Hey, all,
Some of my colleagues are objecting to my desire to minimize uploading of Word documents to our new intranet wiki. My main objection to it is that we ought to be entering information into wiki pages so that we can take full advantage of document versioning, talk pages, watching, etc.-y'know, the stuff that makes it a wiki...
I've been called "silly" and "arbitrary" regarding this. :) I'm not outright forbidding posting Word documents; I'm just trying to get people to use the wiki the way it's mean to be used. Am I being unreasonable? I even stated that it's acceptable to load the final version of a 20-page report, or a form that's meant to be printed out and filled out by hand-i.e., things in a final state that do not need further editing.
Has anyone else encountered this resistance? I was most surprised that it came from someone who uses/edits Wikipedia, which, as far as I can tell, does not support uploading of Word docs.
Nina Nina McHale, MA/MSLS Assistant Professor, Web Librarian Auraria Library http://library.auraria.edu/~nmchale/ Facebookhttp://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=672599042 | MySpacehttp://www.myspace.com/ninermac Serving the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State College of Denver, and the Community College of Denver 1100 Lawrence Street Denver, CO 80204 303-556-4729
2009/4/28 McHale, Nina Nina.McHale@ucdenver.edu:
Hey, all,
Some of my colleagues are objecting to my desire to minimize uploading of Word documents to our new intranet wiki. My main objection to it is that we ought to be entering information into wiki pages so that we can take full advantage of document versioning, talk pages, watching, etc.-y'know, the stuff that makes it a wiki...
I've been called "silly" and "arbitrary" regarding this. :) I'm not outright forbidding posting Word documents; I'm just trying to get people to use the wiki the way it's mean to be used. Am I being unreasonable? I even stated that it's acceptable to load the final version of a 20-page report, or a form that's meant to be printed out and filled out by hand-i.e., things in a final state that do not need further editing.
Has anyone else encountered this resistance? I was most surprised that it came from someone who uses/edits Wikipedia, which, >as far as I can tell, does not support uploading of Word docs.
Don't make your practices fit the tool, choose your tool to fit what you need. If people want a central repository for Word documents, MediaWiki isn't the thing to use. There are plenty of CVSs, etc. that can handle document versioning, watching, etc.
You need to come to a consensus on what you want out of your IT systems and then choose a tool which achieves that.
On Wikipedia, only uploading media (images, video and audio) is allowed.
Darren VanBuren ------------------------- Sent from my iPod
Try Fedora 10 today. Fire it up. http://fedoraproject.org/
On Apr 28, 2009, at 9:06, "McHale, Nina" Nina.McHale@ucdenver.edu wrote:
Hey, all,
Some of my colleagues are objecting to my desire to minimize uploading of Word documents to our new intranet wiki. My main objection to it is that we ought to be entering information into wiki pages so that we can take full advantage of document versioning, talk pages, watching, etc.-y'know, the stuff that makes it a wiki...
I've been called "silly" and "arbitrary" regarding this. :) I'm not outright forbidding posting Word documents; I'm just trying to get people to use the wiki the way it's mean to be used. Am I being unreasonable? I even stated that it's acceptable to load the final version of a 20-page report, or a form that's meant to be printed out and filled out by hand-i.e., things in a final state that do not need further editing.
Has anyone else encountered this resistance? I was most surprised that it came from someone who uses/edits Wikipedia, which, as far as I can tell, does not support uploading of Word docs.
Nina Nina McHale, MA/MSLS Assistant Professor, Web Librarian Auraria Library http://library.auraria.edu/~nmchale/ Facebookhttp://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=672599042 | MySpace<http://www.myspace.com/ninermac
Serving the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State College of Denver, and the Community College of Denver 1100 Lawrence Street Denver, CO 80204 303-556-4729
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
If you do allow Word uploads, your Word users will still be unhappy.
That's because re-editing those Word documents later is full of problems. To edit a document, you have to first download it, then edit it, then re-upload it. This is already annoying. But it gets worse: if two people try downloading, editing, and uploading the same document, they will silently overwrite each other's documents. That is destructive.
Even worse, people will keep copies of those Word documents on their hard drives for a while, then just edit them and upload, never checking if the version in the wiki was already updated.
It's just asking for trouble. Use a real document management system, and integrate it with MediaWiki by writing extensions.
DanB
-----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of McHale, Nina Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 12:07 PM To: mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Mediawiki-l] wiki versus Word
Hey, all,
Some of my colleagues are objecting to my desire to minimize uploading of Word documents to our new intranet wiki. My main objection to it is that we ought to be entering information into wiki pages so that we can take full advantage of document versioning, talk pages, watching, etc.-y'know, the stuff that makes it a wiki...
I've been called "silly" and "arbitrary" regarding this. :) I'm not outright forbidding posting Word documents; I'm just trying to get people to use the wiki the way it's mean to be used. Am I being unreasonable? I even stated that it's acceptable to load the final version of a 20-page report, or a form that's meant to be printed out and filled out by hand-i.e., things in a final state that do not need further editing.
Has anyone else encountered this resistance? I was most surprised that it came from someone who uses/edits Wikipedia, which, as far as I can tell, does not support uploading of Word docs.
Nina Nina McHale, MA/MSLS Assistant Professor, Web Librarian Auraria Library http://library.auraria.edu/~nmchale/ Facebookhttp://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=672599042 | MySpacehttp://www.myspace.com/ninermac Serving the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State College of Denver, and the Community College of Denver 1100 Lawrence Street Denver, CO 80204 303-556-4729
_______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
You could suggest they use a conversion tool like this http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Word_macros to convert from word to wiki.
I think you lose a huge collaboration ability when you just post a word doc. You could try telling them it is much easier to have multiple people collaborating on a doc when it is converted into wiki text.
Rob
Robert Hagens | Chief Technical Officer| Envysion, Inc.
950 Spruce Street | Louisville, CO 80027
303.590.2365 office | 303.590.2351 fax
rhagens@envysion.com | www.envysion.com | Visit our blog
-----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of McHale, Nina Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 10:07 AM To: mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Mediawiki-l] wiki versus Word
Hey, all,
Some of my colleagues are objecting to my desire to minimize uploading of Word documents to our new intranet wiki. My main objection to it is that we ought to be entering information into wiki pages so that we can take full advantage of document versioning, talk pages, watching, etc.-y'know, the stuff that makes it a wiki...
I've been called "silly" and "arbitrary" regarding this. :) I'm not outright forbidding posting Word documents; I'm just trying to get people to use the wiki the way it's mean to be used. Am I being unreasonable? I even stated that it's acceptable to load the final version of a 20-page report, or a form that's meant to be printed out and filled out by hand-i.e., things in a final state that do not need further editing.
Has anyone else encountered this resistance? I was most surprised that it came from someone who uses/edits Wikipedia, which, as far as I can tell, does not support uploading of Word docs.
Nina Nina McHale, MA/MSLS Assistant Professor, Web Librarian Auraria Library http://library.auraria.edu/~nmchale/ Facebookhttp://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=672599042 | MySpacehttp://www.myspace.com/ninermac Serving the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State College of Denver, and the Community College of Denver 1100 Lawrence Street Denver, CO 80204 303-556-4729
_______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Yes, I've experienced this many times. Maybe with every wiki I've set up...
People don't recognize that this short term convenience eliminates many of the advantages of a wiki in the first place, but after enough experience they will learn.
In the meantime, you are doing the right thing. You need to be firm to establish the precedent of best practices, especially with a new wiki.
You may have to convert some docs into wiki pages yourself, for now. Open the word doc in OpenOffice, and then Export it in MediaWiki text format. Then you can copy the text, which will be in the correct markup syntax, and paste it into the text field of the wiki's edit page.
You can go one better and find the OpenOffice extension that allows you to configure your wiki and then save pages directly into it from within OpenOffice, and perhaps teach this practice to your users over time...
Ben
Sent from my iPhone
On Apr 28, 2009, at 12:06 PM, "McHale, Nina" Nina.McHale@ucdenver.edu wrote:
Hey, all,
Some of my colleagues are objecting to my desire to minimize uploading of Word documents to our new intranet wiki. My main objection to it is that we ought to be entering information into wiki pages so that we can take full advantage of document versioning, talk pages, watching, etc.-y'know, the stuff that makes it a wiki...
I've been called "silly" and "arbitrary" regarding this. :) I'm not outright forbidding posting Word documents; I'm just trying to get people to use the wiki the way it's mean to be used. Am I being unreasonable? I even stated that it's acceptable to load the final version of a 20-page report, or a form that's meant to be printed out and filled out by hand-i.e., things in a final state that do not need further editing.
Has anyone else encountered this resistance? I was most surprised that it came from someone who uses/edits Wikipedia, which, as far as I can tell, does not support uploading of Word docs.
Nina Nina McHale, MA/MSLS Assistant Professor, Web Librarian Auraria Library http://library.auraria.edu/~nmchale/ Facebookhttp://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=672599042 | MySpace<http://www.myspace.com/ninermac
Serving the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State College of Denver, and the Community College of Denver 1100 Lawrence Street Denver, CO 80204 303-556-4729
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Well, you are absolutely correct for many of the reasons people have already mentioned. But, your users are still asking to upload Word files. For whatever reason they want to use Word to edit their content and have multiple people read and edit it. Maybe they are old fashioned. Maybe they are not willing to listen. Who knows, but as a provider of services you should still try to meet their needs.
Get a CMS system installed and tell everyone that is where documents will be stored. They can check them out and in to keep versions straight. Then remove uploading of Word and other documents in your wiki. Tell everyone they must use the CMS if they want to have their content in a Word document. Even put a link in your wiki to the CMS. Make it easy for them to use the wiki for what wikis are good for and the CMS for document management. And if they still want to upload documents into the wiki, tell them it's a security issue unless you have a virus checker scanning the images directory of your wiki server.
-Jim
-----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of McHale, Nina Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 12:07 PM To: mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Mediawiki-l] wiki versus Word
Hey, all,
Some of my colleagues are objecting to my desire to minimize uploading of Word documents to our new intranet wiki. My main objection to it is that we ought to be entering information into wiki pages so that we can take full advantage of document versioning, talk pages, watching, etc.-y'know, the stuff that makes it a wiki...
I've been called "silly" and "arbitrary" regarding this. :) I'm not outright forbidding posting Word documents; I'm just trying to get people to use the wiki the way it's mean to be used. Am I being unreasonable? I even stated that it's acceptable to load the final version of a 20-page report, or a form that's meant to be printed out and filled out by hand-i.e., things in a final state that do not need further editing.
Has anyone else encountered this resistance? I was most surprised that it came from someone who uses/edits Wikipedia, which, as far as I can tell, does not support uploading of Word docs.
Nina Nina McHale, MA/MSLS Assistant Professor, Web Librarian Auraria Library http://library.auraria.edu/~nmchale/ Facebookhttp://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=672599042 | MySpacehttp://www.myspace.com/ninermac Serving the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State College of Denver, and the Community College of Denver 1100 Lawrence Street Denver, CO 80204 303-556-4729
_______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
McHale, Nina wrote:
Hey, all,
Some of my colleagues are objecting to my desire to minimize uploading of Word documents to our new intranet wiki. My main objection to it is that we ought to be entering information into wiki pages so that we can take full advantage of document versioning, talk pages, watching, etc.-y'know, the stuff that makes it a wiki...
I've been called "silly" and "arbitrary" regarding this. :) I'm not outright forbidding posting Word documents; I'm just trying to get people to use the wiki the way it's mean to be used. Am I being unreasonable? I even stated that it's acceptable to load the final version of a 20-page report, or a form that's meant to be printed out and filled out by hand-i.e., things in a final state that do not need further editing.
Has anyone else encountered this resistance? I was most surprised that it came from someone who uses/edits Wikipedia, which, as far as I can tell, does not support uploading of Word docs.
I suppose it's because they don't think in the wiki textbox as the way to write a document.
Perhaps you should try installing some wysiwyg extension, and tell them "use word if you want, to save it in the wiki just paste it there". The code will be terrifying, though.
Hi everyone -
I sympathize with the struggle to introduce users to a new tool - they resist because learning new things slows them down...they lose productivity and it's frustrating.
I've been looking for a tool that allows users to have an editor with a friendly UI that is compatible with MediaWiki, so I'm trying out this combination:
OpenOffice Writer, (http://www.openoffice.org/) because it behaves like MS Word, and Sun Wiki Publisher ( http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/wikipublisher)http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/wikipublisher , because it promises a painless upload/download with MediaWiki. I'm attempting to put it together now - I'll keep you posted
Also, this article is a great introduction to wiki use:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-social-mediawiki/ind... Best, Evelyn ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Evelyn Yoder Technical Communications http://longjump.com/
MediaWiki-based online help: http://longjumpsupport.com/
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: McHale, Nina Nina.McHale@ucdenver.edu Date: Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 9:06 AM Subject: [Mediawiki-l] wiki versus Word To: "mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org" mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Hey, all,
Some of my colleagues are objecting to my desire to minimize uploading of Word documents to our new intranet wiki. My main objection to it is that we ought to be entering information into wiki pages so that we can take full advantage of document versioning, talk pages, watching, etc.-y'know, the stuff that makes it a wiki...
I've been called "silly" and "arbitrary" regarding this. :) I'm not outright forbidding posting Word documents; I'm just trying to get people to use the wiki the way it's mean to be used. Am I being unreasonable? I even stated that it's acceptable to load the final version of a 20-page report, or a form that's meant to be printed out and filled out by hand-i.e., things in a final state that do not need further editing.
Has anyone else encountered this resistance? I was most surprised that it came from someone who uses/edits Wikipedia, which, as far as I can tell, does not support uploading of Word docs.
Nina Nina McHale, MA/MSLS Assistant Professor, Web Librarian Auraria Library http://library.auraria.edu/~nmchale/ Facebookhttp://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=672599042 | MySpace< http://www.myspace.com/ninermac%3E Serving the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State College of Denver, and the Community College of Denver 1100 Lawrence Street Denver, CO 80204 303-556-4729
_______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Hey All, So recently I have taken over the wiki at my work. I got myself the O-Reilly "MediaWiki" book. Things have been going pretty well I am learning more about all the things I can do with the wiki. *To the question part:* I has be brought to my attention that the wiki installed is mediawiki-1.6.8. I would like to using all the new included stuff in the current wiki version like API,etc... I have read about the trickiness of upgrading your wiki if you are below a certain version, plus I do not have Admin rights to the box that the wiki is installed on. How do I go about Transplanting the data that is in the current wiki to a newly installed wiki? All I care about is the Article contents,text,images, etc.. I don't need the categories, templates or transparency that I have been using. I have about 250 Articles so don't want to do it by hand. Ideas? Thoughts? Suggestions? Tips? Thank you /Jentzen
Jentzen Mooney wrote:
I has be brought to my attention that the wiki installed is mediawiki-1.6.8. I would like to using all the new included stuff in the current wiki version like API,etc... I have read about the trickiness of upgrading your wiki if you are below a certain version, plus I do not have Admin rights to the box that the wiki is installed on.
Upgrading from 1.6.x to 1.14 shouldn't be difficult if you follow the instructions. That's not a *really* early version.
However, if you don't have admin rights and can't acquire them, upgrading is not much of an option.
How do I go about Transplanting the data that is in the current wiki to a newly installed wiki?
If you create a new wiki from 1.14, you can take the data from the older version and insert it into the new version. There are a few things you have to do.
1 - Use mysqldump to dump the entire contents of the old database. See the MySQL manual and the database backup information on mediawiki.org for assistance. 2 - When you install the new wiki, make sure you use the exact same database prefix as was used in the old database. If you look at the table names in the old database, you'll see the prefix. For example, if the image table is called "xx_images", then "xx" is the prefix. 3 - Once the new wiki is installed and basically functioning, restore the old database that you backed up using mysqldump to the new database. This will overwrite the entire DB's content with the old data. 4 - Copy all the files from the /wiki/images/ directory hierarchy into the same directories on the new wiki. 5 - Run the update.php maintenance script. This will convert the 1.6.* database you restored to the 1.14 formats etc. There's a bit of information on this in a file called UPGRADE in the new wiki's root directory
Test the wiki - it should be fine. BTW - you won't lose anything in doing this, so categories and such should all be there.
Mike
Michael thank you so much, this good stuff to know. I will work on getting those Admin rights or getting some help. Also I was wondering if I create a new wiki from 1.14 do you recommend setting up the SVN repository if I plan to upgrade in the coming months or years? I don't know much about how this should be setup for the wiki. Do you have any wiki resources I should check out, so I can become a better admin for wikimedia?
Thank you for your help /jentzen
Michael Daly wrote:
Jentzen Mooney wrote:
I has be brought to my attention that the wiki installed is mediawiki-1.6.8. I would like to using all the new included stuff in the current wiki version like API,etc... I have read about the trickiness of upgrading your wiki if you are below a certain version, plus I do not have Admin rights to the box that the wiki is installed on.
Upgrading from 1.6.x to 1.14 shouldn't be difficult if you follow the instructions. That's not a *really* early version.
However, if you don't have admin rights and can't acquire them, upgrading is not much of an option.
How do I go about Transplanting the data that is in the current wiki to a newly installed wiki?
If you create a new wiki from 1.14, you can take the data from the older version and insert it into the new version. There are a few things you have to do.
1 - Use mysqldump to dump the entire contents of the old database. See the MySQL manual and the database backup information on mediawiki.org for assistance. 2 - When you install the new wiki, make sure you use the exact same database prefix as was used in the old database. If you look at the table names in the old database, you'll see the prefix. For example, if the image table is called "xx_images", then "xx" is the prefix. 3 - Once the new wiki is installed and basically functioning, restore the old database that you backed up using mysqldump to the new database. This will overwrite the entire DB's content with the old data. 4 - Copy all the files from the /wiki/images/ directory hierarchy into the same directories on the new wiki. 5 - Run the update.php maintenance script. This will convert the 1.6.* database you restored to the 1.14 formats etc. There's a bit of information on this in a file called UPGRADE in the new wiki's root directory
Test the wiki - it should be fine. BTW - you won't lose anything in doing this, so categories and such should all be there.
Mike
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Jentzen Mooney wrote:
Also I was wondering if I create a new wiki from 1.14 do you recommend setting up the SVN repository if I plan to upgrade in the coming months or years?
I don't use SVN for upgrades, just for supporting an extension I wrote. When upgrading, I just download the zipped files from mediawiki.org and install manually - that's what I'm comfortable with and it works just fine even if it takes a few minutes longer than some automated process. Perhaps someone else can give another view on SVN's suitability.
Do you have any wiki resources I should check out, so I can become a better admin for wikimedia?
Mediawiki.org is pretty good if a bit difficult to find your way around. Some information is well organized (most of the Manual and the extensions) while some is kind of disorganized.
Mwusers.com is a forum that is not bad - but I have a conflict of interest in recommending it, since I'm one of the moderators there. It's fine for most of the basic and mid-difficulty stuff but not so great on the most esoteric wiki info - there aren't enough volunteers offering help to provide a really broad base of knowledge.
Wikipedia can contain a lot of useful info from the wiki user's point of view - how to use the wikitext features for example. A lot of wiki beginners have trouble with wikitext while this is very well explained and documented on Wikipedia's help pages.
Mike
Thanks Mike for the help, I will make sure to post any of my findings here. /Jentzen
Michael Daly wrote:
Jentzen Mooney wrote:
Also I was wondering if I create a new wiki from 1.14 do you recommend setting up the SVN repository if I plan to upgrade in the coming months or years?
I don't use SVN for upgrades, just for supporting an extension I wrote. When upgrading, I just download the zipped files from mediawiki.org and install manually - that's what I'm comfortable with and it works just fine even if it takes a few minutes longer than some automated process. Perhaps someone else can give another view on SVN's suitability.
Do you have any wiki resources I should check out, so I can become a better admin for wikimedia?
Mediawiki.org is pretty good if a bit difficult to find your way around. Some information is well organized (most of the Manual and the extensions) while some is kind of disorganized.
Mwusers.com is a forum that is not bad - but I have a conflict of interest in recommending it, since I'm one of the moderators there. It's fine for most of the basic and mid-difficulty stuff but not so great on the most esoteric wiki info - there aren't enough volunteers offering help to provide a really broad base of knowledge.
Wikipedia can contain a lot of useful info from the wiki user's point of view - how to use the wikitext features for example. A lot of wiki beginners have trouble with wikitext while this is very well explained and documented on Wikipedia's help pages.
Mike
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Evelyn, This has issue has also been sitting on my shoulders. I really appreciate links and findings below. I was looking into these for little while but no commitment yet http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:External_editors Thank you /jentzen
Evelyn Yoder wrote:
Hi everyone -
I sympathize with the struggle to introduce users to a new tool - they resist because learning new things slows them down...they lose productivity and it's frustrating.
I've been looking for a tool that allows users to have an editor with a friendly UI that is compatible with MediaWiki, so I'm trying out this combination:
OpenOffice Writer, (http://www.openoffice.org/) because it behaves like MS Word, and Sun Wiki Publisher ( http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/wikipublisher)http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/wikipublisher , because it promises a painless upload/download with MediaWiki. I'm attempting to put it together now - I'll keep you posted
Also, this article is a great introduction to wiki use:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-social-mediawiki/ind... Best, Evelyn
Evelyn Yoder Technical Communications http://longjump.com/ MediaWiki-based online help: http://longjumpsupport.com/ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: McHale, Nina <Nina.McHale@ucdenver.edu> Date: Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 9:06 AM Subject: [Mediawiki-l] wiki versus Word To: "mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org" <mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Hey, all, Some of my colleagues are objecting to my desire to minimize uploading of Word documents to our new intranet wiki. My main objection to it is that we ought to be entering information into wiki pages so that we can take full advantage of document versioning, talk pages, watching, etc.-y'know, the stuff that makes it a wiki... I've been called "silly" and "arbitrary" regarding this. :) I'm not outright forbidding posting Word documents; I'm just trying to get people to use the wiki the way it's mean to be used. Am I being unreasonable? I even stated that it's acceptable to load the final version of a 20-page report, or a form that's meant to be printed out and filled out by hand-i.e., things in a final state that do not need further editing. Has anyone else encountered this resistance? I was most surprised that it came from someone who uses/edits Wikipedia, which, as far as I can tell, does not support uploading of Word docs. Nina Nina McHale, MA/MSLS Assistant Professor, Web Librarian Auraria Library http://library.auraria.edu/~nmchale/ Facebook<http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=672599042> | MySpace< http://www.myspace.com/ninermac> Serving the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State College of Denver, and the Community College of Denver 1100 Lawrence Street Denver, CO 80204 303-556-4729 _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Followup: the Sun Wiki Publisher didn't connect to MW as expected.
Instead, I installed this MW extension, it works like a charm, and gives users a WYSIWIG interface.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FCKeditor_(Official)
Good feedback from users, so far.
Evelyn
On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 11:32 AM, Jentzen Mooney jentzen@blur.com wrote:
Evelyn, This has issue has also been sitting on my shoulders. I really appreciate links and findings below. I was looking into these for little while but no commitment yet http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:External_editors Thank you /jentzen
Evelyn Yoder wrote:
Hi everyone -
I sympathize with the struggle to introduce users to a new tool - they resist because learning new things slows them down...they lose
productivity
and it's frustrating.
I've been looking for a tool that allows users to have an editor with a friendly UI that is compatible with MediaWiki, so I'm trying out this combination:
OpenOffice Writer, (http://www.openoffice.org/) because it behaves like
MS
Word, and Sun Wiki Publisher ( http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/wikipublisher)<
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/wikipublisher%3E
, because it promises a painless upload/download with MediaWiki. I'm attempting to put it together now - I'll keep you posted
Also, this article is a great introduction to wiki use:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-social-mediawiki/ind...
Best, Evelyn
Evelyn Yoder Technical Communications http://longjump.com/ MediaWiki-based online help: http://longjumpsupport.com/ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: McHale, Nina <Nina.McHale@ucdenver.edu> Date: Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 9:06 AM Subject: [Mediawiki-l] wiki versus Word To: "mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org" <mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Hey, all, Some of my colleagues are objecting to my desire to minimize uploading of Word documents to our new intranet wiki. My main objection to it is thatwe
ought to be entering information into wiki pages so that we can take full advantage of document versioning, talk pages, watching, etc.-y'know, the stuff that makes it a wiki...
I've been called "silly" and "arbitrary" regarding this. :) I'm not
outright
forbidding posting Word documents; I'm just trying to get people to use
the
wiki the way it's mean to be used. Am I being unreasonable? I even stated that it's acceptable to load the final version of a 20-page report, or a form that's meant to be printed out and filled out by hand-i.e., things
in a
final state that do not need further editing.
Has anyone else encountered this resistance? I was most surprised that it came from someone who uses/edits Wikipedia, which, as far as I can tell, does not support uploading of Word docs.
Nina Nina McHale, MA/MSLS Assistant Professor, Web Librarian Auraria Library http://library.auraria.edu/~nmchale/http://library.auraria.edu/%7Enmchale/ Facebookhttp://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=672599042 | MySpace< http://www.myspace.com/ninermac%3E Serving the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State College of Denver, and the Community College of Denver 1100 Lawrence Street Denver, CO 80204 303-556-4729
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On 05/02/09 00:37, Evelyn Yoder wrote:
Followup: the Sun Wiki Publisher didn't connect to MW as expected.
I'd be interested in what didn't work. Maybe you or I can provide that feedback to the developers and get that extension fixed up so that it works properly with MediaWiki. :-)
C
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