Hi friends,
To be honest I really don't think I portrayed my thoughts very well in
the other thread.
I'm not an anarchist, well maybe just a wee bit, and I do understand the
need for some structure. My concern is more for how to get people
contributing, so for me that is the primary focus. Someone with a
primary focus of how to deliver content to users, from their help
screen, would probably form different conclusions as to the best way to
proceed. Doesn't make either of us wrong, just different perspectives.
*chuckle*
"Insight".- to bad, that's a great name IMO - even great marketing
slogans come right to mind...oh, well.
*Help files linking to wiki pages.*
Great idea - how about this for an approach:
Create a namspace, in mediawiki, for static information pages that will
be linked to from these external sources
Create a group, in mediawiki, membership in this group grants write access.
All others not in the group have read only access.
hmmm- that is, in essence, what Collabnet offered for the documentation
project wasn't it...so maybe not a great idea
Got another one - what is a wiki? It is a bunch of pages on the
internet, right.
Therefor one should create a bunch of URLs pointing to these pages, right?
That is what the search engines do so why not do the same for the help
files, right?
If pages move then redirects are setup by the wiki software to handle
this, but that is really costly on the server side.
I say - What is a wiki? It is a dynamic document production systems
driven by a database on the back end and a number of filters / page
generators on the front end.
Can we query the backend directly? Yes, query.php is a standard module
and there a number of addon modules that allow for more robust searching
capabilities. Are we limited to these canned modules - Well, god I hope
not - we are the database group right, and most of us can even manage a
little coding.
So - a help file with a bunch of URLs to static addresses for pages or a
project for the help system to dynamically retrieve current information
from the wiki (knowledge repository that may aggregate information from
more then just the wiki). Do I dare say it...OK I'll say it - SOA -
anyone heard of it...- call me nuts, but it is a thought. I even think
on of the companies involved with OpenOffice.org is familiar with the
concept....LOL.
Beyond that - the rest is my trust in the common courtesy of others, and
the belief that no-one *owns* pages. Tough concept that last one, I know.
Well, I think that more accurately covers my thoughts.
Drew
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