Jim said: >> ScrewTurn Wiki and Perspective are both great wikis. We've moved
away from FlexWiki and are in correspondence with one of those two and find
them very cooperative. They have a business attitude towards their products
rather than a programmer's attitude. IOW, they are designing for the users, not
for the cleverness of programming.
Jim, I understand what you're saying. And I think the major developers here
understand it too. But behind the shiny css, ScrewTurn nor Perspective are not
superior (not particularly worse, either). ScrewTurn is currently going
through an upgrade which will happen when 2.1 is released and that is an effort
to bring it up to speed with almost all of the features that FlexWiki has.
Some definiciencies I see with ScrewTurn is that it lacks the ability to have
tags and organize content around keywords. It also lacks namespaces and
templates and a "recently changed" system. Without this you have a very static
site and people are already complaining about major performance issues with
only 1,000 pages. And the search isn't so hot. Also, if you want to do any
sort of customizing that is currently being asked on ST you must know C#. With
FlexWiki you only need to know WikiTalk and can do the customizing immediately
(and there is probably already sample WikiTalk code on FlexWiki.com that you
can grab). Anyone who can spend an hour learning WikiTalk (with a little
programming experience, granted) will easily do all the customizing that
ScrewTurn can do only when writing and compiling code. You can take the
positives and negatives out of that at will.
FlexWiki is also working on a new version (2.0). I believe that if FlexWiki
looked more user-friendly then you would be saying that ScrewTurn doesn't have
everything that FlexWiki has. But I think this is something that can easily be
remedied with the following focus on users:
1. FW CSS redesign (to be able to design the pages using CSS through div ids --
they're working on that for 2.0.)
2. Redesign the default FlexWiki and therefore FlexWiki.com to appear more
modern and show off what FW can do (although it doesn't do everything that ST
does, it does do a lot that ST cannot do).
[The following points will not be effective without the implementation of #1
and #2]
3. Flush the current pages on FlexWiki.com and only keep those that help people
to:
a. install FlexWiki
b. configure FlexWiki
c. fomat FlexWiki pages
4. Segregate the discussions about WikiTalk on FlexWiki.com that may impede
people from installing FlexWiki in an advanced section.
5. Show off the base wiki without WikiTalk. Then show the pages that do have
WikiTalk in an advanced and/or customize section. I think the idea that
FlexWiki is WikiTalk is confusing people, especially for the beginners. They
cannot get passed the basics because they believe they have to know WikiTalk.
In reality, the simple basics are all there and and almost do everything that
ST can do. Then show them what it can do in addition to ST by including
WikiTalk for advanced users. Maybe consider WikiTalk as the ability to create
customizations beyond the powerful base wiki.
6. Allow minor edits with section headers and add a table of contents based on
these headers. (e.g. Wikimedia, ST)
7. Create a discussion page per topic (e.g., Wikimedia, ST).
8. Incorporate a support message-board. This is for people who want access to
easy questions and answers and to know that if they have problems that there
are people there who care about usability and want to help.
9. Incorporate a developer blog focused on users instead of code.
I think a lot of the deficiencies of FW are simply perceptions based on the
current discussions and the poor physical design of FlexWiki.com (straight from
1994). If you take a deeper look at FW you will see that it is extremely
flexible and powerful. Unfortunately, perceptions do matter.
10. Simplied admin system where many of the controls can be accessed via admin
(page locking, security, member management, cache management, configuration,
etc...)
11. Develop a membership system.
12. WYSIWYG editor. Perspective is the only one that has a WYSIWYG editor that
and it's not so great when you look at it. ST uses what Wikimedia uses. It's
a tool bar that throws out wiki code when you click a button. Experienced
users will probably not even use it but beginners will definitely use it.
13. Like ST, use Wikimedia as the main model. It has a massive userbase and
they have encountered almost all the issues that wiki users face.
I think that #10 and #11, while nice, are not absolutely needed because of how
you can limit people But I can see how it impedes people from choosing FW.
Regards,
Astralis
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