[IAEP] Wiki editing

[Ron Feigenblatt]

On 2/2/13, Frederick Grose <fgrose at gmail.com> wrote:

> Be assured that all changes saved in a wiki can be recovered from the 'View
> history' tab for a page.

Indeed. But sometimes one has worthy reasons for assigning pre-emptive
editorial power over a page to an individual. For example, shouldn't
the current leader of the Marketing Team have exclusive write-control
over the Marketing Team page? That need not prevent petitioners from
making change suggestions on its Discussion page, as you noted
immediately below.

> While one is reconstructing an existing page, it is often best to copy it
> to a separate page as content details are worked out.  Open discussion (on
> the associated 'Discussion' page) with other interested authors will
> generally lead to improvements.

Having a "watch" set on a page is not the same as having the time to
respond to changes every week, much less every hour.

I think it would be useful if everyone with wiki login credentials had
a quota of space for creating content they ALONE can write. Not only
could they create NEW content they alone control, but they could also
create and nominate full-blown REVISIONS of content OTHER people alone
control for linking from the respective Discussion page of the latter.

The Wikipedia article on the Wiki at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
interprets Wiki creator Ward Cunningham's book so: "A wiki is not a
carefully crafted site for casual visitors." If one accepts this, then
it might be useful for a heading on EVERY page of the wiki to state
just that and link to a conjugate non-Wiki Website for such casual
visitors. That way, e.g., Sean Daly's prospective wiki-illiterate
teachers would not be denied the chance to peruse the wiki, but at the
same time would be properly served by immediate referral to the
material intended for their eyes.

I hope you will also consider the Wiki education suggestion I made on
your personal page.

For about a third decade, between summer 2005 and late 2008, I tried
to seed wiki literacy in my literacy-phobic rural USA community. It
started with a digital technology course I gave at a new local public
library, whose remarks about wikis lie within the lesson on
asynchronous groupware at
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gahchs/BHPL/FOTL/DigTech/Chapter4/

I only managed to get two people to attempt wiki writing. One was a
woman in her 30's with a Bachelor's degree in Russian who commuted to
work in India, and had experience as an exchange student in Russia.
The other woman, in her 40's, was a non-degreed engineer who manages a
state highway construction crew, and whom I think recently became a
member of the county development authority. Both gave up almost
immediately due to the challenge, rather than their disbelief in the
utility of wiki-writing. (I had them try using Wikispaces.)

The first public evidence of wiki literacy in this part of the state I
encountered was a link to a staff-only wiki on a public Web page of
the regional public library system within the last couple of years.
(Aside: I must say that I was shocked that as C-SPAN's BookTV
programming celebrated its fifth anniversary some years ago, I
discovered that the assistant director of this regional system had
never heard of its existence.)

Let me close by assuring you that my previous inquiry was not
rhetorical: Frederick, is it possible to give an individual user the
exclusive power to write a particular wiki page within the MediaWiki
system we use here at Sugar Labs? Thanks.

Ron