example of the layout is seen at https://www.cairn.info/revue-internationale-de-philosophie-2005-4-page-491.htm#no7 which shoes a portion of the endnotes to the left of the main article. I think it would be better to have them to the right, but it could be an option that the wiki owner could choose)
This would be very valuable for a wiki I envision to discuss/debate theological issues where the main article would be addressed to defend a specific proposition and the sidebar would be used to critique the statements or claims being made in the main article. With perhaps dozens or hundreds of people editing on one or both sides, the rule of etiquette would be that "each side" would be entitled to put their best arguments forward in each section and that the critic's objections, comments would be confined to the sidebar rather than in wrestling over contested edits of the main article to develop a consensus that doesn't exist between each side (as per what happens in contentious Wikipedia articles).
I believe this format would be very valuable for many types of wikis . . . not only those engaged in any point/counterpoint presentations, but also for collaborative development of business plans, industry standards, etc, where portions of what would now appear on the discussion page can be moved to the main page by way of sidebar edits.
Technical Details
I would envision a new wiki code, similar to <ref> which would instead be <sidebar> or perhaps <sb>
All the text and formatting, including wiki links to other articles and sidebar references <ref> (which would appear at the bottom of the sidebar), would appear between the sidebar start tag and the sidebar end tag. Given the potential complexity of sidebars, rather than put all the text between the the brackets such as <sidebar Here's a three paragraph comment . . . . >, I might suggest breaking use <sidebar start> Here's a three paragraph comment . . . . <sidebar end> and when displaying, ignore any white space preceding or following the <sidebar start> and <sidebar end> tags so that in the source code, editors could add a couple carriage returns to more clearly display the sidebar code apart from the main article code>. Preferably, this would be done in an editor that made it easy to see in a WYSIWYG fashion, but some accommodation might be made as suggested for those who edit the source code.
- Option to turn on the comment sidebar feature for the wiki or specified pages.
- Option to highlight any amount of text to which the comment is to be attached and displayed next to in the sidebar.
- Option to show only X number of lines of the comment, with an <expand> link which would reveal the entire comment, reformatting the page to push down the next paragraph of the main article, if necessary, so the entire comment can be shown. The idea here is that normally the reader is reading the main article and should be able to focus on the main article without formatting requirements for a long comment to disrupt the layout of the main article.
As mentioned above, I'd be interested to learn if any similar feature is available already or in a different wiki platform.