[Imc-alternatives] User Stories: Wikis or Wysiwygs?

[strypey at riseup.net]

Kia ora koutou

My understanding of a wiki is: a user-editable web page. "The simplest online
database that could possibly work." - Ward:
http://www.wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki

So the question is not so much wiki vs. wysiwyg. It is more a case of how should
users edit our 'knowledge-base' wiki pages:
- Twiki-style like docs.indymedia.org
- wysiwyg style like openplans.org

I didn't get my head around Twiki until we did a face-to-face workshop at an
AotearoaIMC convergence. Openplans I worked out for myself pretty quickly. I
think we want our site to be user-friendly to more people so I would tend to
support WYSIWYG editing for our wikis.

Could we have a script that sets up a wikispace  on an existing wikisite like
openplans.org, or another similar wiki site? Or maybe gives the person
requesting the wikispace gets the choice of host? Here's some possibilities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wikis

Maybe we could have an aggregator that collected a list of wiki links, removed
any duplicates and displayed the compiled list to the user? Maybe sorted by topic?

Or do we need our own wiki pages? If so, what package would be use:
a Drupal wiki module
Twiki
TikiWiki
Something else?

One of the main considerations would be its ability to support internationalization.

RnB
Strypes


Josef Davies-Coates wrote:
> Dave makes some good points.
> 
> But I'd personally say we should still go for WYSIWYG (although it can be a
> pain, it is generally better for the average user).
> 
> Limiting what it can do probably makes sense. And not offering any support
> ;)
> 
> Josef.
> 
> On 08/08/2007, Dave Fregon <dave at netaxxs.com.au> wrote:
>> On Tue, 2007-08-07 at 17:52 -0400, Aaron Kreider wrote:
>>> The user stories refer to "wikis".  I think we should use WYSIWYG (What
>>> you see is what you get) editors instead.  For an example of WYSIWYG you
>>> can see our openplans site and how you have the ability to change text
>>> format by clicking on "B" and selecting text to make it bold.
>>>
>>> Drupal has a module that does this: TinyMCE
>>> (http://drupal.org/project/tinymce).
>>>
>>> Drupal lets you choose multiple modes.  So you could have text, html and
>>> wysiwyg and let users choose which one is their default.  I'd suggest
>>> starting off regular users using wysiwyg as default.
>>>
>>> Both wiki format and html codes are a little bit too complex and
>>> unfamiliar for the average user. Whereas WYSIWYG imitates the most
>>> familiar conventions that are used by word processing programs and other
>>> software.
>>>
>>> Do people agree with me on this? It'd be particularly useful to hear
>>> from people who have experience in this area (mine is limited).  What do
>>> regular (non-techie) users prefer?
>> ok I have to chime in here :)
>>
>> WYSIWYG can be good and bad, it's finding the middle-ground.
>>
>> Having handed out a lot of WYSIWYG sites, only to have 20 title colours
>> on one page, 3 font sizes and no consistency to a template provided, I
>> have to say that some things are good, others are EVIL :) making
>> something bold can be good, giving users the ability to make all the
>> text underlined and pink is not :) (nothing against pink, just not as
>> text;)
>>
>> HTML is a medium that has limits, and when you get into this area, I
>> have found from a techie perspective you can spend a huge amount of
>> support time helping a user align tables and images in a wysiwyg editor,
>> because 'I can do it in word, why can't I cut and paste that in
>> here?' .. it adds to the work, and detracts from the work to be done as
>> well.
>>
>> Depending on what it's being used for I guess .. and what the users have
>> exposure to actually do with it.
>>
>> I have tended to fall back lately on larger projects I am doing to
>> defining a template, and have the user fill out plain text fields to
>> populate it. OR, limiting the WYSIWYG editor to only allowing certain
>> markup, and having the 'style' predefined in css (eg: headings) so they
>> don't 'break out' of the sites style.
>>
>> my 2 cents, couldn't help it as WYSIWYG support gives us a lot of pain
>> at werk :)
>>
>> Dave
>>
>>
>>> Aaron
>>>
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>>> Imc-alternatives at lists.indymedia.org
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