Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Wikis

[John Faust (wjfaust]

Sharon,

The MediaWiki editor uses wiki tags for things like headings, lists,
bolding, italicizing, and references to other web pages. Most are rather
easily entered by the buttons at the top of the editor. The list items have
to be entered manually. This visible tagging is unfortunate since other
wikis really do use WYSIWYG editors and you never see the tags--just the
results. For those wikis, the editor would look like most of the familiar
text or email editors and might be less intimidating. Nevertheless,
MediaWiki editing isn't quite as onerous as having to *manually* enter all
the wiki tags. If you enter the editor from this
page<http://wiki.cohousing.org/index.php?title=Community-Developer_Relationships>of
the wiki, you will see only three types of tags for the entire
article:
headers (bounded by ==), references to emails (bounded by [ ]) and list
items (preceded by *).

There are a other options for capturing the information:

   1. Changing to a different wiki that has a WYSIWYG editor (no tags
   showing) and simple button selection. Since there isn't a lot committed to
   the current wiki that is probably not a big task. Actually, MediaWiki (same
   one as used in Wikipedia) is not that bad once you learn a few of the wiki
   tags. It does have some nice features.

   2. Someone knowledgeable doing the hard work of converting a thread into
   a more useful document form using a conventional editor and sending it to
   someone who can do the entry. I suspect there are a number who can and would
   be willing to do that--myself included.

The former is probably preferred since the wiki should really be a place
where discussions on existing documents can occur just as they do on the
listserv. The listserv can be thought of as the place where the seeds are
planted; the wiki is the place where the seedlings are nurtured into a
mature plant. Once they are moved to the wiki they should remain in a state
of flux.

I will be in Waltham for the conference in June. Perhaps, a more fruitful
discussion can take place then.

John Faust

On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 6:24 AM, Sharon Villines <sharon [at] 
sharonvillines.com>
wrote:

>
> Are there any Wiki sites that can be done without any HTML?
>
> I looked once but the HTML is daunting. I don't think I could get the
> other members of the facilities team or the board to use it.
>
> To post minutes, etc., on the website means it all has to go through me.
>
> Sharon
> ----
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing,Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org
>
>