Hello! I've signed up for this: http://hackday.org/
Basically, it's a bunch of geeks getting together in Alexandra Palace on 16th-17th June, and making things. I thought it might be cool if there were OpenGuides people there. Dom, might you be able to make it? Anyone else?
One of the organisers turned up on #london.pm the other day and said not to be put off by the thing about "considered for participation" and "reviewing applications for attendance" - apparently that's mostly to put off people who're not actually involved in building interesting things and just want to come for the free booze/networking/etc.
Note that I don't know if there'll be space there to do anything directly OpenGuides-related, but it might be fun anyway.
This also reminded me that I've been thinking for a while that it might be about time for another OpenGuides hackathon - anyone interested?
Also: I learn from the interweb that Earle is going to Montreal to talk to Wikitravel people about RDF output and how we can make OpenGuides and Wikitravel talk to each other: http://evan.prodromou.name/Journal/4_Flor%c3%a9al_CCXV
Is anyone else doing anything exciting at the moment? I hear rumour of a potential OpenGuides-related talk at YAPC::EU...
Kake
hi all,
I think I've mentioned it before, Kake, but after me turning up and waving the flag for the Open Guides at WikiSym in Odense last year (and meeting Evan), I've been asked to be on the program committee for WikiSym2007 in October this year - reviewing papers and helping put together the list of papers to be accepted.
The deadline for papers is early May - so if anybody fancies keeping that direction going maybe check the call for papers? Certainly people seemed pretty interested in what I had to say. Me and Tom are both at a busy part of our PhD's so not likely to put in a follow up this time (though Tom's revyu.com stuff is taking off in an interesting way and Milton Keynes OG has an interesting taxi company edit war!), however maybe other people have ideas they'd like to debate in this arena?
http://www.wikisym.org/ws2007/index.html
"We are seeking submissions for
* research papers (long and short): due 7 May 2007 * workshops: due 7 May 2007 * panels: due 7 May 2007 * posters: due 9 July 2007 * demonstrations: due 9 July 2007"
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@lists.openguides.org on behalf of Kake L Pugh Sent: Tue 4/24/2007 7:58 PM To: OpenGuides software developers' list Subject: [OGDev] Hack Day (not ours, but maybe)
Hello! I've signed up for this: http://hackday.org/
Basically, it's a bunch of geeks getting together in Alexandra Palace on 16th-17th June, and making things. I thought it might be cool if there were OpenGuides people there. Dom, might you be able to make it? Anyone else?
One of the organisers turned up on #london.pm the other day and said not to be put off by the thing about "considered for participation" and "reviewing applications for attendance" - apparently that's mostly to put off people who're not actually involved in building interesting things and just want to come for the free booze/networking/etc.
Note that I don't know if there'll be space there to do anything directly OpenGuides-related, but it might be fun anyway.
This also reminded me that I've been thinking for a while that it might be about time for another OpenGuides hackathon - anyone interested?
Also: I learn from the interweb that Earle is going to Montreal to talk to Wikitravel people about RDF output and how we can make OpenGuides and Wikitravel talk to each other: http://evan.prodromou.name/Journal/4_Flor%c3%a9al_CCXV
Is anyone else doing anything exciting at the moment? I hear rumour of a potential OpenGuides-related talk at YAPC::EU...
Kake
On Tue 24 Apr 2007, "M.B.Gaved" M.B.Gaved@open.ac.uk wrote:
I think I've mentioned it before, Kake, but after me turning up and waving the flag for the Open Guides at WikiSym in Odense last year (and meeting Evan), I've been asked to be on the program committee for WikiSym2007 in October this year - reviewing papers and helping put together the list of papers to be accepted.
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
On 24/04/07, Kake L Pugh kake@earth.li wrote:
This also reminded me that I've been thinking for a while that it might be about time for another OpenGuides hackathon - anyone interested?
It would be a Good Thing. Last time was great.
Also: I learn from the interweb that Earle is going to Montreal to talk to Wikitravel people about RDF output and how we can make OpenGuides and Wikitravel talk to each other: http://evan.prodromou.name/Journal/4_Flor%c3%a9al_CCXV
Indeed! And I'm impressed that you managed to pip me to mentioning it here. I'm looking forward to flying the OG flag at RoCoCoCamp as well as a long-overdue serious RDF talk with Evan.
On Tue 24 Apr 2007, Earle Martin openguides@downlode.org wrote:
I'm looking forward to flying the OG flag at RoCoCoCamp as well as a long-overdue serious RDF talk with Evan.
Do you know if he's been thinking about outputs other than RDF? I was wondering if OpenGuides should perhaps have additional output formats that are a little more programmer-friendly - maybe JSON? These could be optional depending on whether the admin has the relevant Perl modules installed.
Kake
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_Oreg...
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@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@open.ac.uk wrote:
I think I've mentioned it before, Kake, but after me turning up and waving the flag for the Open Guides at WikiSym in Odense last year (and meeting Evan), I've been asked to be on the program committee for WikiSym2007 in October this year - reviewing papers and helping put together the list of papers to be accepted.
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
On Wed 25 Apr 2007, "M.B.Gaved" M.B.Gaved@open.ac.uk wrote:
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!
A few quick thoughts:
I don't think there is a best solution - I think it all depends on your audience. How do you find out what your audience finds least annoying/confusing? Talk to them, and listen to their answers.
Different OpenGuides might need different solutions!
I had awful trouble trying to edit the Wiki Wednesdays wiki earlier today because it dumped me into the "word processor" view and so I couldn't see how previous editors had achieved the results that I was seeing on the page. I figured out that I needed to switch it to the "Advanced" view, and all became clear.
I say if someone wants to use HTML, then let them. If someone wants to use wiki markup, then let them. I have no objection to both being used on the same page - I don't think consistency is necessary here, because you can see the results in the preview; you can see whether what you're doing has your desired effect, and the existence of more than one way to do something is really not a shatteringly new concept.
Kake
On Thu 26 Apr 2007, Kake L Pugh kake@earth.li wrote:
I had awful trouble trying to edit the Wiki Wednesdays wiki earlier today because it dumped me into the "word processor" view and so I couldn't see how previous editors had achieved the results that I was seeing on the page. I figured out that I needed to switch it to the "Advanced" view, and all became clear.
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
aww, spoilsport, I thought we had the makings of a good flamewar there, couldn't I just say "emacs is rubbish and I prefer vi which is vastly superior" just to start things off? ;-)
(even though actually I am barely computer literate and need a cheat sheet to use either..)
Good point well made Kake. I agree, ideally we give people a choice of ways to enter text and some interfaces are truly bad.
Mark
On Thu 26 Apr 2007, Kake L Pugh kake@earth.li wrote:
I had awful trouble trying to edit the Wiki Wednesdays wiki earlier today because it dumped me into the "word processor" view and so I couldn't see how previous editors had achieved the results that I was seeing on the page. I figured out that I needed to switch it to the "Advanced" view, and all became clear.
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:
aww, spoilsport, I thought we had the makings of a good flamewar there, couldn't I just say "emacs is rubbish and I prefer vi which is vastly superior" just to start things off? ;-)
(even though actually I am barely computer literate and need a cheat sheet to use either..)
Good point well made Kake. I agree, ideally we give people a choice of ways to enter text and some interfaces are truly bad.
Mark
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 Thu 26 Apr 2007, Chris Prather chris@prather.org wrote:
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.
(It isn't entirely clear to me what the use.perl drop-down actually means, and I'm too tired to test it now.)
I think what the Wiki Wednesdays wiki does is give you different ways of inputting the same data - if it works sensibly, which I suspect it does, there's one canonical content datum that gets stored, and translation to/from this happens in between the edit form and the database. Wiki::Toolkit::Formatter::Multiple is different from this; it's designed for wikis where you might want to write some pages in, say, Pod (Perl's documentation markup) and other pages in something more suited to more general textual content. It's not intended for translating between one markup format and another.
Kake
On Wed 25 Apr 2007, "M.B.Gaved" M.B.Gaved@open.ac.uk wrote:
In the Milton Keynes Open Guide I'd say we see very little evidence of HTML usage by contributors, mainly just plain text entries.
I forgot to reply to this bit, sorry!
Do any of these people even attempt to use wiki markup?
Kake
On Fri, Apr 27, 2007 at 11:09:03PM +0100, Kake L Pugh wrote:
On Wed 25 Apr 2007, "M.B.Gaved" M.B.Gaved@open.ac.uk wrote:
In the Milton Keynes Open Guide I'd say we see very little evidence of HTML usage by contributors, mainly just plain text entries.
I forgot to reply to this bit, sorry! Do any of these people even attempt to use wiki markup?
I generally don't when doing wiki stuff, because I can't be bothered to learn any of the zillion different wiki markup formats. I only use the bare minimum to create links.
This is one of the few places where a clever Javascripty editing interface might be useful - assuming of course that such a beastie could be written to work reliably.
Hi Kake
I'd have to check - couldn't be definite, but I am pretty sure the vast majority of the Milton Keynes OG contributions apart from the core team are just plain text (Tom? thoughts? you agree?).
Admittedly our Edit page doesn't have "editing hints" at the top of the page or links out to guides so I imagine the contributors who aren't regular wiki contributors probably just go for plain text input seeing the big empty web form box. Something we'll have to tweak and then see if we get greater use of markup.
regards Mark
Mark Gaved http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/mark
-----Original Message----- From: openguides-dev-bounces@lists.openguides.org on behalf of Kake L Pugh Sent: Fri 4/27/2007 11:09 PM To: OpenGuides software developers' list Subject: Re: [OGDev] other things going on
On Wed 25 Apr 2007, "M.B.Gaved" M.B.Gaved@open.ac.uk wrote:
In the Milton Keynes Open Guide I'd say we see very little evidence of HTML usage by contributors, mainly just plain text entries.
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@cantrell.org.uk wrote:
I generally don't when doing wiki stuff, because I can't be bothered to learn any of the zillion different wiki markup formats. I only use the bare minimum to create links.
That's roughly how I feel.
This is one of the few places where a clever Javascripty editing interface might be useful - assuming of course that such a beastie could be written to work reliably.
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
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