Jim, as one of the people who is having problems, and as an avid wiki user,
here are some of the problems I have seen:
-
There is no structure that I can see - people have tried to input some
kind of structure in different places, but the media wiki structure is
basically flat. This means that items that should be somewhat hierarchical
(Workshop>Tools>Laser Cutter>Laser Repair Log) are not, and as such, it was
hard for me to know these existed, and it is equally hard or more so for
many new users to rapidly get to grips with the site as a whole. Which
means that potentially simple questions are not solved on the wiki even if
the data is there.
-
Duplicate Pages - there are a number of pages that are duplicated, or
just entirely not needed any more, and orphaned pages are an issue which we
would like to work on.
-
Lack of information - the tools page is missing pages for each major
tool, which will quell the questions around “do we have XYZ?” on the
mailing list (in my hopes, at least), as well as being a good place to keep
safety information for each device, as well as potential advice for use.
-
Accessibility / First order retrievability - this technically goes along
with the structure, but I’ve put it here for a reason. The wiki and the
data within should be easily retrievable, and should almost offer its self
up to users of all abilities, as we have users who are young and old, and
even some of us who can’t program to save our lives (that… that would be
me). And while many are used to how wikipedia and other wikis work, users
don’t realise that they don’t just majestically do the link-page and
similar magic automatically, there is a solid group of editors who put a
lot of time and energy in to it.
-
Permissions issues - Recently, I uploaded a PDF to the wiki, and tried
to upload it again with new additions to the data - I was refused, due to
lack of permissions. I have no idea why, and nor did anyone I asked. Small
issue, but still an issue.
-
Broken addons and templates - I hope, self explanatory
Now first of all, nobody is suggesting a burning of the wiki pages
en-masse, nor are any of us running in to this headlong. This is a
discussion that has been ongoing for a week or two, in meatspace (around a
table in the hackspace), and on telegram, and I was looking to put
somthing more solid forward on the mailing list soon. It just happens that
Richard is massively enthusiastic about a potential solution, and in the
spirit of our do-ocracy, has beaten me to the punch hat tip to Richard.
The email was really a message about the first step we are taking - a basic
inventory of what pages exist, so we have an idea of the scale of any
potential work (as we don’t want to get neck deep in a project we didn’t
scope out). There is no garentee that the software bundle Richard has
suggested will be the solution that will be used, or if there will be a
change in software at all. Although from what I have seen of the software,
it functions nicely, and I do rather like it at a first glance.
- Structure
a) One solution is to go through the current wiki, and build in some kind
of structure - the problem with this is that mediawiki appears to be
entirely flat by design, meaning any hierarchical structure has to be
shoe-horned in, and has to be maintained. User compliance would be needed,
and as we don’t always communicate things clearly, one rouge newbie could
leave a mess to fix, which would likely fester and grow until someone found
it and dealt with it.
b) Wipe mediawiki and start again, building a structure in, and adding all
the data back in. Slow, labor intensive, and suffers the same issues as 1(a)
c) Look at other systems that have a structure, and move the data in to
that, slowly migrating it into the structure. This poses some problems with
comfort to users that are used to the way that mediawiki works, but does
mean it can be done at a slower pace, and while doing it, the current wiki
can stand and be accessible.
- Duplicate data
a) The only solution is the same regardless of what we do regarding the
underlying software - we need to weed them out, merge data where possible,
and hopefully tidy up a bit.
- Lack of information
a) The simple (only?) solution is to see what data we have, and build the
rest, and I plan to do that - the audit we are taking at the moment will
help with this rather a lot.
4)Accessibility
a) We task a group as editors, and give them the role of sorting it out,
and getting things like the front page more user friendly (Jim, as someone
who knows mediawiki well, would you like to head this team, and I’ll join?
If this is to be the chosen solution at least)
b) One person attempts to weed it out, starts well with good intentions,
and becomes overwhelmed - at this point, that’s me. Thus the audit to look
at how big the project is. It’s large, and I have a Law degree to do, and
that will win every time, because Tas and Kat have said so. And they have
more control over me than my fear of a lack of order on the wiki site.
c) We install software that has an in-built structure, and displays it in a
user-friendly way, in comparison to the shotgun attempt we have now. That
list of all the pages /is/ all the structure we have, and a nice tree
structure would help a lot.
- Permissions
a) Find out what was causing the issue, out of all the plugins etc, hope
that it’s nothing important, and disable it. Note the time debugging
somthing like that will take.
b) Choose a system that will work well with LDAP (the new authentication
system we are moving to for many things), and manage what add-ons we use.
- Broken Add-ons
a) Look at the dependacies, and try to find what is clashing and why - as
well as finding updates for add-ons, or replacements for ones that have
ceased to be updated.
b) Upgrade to a different system, looking for solid add-ons that have a
good support history, and maintain them with a schedule.
Now, we are merely at the first part of looking at the issues and what we
might do - we have seen that there is a problem (or rather, a few), and are
auditing it. Next step will be to ask for possible solutions (it just
happened that Richard has used this one before, and installed it previously
- he likes it enough that he runs it at home for his own projects), then we
will put forward some solutions to everyone, maybe finishing with a vote.
Note that I’ve not really put a big plan together yet, as the past week has
consisted of finishing coursework, an exam, and assisting in running a
three day residential conference. Saying that, I hope this has helped clear
everything up - although it does seem that I may have just written another
essay out in reply to you!
Thanks,
ChrisOn Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 9:44 PM, Jim MacArthur jim@mode7.co.uk wrote:
Nothing on that page makes it clear to me what the problem is, I’m
afraid. Can you come up with some examples of things that are
difficult to find at the moment? Whether we move to a new wiki or not,
we need to be clear on what problem we’re solving.
On 27 August 2015 at 18:44, garlicbread (Richard) garlicbready@googlemail.com wrote:
Hi Jim,
For info I made the suggestion of a move to dokuwiki on telegram a while
back
but not everyone was aware of the conversation (one of the reasons I
posted
this mail)
one of the main things is navigation within the site (finding pages), and
the fact everything needs updating whichever wiki we stay or move to
I’ve been updating the discussion link with lists of reasons and
additional
things we may gain as a result (it’s a long list)
http://wiki.hacman.org.uk/index.php?title=Wiki_discussions_2015-08
nothing is actually decided yet
The first link I posted was just a demo / copy paste of something I’d
setup
before for work just to get people’s opinions on if it was better or
worse
etc
There’s a lot more plugins such as pdf exporting and a little treeview on
the sidebar for navigation and graphical doodads to make everything look
a
lot nicer and easier to use (that’s only my opinion mind you)
On Thursday, August 27, 2015 at 2:39:08 PM UTC+1, Jim MacArthur wrote:
Thanks Tom. I’d be interested in coming along on the 8th or 10th to
discuss it.
FWIW, I can’t see any actual problems on that page except the
permissions things which can be easily changed. I use the current wiki
a lot and I think it’s well organised.
On 27 August 2015 at 14:31, Tom Bloor tom....@gmail.com wrote:
Jim,
This came up in the Telegram group sometime ago supposedly, and then
again
today due to this email. However, theres a summary here:
http://wiki.hacman.org.uk/index.php?title=Wiki_discussions_2015-08
and also a list of all pages and their last-edit-date here:
http://wiki.hacman.org.uk/Oldwiki/oldpagelist
Hope that helps (and anyone else feel free to chip in!)
Thanks,
Tom
On Thu, 27 Aug 2015 at 14:29 Jim MacArthur j...@mode7.co.uk wrote:
I haven’t seen any discussion of moving from Mediawiki at all.
Could someone summarise why we’re thinking of changing it, if we are?
On 27 August 2015 at 00:58, garlicbread (Richard) garlic...@googlemail.com wrote:
Hi All,
I know there’s been some discussion recently with moving from the
existing
mediawiki to a new one
I’ve written a small app to extract a list of the existing pages on
the
old
wiki (and list of file attachments), using the mediawiki public api
I’ve pasted it into the new dokuwiki demo I setup on this link
http://garlicbready.byethost3.com/doku.php?id=root:oldwiki:pagelist
I know the old wiki is still in use at the moment, I can always
re-create
the tables once we’ve reached the point where we can start to
transition
If you’ve got the login credentials I posted on telegram you should
be
able
to edit the table using the fancy javascript table editor (edit
button
bottom left of the table), or edit it as a block of text, each row
is
just a
set of text seperated with pipes
I didn’t want to jump too far ahead, I know the main show stopper
at
the
moment is waiting for ldap to be setup for authentication
in theory it should be possible to link dokuwiki to wordpress, but
I’m
not
sure how much of a faff it would be to setup, so it’s probably best
to
just
wait untill ldap is setup
I just wanted to ask is there anything else outstanding left over
to
look
at?
Is it too early at this stage to upload a copy to the hacman
webserver?,
are
there any comments on other types of wiki that people may want to
explore?
Many Thanks,
Richard
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