We've seen the same basic tendencies of our users to stick with what they know, which is Office documents. Yes, we much prefer it if people use a real wiki page, especially for Word documents, but frankly, I don't get all that bent out of shape about it--I'll mention it to people if it comes up, but I don't go out of my way to find people uploading those documents and trying to "convert" them. And it does make sense in some occasions: as you've mentioned, forms, final documents, but certainly for spreadsheets, presentations, etc. As someone else mentioned, keeping a Word document up-to-date is quite a pain, and I've found that people tend to migrate to wikitext after the first few iterations. We actually have extended the search engine to automatically index the text in common types of attachments so that they are searchable.
Personally, I've found that the lower-key approach works better, but your mileage may vary.
mediawiki-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
Message: 2 Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:06:48 -0600 From: "McHale, Nina" Nina.McHale@ucdenver.edu Subject: [Mediawiki-l] wiki versus Word To: "mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org" mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: 3354E9B491D9EA47A1DB89BF9837636367007771F5@STEAMBOAT.ucdenver.pvt Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
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
I've got yet another suggestion concerning Word-documents. Don't let them be uploaded into your wiki at all, but use a central shared folder(-structure) and link to the documents from your wiki using the filelink-extension.
That's what we are doing and (afaik) it's working well. :-) The shared folderstructure was already in existence and use when we decided to use a wiki as a central starting point to all the different information in our library with its four locations.
Some things are much better suited for putting into a word-document, requiring extensive and in-depth formatting that is impossible or at least very difficult to do inside a wiki-text.
Good luck! Katharina
Chris Reigrut schrieb am 29.04.2009 05:52:
We've seen the same basic tendencies of our users to stick with what they know, which is Office documents. Yes, we much prefer it if people use a real wiki page, especially for Word documents, but frankly, I don't get all that bent out of shape about it--I'll mention it to people if it comes up, but I don't go out of my way to find people uploading those documents and trying to "convert" them. And it does make sense in some occasions: as you've mentioned, forms, final documents, but certainly for spreadsheets, presentations, etc. As someone else mentioned, keeping a Word document up-to-date is quite a pain, and I've found that people tend to migrate to wikitext after the first few iterations. We actually have extended the search engine to automatically index the text in common types of attachments so that they are searchable.
Personally, I've found that the lower-key approach works better, but your mileage may vary.
mediawiki-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
Message: 2 Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:06:48 -0600 From: "McHale, Nina" Nina.McHale@ucdenver.edu Subject: [Mediawiki-l] wiki versus Word To: "mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org" mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: 3354E9B491D9EA47A1DB89BF9837636367007771F5@STEAMBOAT.ucdenver.pvt Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
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
Hi,
Katharina Wolkwitz schrieb:
I've got yet another suggestion concerning Word-documents. Don't let them be uploaded into your wiki at all, but use a central shared folder(-structure) and link to the documents from your wiki using the filelink-extension.
We combine MediaWiki with WebDAV on the same Server. We use autologin together with ldap/basic auth all over the server, so there is only one login for each user. Documents can be uploaded to the DAV directories and linked in the wiki via http.
Marc
Hi,
Regarding this problem I have two questions:
1. Confluence is offering an MSOffice connector, i.e. users are able to import directly word documents as wiki pages. Does anyone know if such thing exists for MediaWiki (GLP or commercial license)?
2. @Nina: are you offering to the users a WYSIWYG or are they supposed to create the articles using wikimark-up? In my group, people avoid collaboration due to the fact that they are not willing to take the time and have a look on the editing guidelines.
Roxana.
________________________________
Von: mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org im Auftrag von Marc Patermann Gesendet: Mi 29.04.2009 09:58 An: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Betreff: Re: [Mediawiki-l] wiki versus Word
Hi,
Katharina Wolkwitz schrieb:
I've got yet another suggestion concerning Word-documents. Don't let them be uploaded into your wiki at all, but use a central shared folder(-structure) and link to the documents from your wiki using the filelink-extension.
We combine MediaWiki with WebDAV on the same Server. We use autologin together with ldap/basic auth all over the server, so there is only one login for each user. Documents can be uploaded to the DAV directories and linked in the wiki via http.
Marc
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Roxana Craciun wrote:
Hi,
Regarding this problem I have two questions:
Confluence is offering an MSOffice connector, i.e. users are able to import directly word documents as wiki pages. Does anyone know if such thing exists for MediaWiki (GLP or commercial license)?
@Nina: are you offering to the users a WYSIWYG or are they supposed to create the articles using wikimark-up? In my group, people avoid collaboration due to the fact that they are not willing to take the time and have a look on the editing guidelines.
You can use OpenOffice.org (OOo) to import/export docs to/from a MediaWiki.
To export documents to Wiki you can use the Wiki Publisher extension for OOo: http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/wikipublisher (adds a Send - MediaWiki Server menu item and dialog to help publish the document on a MediaWiki).
To export from Wiki back to OOo, you can use the Collections Extension: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Collection
I use both on the OOo Wiki http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Main_Page (although I haven't used the WikiPublisher extension for a while now). The Collections extension to export to ODT gets used a lot on the OOo Wiki,and works quite nicely.
C.
I just realized that your users who refuse to use the wiki and want to use Word are probably doing so because of the wikitext editor, which can be a real pain for people to switch to from Word. Over a year ago we installed the FCKeditor extension (FCKeditor+Mediawiki) which provides a WYSIWYG editor to Mediawiki. It had its bugs then but has improved a lot and I have heard no complaints from our many users. With a WYSIWYG editor you will likely have a much better response from users who switch to the wiki from Word.
-Jim
-----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Chris Reigrut Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 11:53 PM To: mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] wiki versus Word
We've seen the same basic tendencies of our users to stick with what they know, which is Office documents. Yes, we much prefer it if people use a real wiki page, especially for Word documents, but frankly, I don't get all that bent out of shape about it--I'll mention it to people if it comes up, but I don't go out of my way to find people uploading those documents and trying to "convert" them. And it does make sense in some occasions: as you've mentioned, forms, final documents, but certainly for spreadsheets, presentations, etc. As someone else mentioned, keeping a Word document up-to-date is quite a pain, and I've found that people tend to migrate to wikitext after the first few iterations. We actually have extended the search engine to automatically index the text in common types of attachments so that they are searchable.
Personally, I've found that the lower-key approach works better, but your mileage may vary.
mediawiki-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
Message: 2 Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:06:48 -0600 From: "McHale, Nina" Nina.McHale@ucdenver.edu Subject: [Mediawiki-l] wiki versus Word To: "mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org" mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: 3354E9B491D9EA47A1DB89BF9837636367007771F5@STEAMBOAT.ucdenver.pvt Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
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
I haven't play a lot with WYSIWYG editors, but I doubt it can do all things people like to do on word. In my neighboor, at work, I have plenty of people using word/excel every day. - can you insert image with copy/paste without uploading them ? - can you draw some arrows, frames... ? - can you insert a table which is an Excel file ? (in Word you can insert an Excel sheet, that's buggy, heavy file... but they all do that) - table not from excel : easy to resize, insert/delete lines, change background color or style for one line/one column... is it possible in WYSIWYG ? - they like the "tab" key to indent the first line of each paragraph, in WYSIWYG does it indent text? or go to next field as in all normal html forms ? - they heavily uses styles for titles, lists (like <ol>,<ul>...) but with WYSIWYG, you'll never have problem with normal.dot !! yeah! I think it's better to use a software which has features you need. My 2 cents.
I completely agree with you that if you need the full features of Word a wiki WYSIWYG editor will not likely match those of Word, at least those editors available today. But most people do not use all of those features. Most are simply text with attributes like bold, italics, etc. You must upload an image first of course, we must remember this is first and foremost a wiki, but it is easy to take that image and insert it using the FCKeditor. But if you want to see the real power of a wysiwyg editor for mediawiki, create a table in wikitext then go to the FCKeditor sandbox and create the same table. For a 10 row by 6 column table the first will take you about 10 minutes, the later will take you 10 seconds.
-Jim
-----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Sylvain Machefert Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 9:13 AM To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] wiki versus Word
I haven't play a lot with WYSIWYG editors, but I doubt it can do all things people like to do on word. In my neighboor, at work, I have plenty of people using word/excel every day. - can you insert image with copy/paste without uploading them ? - can you draw some arrows, frames... ? - can you insert a table which is an Excel file ? (in Word you can insert an Excel sheet, that's buggy, heavy file... but they all do that) - table not from excel : easy to resize, insert/delete lines, change background color or style for one line/one column... is it possible in WYSIWYG ? - they like the "tab" key to indent the first line of each paragraph, in WYSIWYG does it indent text? or go to next field as in all normal html forms ? - they heavily uses styles for titles, lists (like <ol>,<ul>...) but with WYSIWYG, you'll never have problem with normal.dot !! yeah! I think it's better to use a software which has features you need. My 2 cents.
mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org