[IAEP] Wiki editing

[James Simmons]

The Booki software used to write FLOSS Manuals is an interesting approach
to a Wiki.  Anyone can edit a page, just like any other Wiki, but you can
also publish a separate, static version of the pages and you can control
who gets to publish these pages.  This gives you both worlds: a static page
that is endorsed by an editor and a collaborative environment to create and
edit pages. As a bonus you can generate a PDF of your site in a suitable
format for print on demand publishing.

This would be overkill for a lot of things, but it there was a subset of
the wiki that would benefit from tighter control on content then Booki
gives you a pretty good way of achieving that.

James Simmons

On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 9:54 PM, Ron Feigenblatt <docdtv at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> _______________________________________________
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