I thought the below was a really good list, and I wanted to address these points individually:
> 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.) Where are we at on this? > 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). Yeah, the upgrade of flexwiki.com is definitely something we should do soon. I just feel like I need to get the perf tweaked up a bit more - it's super slow for a few of the pages on that wiki. But I have a few ideas left to explore, and hope that they'll be effective. If not, then it may be time to throw what we've got out there as "good enough for now" and keep working in the background. > [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 Amen. www.flexwiki.com is a complete mess. Someone (I forget whom) made a valliant effort to go through and clean it up, but unsurprisingly didn't really finish the job. It would be great to see someone really aggressively reorganize this stuff. Remember: history is maintained, so don't be afraid to delete and move stuff. > 4. Segregate the discussions about WikiTalk on FlexWiki.com that may > impede people from installing FlexWiki in an advanced section. Good idea. > 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. Interesting. > 6. Allow minor edits with section headers and add a table of contents > based on these headers. (e.g. Wikimedia, ST) We started down this road (Derek, wasn't this you?) but it turns out to be a pretty big deal because it affects the core, which has been in tiny pieces for a few years now. I think this should be a lower priority than other things, because I believe we'll get more bang for our buck elsewhere. > 7. Create a discussion page per topic (e.g., Wikimedia, ST). Like minor edits, I believe this would best be implemented as allowing the wiki to store non-wikitext media types. Again, this is a moderately large change to the project. > 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. I certainly believe that FlexWiki is pretty much a total failure as a way to do question-and-answer stuff. > 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. Agreed. I blog about FlexWiki occasionally on my personal blog, but it's hardly a "this week in FlexWiki", and it doesn't include any of the other developers. How would you suggest we handle this one? We could probably get a CommunityServer instance or something going on www.flexwiki.com. > 10. Simplied admin system where many of the controls can be accessed > via admin (page locking, security, member management, cache management, > configuration, etc...) Agreed. We had someone from company called Qasper who had agreed to fund a developer to look at adding this, but we haven't heard from him since we asked him to define what he wanted to see more concretely. Not sure why. > 11. Develop a membership system. We're able to leverage the ASP.NET membership system in 2.0. Is that good enough? > 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. Yeah, I came *this* close to writing one in Silverlight when that was first announced, until I realized that Silverlight 1.0 doesn't support FlowDocument. Too bad: it would have been perfect. But maybe when Silverlight 1.1 arrives someone can pull this off. Having the wiki parser would really help this effort. > 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 have always wanted to really survey the other wiki engines and get a better idea about what they're doing, so we can steal the good ideas. But I've never gotten around to it. Since I started tracking my time a little less than two years ago, I've spent 250 hours on FlexWiki, and that doesn't include a lot of the time I spend writing emails to the list. 250 hours in two years is not a lot - roughly two man-months - so you can see why lots of things (for instance, documentation) are not where we'd like to see them. In fact, I'd say that we've got a lot more ideas than people-time to work on them. If anyone has suggestions about how to change that, I for one would love to hear them. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Flexwiki-users mailing list Flexwiki-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flexwiki-users
