Hi all,
Since I've started the discussion on both the website structure and the wiki (through Ian - thanks) I feel it is time to give my summary of the discussion and advice what to do next.
In general it is recognized that the site (main and wiki) need an overhaul, both its design and its content. There is no consensus how this overhaul should be done. Everything between putting everything in a wiki or in a CMS, leave the design and do the content first or just put a new skin on top of the content has passed the revue.
Various important issues came up: -The status of current content is unclear -Easy editing is required -Unified login is required -How do we proceed
On the first topic: this is something that has to be cleared up, regardless of if and how the site will be overhauled. As taken from the discussion: Krzysztof: What is needed is a concerted effort to organize the information available on the wiki, and remove outdated information.
Josh: So really, it seems like the main areas that need to be dealt with are some restructuring/reorganizing where it makes sense, removing truly deprecated information, updating things that are still partially accurate, and what else?
Chris: I think it would be helpful doing this in a decided format in a repository, rather than in the wiki; really, starting preparing the content migration before the site is ready. We'll need to pull the content from the wiki anyway and reformat it.
So this is task one, although I would like to add it is information both on the wiki and the main site. I agree with Chris that it would be smart to do it in such a way that it can be used in the content migration.
On the second topic: Wiki [1] stands for a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages. However, this does not mean that it needs to run on mediawiki or other software with 'wiki' in its name. Also easy editing is a rather subjective thing. Personally I find Wordpress' rich text editor with autosave etc a much easier way to edit than mediawiki with its wiki-syntax. However, we require something where (once logged in - anonymous edits are a thing of the past unfortunately) you can click on edit and get on your way as such keeping the wiki-workflow.
From the discussion:
Jon: Problem is... a wiki is also very much about the usage and workflow, and even a nicer CMS like Alfresco or such is just not the same.
Chris: I think we can improve upon it by making it web-editable and text editor-editable
So task two is to make sure that whatever we build, it needs to be easy to edit existing and new content, both in getting to the edit bit and the actual editing.
On the third topic: this is a bit of a no-brainer. It is in the design document [2]: '• LOGIN as with http://meta.osqa.net/account/signin/ (allows various accounts to login - Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)' this would make it even possible for those who want to not create a new account to edit, but use an existing one.
On the fourth topic: I don't believe in design by committee [3] so I don't think we should keep on discussing until we have a consensus on how to proceed. There is a team assembled by Ian who are motivated and skilled enough to take on the redesign and rebuilding of the site. The deadline of the design submissions was yesterday, a winner will be announced soon, so we can start implementing that design. It will be done in Django, with task two in mind.
So task three A is for the website team to get cracking and task three B is for the rest to have a little faith in us and have a look at task one :)
I hope I have addressed all important issues people have discussed. I'm open for any comments or feedback, but do realize that we need to start working and this will be our starting point. In my experience it is more useful to discuss some actual object than just the realm of possibilities. As Chris said earlier: "At present we're discussing hypothetical cases and new things that haven't been seen and so can't be assessed fairly."
On a last note: although I'm part of the team, I've written this on a personal title. 'I' really means me and my opinions and 'we' generally means the team and shouldn't express an opinion, just tasks and obligations.
Regards, Steven
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki [2] https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1K2O-gRdbkP0XATykk6LcPo6O5-JdQzK4QmP... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee