Hi Kake yup, Wikisym is a conference for folk into wikis :-) as far as I can see, there are two academic conferences out there on wikis, WikiSym and WikiMania. WikiMania is in Taiwan this year in August - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2007 . I think (though I may have got this wrong) that wikimania is much more closely aligned with Wikipedia/the Wikipedia Foundation). There's more of a hacker vibe gig as well "Recent Changes Camp" http://2007.recentchangescamp.org/RecentChangesCamp_2007_--_Portland%2C_Ore… WikiSym is associated with ACM and costs rather more to turn up to - a discussion of lively debate at WikiSym amongst the hacker crew late at night last time - I think it's seen as more of an academic style gig, but it did have people with a broad range of real building skills and interests. I think WikiSym and WikiMania have agreed to circle the planet, putting themselves on different continents each year, so as not to iclash. Myself I'd be keen to see Open Guides pitching in at all of them, they seem like a nice crowd across all of them and receptive to hearing what people are doing. We (as the Open Guides community) certainly have some solid things to show folk and issues to engage in. Usability and wikis - oh yeas, don't get me started! I am all for discussing this :-) I totally agree wikis are too tricky to get into. There was a session on at WikiSym on Wiki Creole- the attempt to develop a common simplified set that could be used across as many wikis as possible so casual users could contribute more easily: http://www.wikicreole.org/ I waver between simplified wiki-markup, html, and WYSIWYG editors. I could be argued that far more people are exposed to word processors than html. I really don't know about the amount of HTML usage but I think that in some cases even this is too much to ask. I think it depends on the audience you are trying to encourage to contribute to the wiki. In the Milton Keynes Open Guide I'd say we see very little evidence of HTML usage by contributors, mainly just plain text entries. Love to hear everybody's opinion on this! cheers! Mark Mark Gaved Knowledge Media Institute The Open University Walton Hall Milton Keynes, UK MK7 6AA http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/mark -----Original Message----- From: openguides-dev-bounces(a)lists.openguides.org on behalf of Kake L Pugh Sent: Tue 4/24/2007 11:27 PM To: OpenGuides software developers' list Subject: Re: [OGDev] other things going on On Tue 24 Apr 2007, "M.B.Gaved" <M.B.Gaved(a)open.ac.uk> wrote: Ah-ha, yes! I think I failed to register that previously because I wasn't sure what WikiSym _was_ - but it's basically a conference for people interested in wikis, yes? I'm interested in the mention of usability at the URL you gave. I'd like to see what the wiki people make of that topic. Something I've found very difficult in participating in different wikis is that you always have to figure out the local wiki syntax, because every one is slightly different. This may, of course, be a very old and overly-debated idea, but basically, I think it's a shame that wiki syntax has always been so jammed-in with the whole idea of wikis. I think the "read, think, click, edit, publish" thing of wikis is utterly fantastic, but I hate being forced into using the local language when there's a universal one available. With the advent of livejournal and similar services, most people who're willing to contribute user content have at least a basic working knowledge of HTML - why can't we just let them use this HTML that they're familiar with? Why are we so convinced that our own made-up markup language is going to be easier for them to use? (By the way: this is not an idea that came to me out of thin air; it comes from talking to people and observing them as they try to use OpenGuides and other wikis. You don't actually have to be observing them in real life; you can learn a surprising amount about what people find hard by looking at a page's edit history. "I hate wiki markup" is a surprisingly common edit/changelog comment.) Relatedly, I think one of OpenGuides' strengths (again, this came from listening to naive user comments) is that it gives definite boxes to put things in. Wikipedia's "template" functionality is powerful, but it's an entry barrier. This, for example, is quite terrifying: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=North_Kent_Line&action=edit Kake -- OpenGuides-Dev mailing list - OpenGuides-Dev(a)lists.openguides.org http://lists.openguides.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openguides-dev

On Thu 26 Apr 2007, Kake L Pugh <kake(a)earth.li> wrote: Oh, some background to this, since not everyone knows what my day job is - I use a word processor (Word for OS X) exclusively in my paid work as a copyeditor. So I'm not just a geek who only understands emacs. Kake

On Apr 26, 2007, at 10:36 AM, M.B.Gaved wrote: Barely computer literate means you need a cheatsheet to *know* what either is. I consider myself very computer literate and I've never touched emacs (cause Vi is so much better you see ... *cough*) :) use.perl has a drop down on it's edit boxes letting you choose your favorite markup, and I know that Wiki::Toolkit supports multiple wiki texts. I suppose the issue would be trying to do revisions in Format A when the previous version was done in Format B. -Chris

On Wed 25 Apr 2007, "M.B.Gaved" <M.B.Gaved(a)open.ac.uk> wrote: I forgot to reply to this bit, sorry! Do any of these people even attempt to use wiki markup? Kake

On Mon 30 Apr 2007, David Cantrell <david(a)cantrell.org.uk> wrote: That's roughly how I feel. I think the one on the Wiki Wednesdays wiki is the sort of thing you're thinking of - e.g. http://www.eu.socialtext.net/wikiwed/index.cgi?london_wikiwed_6_june_2007 (oh, you may have to register to see the editing interface, sorry). Kake