Re: [tdf-discuss] [WEBSITE] Improvements for the wiki?

Thanks, Christoph. I've long been interested in wikis and the capabilities they can provide, the 
data structures and usage patterns that tend to work well, and the various wiki platforms 
available. I've read "Wikipatterns," which is a book I recommend to others interested in this 
subject. Much of its information is available on its website: http://www.wikipatterns.com/

I am a fan of MediaWiki, but I think we should consider other wiki platforms as well. My 
recommendation, in fact, is Foswiki (http://foswiki.org/), which forked from TWiki about a year 
ago, and is GPL 2.0-licensed. (Their experience was similar to what we're going through with 
LibreOffice's birth right now.) 

Foswiki's got some advanced features that we could really use, including separate "webs" that 
isolate major logical sections from one another (and allow different access permissions for each 
web, so that a Community Council group, for example, could maintain a private web for internal 
discussions). It offers a good WYSIWYG text editor, allows dynamic pages for things like to-do 
lists, and has extensions that provide extra functionality. It also supports macros and forms that 
let you build applications within the wiki itself, which would let us do some really cool stuff.

I've got a lot more to say on the subject, but don't want to start off with too large a soliloquy. 
I'm looking forward to what others say on this subject as well.

-Ben

On Oct 4, 2010, at 5:54 PM, Christoph Noack wrote:

> Good evening everyone,
>
> the subject already tells you, this mail is about Wiki improvements.
> "What Wiki?" you might ask. Correct, there is none ... but if we want to
> change that, it'll be great to know what we require. Once it is set up,
> I'm confident that a reasonable structure will greatly help us.
>
> I assume that our Wiki will be used by all kinds of community members -
> being it users, all kinds of contributors, the final foundation people.
> And it will be used for very different things, e.g. planning
> conferences, documenting best practices, providing documentation. Well,
> although there are still discussions whether we need team ABZ or XYZ ...
> some topics can't be avoided to shape a complex thing like LibreOffice.
>
> As far as I understand, many of you have a great experience to work with
> tools like Wikis. Very good! And - also my hope - we will also hear some
> voices who are less experienced. Step forward, and share your thoughts,
> too, please! But how to get started ... I mean ... without a wiki to
> document the statements.
>
> My proposal is to collect some experiences when working with Wiki
> content (not so much the Wiki system itself) ... what is good, what can
> be improved? It would be great if you could explain why, e.g. "I always
> find everything I need within a few clicks.", and stating what you
> usually do (e.g. QA work). And you may add what you expect from a
> website - being different from a wiki.
>
> Just to give you an idea, I've picked some of the larger projects to
> state examples. A certain size is required, since we are complex too ...
> but we don't want to be complicated. Feel free to add any kind of
> project you like to refer to...
>
>      * Fedora Project Wiki
>        https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Project_Wiki
>
>      * Gnome Live!
>        http://live.gnome.org/
>
>      * KDE Wiki
>        http://wiki.kde.org/
>
>      * Apache General Wiki
>        http://wiki.apache.org/general/
>
> At the moment, it seems appropriate to use this mailing list. But, I'm
> sure we'll have a dedicated website list tomorrow or Wednesday latest.
> So please also decide what to do ... discuss it here, or wait for the
> list. It is up to us :-)
>
> Thank you so much!
>
> Cheers,
> Christoph
>
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Benjamin Horst
bhorst@mac.com
646-464-2314 (Eastern)
www.solidoffice.com

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