RE: [dita-fa-edboard] DITA wiki

["Carol Geyer" <carol.geyer@oasis-open.org>]

I realize our original goal was for the KB to represent the organized thoughts
of the EdBoard, but I fear those pages have grown stagnant (and many remain
stillborn). Empowering "contributing users" to add content (in the self
policing spirit of wikipedia) might help the DITA community feel more ownership
of the site.

I'm also not sure it's clear to users why some information is in the KB and
other information is in the wiki pages.

I think Drupal 5.1 will give us more options WRT navigation and menus. We can
explore this once the site has been transitioned. Maybe we could add an
expandable left nav back into the theme.

If we can improve the navigation, would it make sense for the Editorial Board
to spend time composing a more comprehensive hierarchy for the site and adding
"stub" pages in places where we don't have content but would like to encourage
it?

Carol

-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Esrig [mailto:esrig-ia@esrig.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2007 9:56 AM
To: Carol Geyer; 'DITA Editorial Board'
Subject: Re: [dita-fa-edboard] DITA wiki

1. I think this should be done in the wiki, not in the knowledge base.

The knowledge base is constructed as a tree of book pages. It has a 
definite hierarchy, which the user can navigate using the up, prev, and 
next links at the bottom of the page. (Also, the knowledge base represents 
the organized thoughts of the editorial board, for better or worse. If we 
want to allow certain people to edit the knowledge base, we should make 
them "contributing users" and use those permissions to enable their 
activities within the knowledge base.)

The areas that we have divided the wiki into are not separated in this way. 
The relationships are quite fluid. How you get to a wiki page matters less 
than what links you see when you get there. We don't have a way right now 
to show the user how to navigate back from a wiki page to the wiki pages 
that point to it, so if someone arrives on the site at a wiki page, they 
have to do their own work to find out where they are. That's why I've been 
advocating format standards for wiki pages that emphasize the value of 
links from a page to the context for the page.

2. I don't know where we stand with regard to Zak and his proposed 
contribution. I might have left him with a choice that he doesn't know how 
to answer.

Best wishes,

Bruce

At 08:37 AM 6/27/2007, Carol Geyer wrote:
>Should we consider allowing registered users to directly edit and add pages to
>the Knowledge base (essentially merging our Knowledge base and Wiki sections)?
>This would be a simple matter of changing permissions on the registered user
>role. The Editorial Board could review new posts on a regular basis and adjust
>the site's navigation to accommodate them (or work out something similar 
>to the
>way wikipedia uses "stubs" to embrace navigation to new pages).
>
>We could put the spec itself in a different section where only appended
>comments (not direct edits) would be allowed.
>
>Does that make sense? What would a wiki give us that this approach would not?
>
>--c
>
>_________________________________
>Carol Geyer
>Director of Communications
>OASIS
>+1.978.667.5115 x209
>
>
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