Re: [dita-fa-edboard] DITA wiki

[Scott Prentice <sp@leximation.com>]

I think that the ability to author DITA files in an online environment 
is technically a cool and interesting thing to do, but I'm not convinced 
that it is actually a good idea in practice for a publicly-maintained 
set of web pages. The biggest problem that I see is that it offers way 
too many tagging options, and the resulting content may not be very 
usable. One way to mitigate the problem may be to expose a very pared 
down set of tags. If this were only used by a limited group of people 
who agreed on tagging standards, it could work nicely, but for the 
general public use I think it would be more trouble than its worth.

I don't mean to discourage this development, because it would be really 
nice to be able to provide this as a prototype for a web-based authoring 
environment. Maybe we should start by setting this up as a sandbox 
testing area and see where it can go from there.

...scott


Don Day wrote:
> Might it be worth re-engaging Alex Karezin on his offer to implement a DITA
> Storm sub-feature in the server, whereby users could create the hierarchy
> and link to actual DITA source under the covers? There is still the issue
> of who to make this content access available to, but it would be a great
> step forward in "eating our own dogfood."
>
> Regards,
> --
> Don Day
> Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee
> IBM Lead DITA Architect
> Email: dond@us.ibm.com
> 11501 Burnet Rd. MS9033E015, Austin TX 78758
> Phone: +1 512-838-8550
> T/L: 678-8550
>
> "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
>  Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
>    --T.S. Eliot
>
>
>                                                                            
>              "Carol Geyer"                                                 
>              <carol.geyer@oasi                                             
>              s-open.org>                                                To 
>                                        "'Bruce Esrig'"                     
>              06/27/2007 10:36          <esrig-ia@esrig.com>, "'DITA        
>              AM                        Editorial Board'"                   
>                                        <dita-fa-edboard@lists.xml.org>     
>                                                                         cc 
>                                                                            
>                                                                    Subject 
>                                        RE: [dita-fa-edboard] DITA wiki     
>                                                                            
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>
>
>
> 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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