Hello,
I am trying to convince my company to use MediaWiki for our public knowledge base, and so far our test setup has been working well. However, I'm running into two major stumbling blocks, both of which seem to be inherent to how the Wiki works, and I'm hoping someone else has found solutions for them, or can at least help us do so.
1. Creating articles is someone unintuitive, since there is no "Create A New Article" page. So far everyone that's added articles has know how to construct the proper URL, but we want to streamline the process a bit. I'm pretty sure I can just write a new special page extension that does this automatically, but if anyone else has a similar and/or better solution, I'm all for it.
2. The bigger problem is with the search results. Our articles were added to the wiki with their title being the knowledge base number. However, we want the search results to show both this number, and a "title" (which is usually the question or error the article is about). Right now, when someone searches for articles they only see the few lines of context around the search word, and this is often not enough to differentiate between similar articles.
I have no problems writing code to make these things happen, and submitting it back to the community. (I've already cleared this with my employer.) But I also don't want to rush into mediawiki coding blind, and what I want to do seems beyond the scope of most tutorials. I've read up on creating extensions, and creating your own markup, but I suspect I will need to make big changes to the existing pages, possibly even the database schema, to achieve everything we need.
I'm hoping someone else has done something similar, and can either direct us where to find and install it, or at least point me in the right direction for writing it myself.
--Mike
"Esta mensagem do SERVIÇO FEDERAL DE PROCESSAMENTO DE DADOS (SERPRO), empresa pública federal regida pelo disposto na Lei Federal nº 5.615, é enviada exclusivamente a seu destinatário e pode conter informações confidenciais, protegidas por sigilo profissional. Sua utilização desautorizada é ilegal e sujeita o infrator às penas da lei. Se você a recebeu indevidamente, queira, por gentileza, reenviá-la ao emitente, esclarecendo o equívoco."
"This message from SERVIÇO FEDERAL DE PROCESSAMENTO DE DADOS (SERPRO) -- a government company established under Brazilian law (5.615/70) -- is directed exclusively to its addressee and may contain confidential data, protected under professional secrecy rules. Its unauthorized use is illegal and may subject the transgressor to the law's penalties. If you're not the addressee, please send it back, elucidating the failure."
You can simply use the Inputbox extension by AJB (http://meta.wikimedia.org/Help:Inputbox) for the create an article page you want.
This should address your first point.
-- gary kirk
On 7/26/06, Mike Edenfield kutulu@kutulu.org wrote:
Hello,
I am trying to convince my company to use MediaWiki for our public knowledge base, and so far our test setup has been working well. However, I'm running into two major stumbling blocks, both of which seem to be inherent to how the Wiki works, and I'm hoping someone else has found solutions for them, or can at least help us do so.
- Creating articles is someone unintuitive, since there is no "Create A
New Article" page. So far everyone that's added articles has know how to construct the proper URL, but we want to streamline the process a bit. I'm pretty sure I can just write a new special page extension that does this automatically, but if anyone else has a similar and/or better solution, I'm all for it.
- The bigger problem is with the search results. Our articles were
added to the wiki with their title being the knowledge base number. However, we want the search results to show both this number, and a "title" (which is usually the question or error the article is about). Right now, when someone searches for articles they only see the few lines of context around the search word, and this is often not enough to differentiate between similar articles.
I have no problems writing code to make these things happen, and submitting it back to the community. (I've already cleared this with my employer.) But I also don't want to rush into mediawiki coding blind, and what I want to do seems beyond the scope of most tutorials. I've read up on creating extensions, and creating your own markup, but I suspect I will need to make big changes to the existing pages, possibly even the database schema, to achieve everything we need.
I'm hoping someone else has done something similar, and can either direct us where to find and install it, or at least point me in the right direction for writing it myself.
--Mike _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Re: 2. I do not have a solution to the seach results issue - but it seems the problem is, you would like each page to have "several" titles. Perhaps you could use a workaround for this, using namespaces, categories or templates.
For instance, you could make extensive use of redirects, with both knowledge base numbers and titles all pointing to a canonical page, which has both the knowledge base number and the title in its pagename; one or the other paranthesized, or with a colon in between. That way pages using either link will all point to the same page, and pages displayed in the search results will show both number and title in the complete pagename.
Best wishes, Morten :-)
-- Crews Cut Production Morten Blaabjerg Danmarksgade 97 - DK-5000 Odense C Tlf. 65 90 60 88 / 51 80 91 55 http://morten.crewscut.com morten@crewscut.com
----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Edenfield" kutulu@kutulu.org To: mediawiki-l@Wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2006 3:13 PM Subject: [Mediawiki-l] MediaWiki as a "Knowledge Base"
Hello,
I am trying to convince my company to use MediaWiki for our public knowledge base, and so far our test setup has been working well. However, I'm running into two major stumbling blocks, both of which seem to be inherent to how the Wiki works, and I'm hoping someone else has found solutions for them, or can at least help us do so.
- Creating articles is someone unintuitive, since there is no "Create A
New Article" page. So far everyone that's added articles has know how to construct the proper URL, but we want to streamline the process a bit. I'm pretty sure I can just write a new special page extension that does this automatically, but if anyone else has a similar and/or better solution, I'm all for it.
- The bigger problem is with the search results. Our articles were
added to the wiki with their title being the knowledge base number. However, we want the search results to show both this number, and a "title" (which is usually the question or error the article is about). Right now, when someone searches for articles they only see the few lines of context around the search word, and this is often not enough to differentiate between similar articles.
I have no problems writing code to make these things happen, and submitting it back to the community. (I've already cleared this with my employer.) But I also don't want to rush into mediawiki coding blind, and what I want to do seems beyond the scope of most tutorials. I've read up on creating extensions, and creating your own markup, but I suspect I will need to make big changes to the existing pages, possibly even the database schema, to achieve everything we need.
I'm hoping someone else has done something similar, and can either direct us where to find and install it, or at least point me in the right direction for writing it myself.
--Mike _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
On Wednesday 26 July 2006 15:13, Mike Edenfield wrote:
Hello,
I am trying to convince my company to use MediaWiki for our public knowledge base, and so far our test setup has been working well. However, I'm running into two major stumbling blocks, both of which seem to be inherent to how the Wiki works, and I'm hoping someone else has found solutions for them, or can at least help us do so.
Although everyone who will be using our KB is tech-savvy, we also have similar problems.
- Creating articles is someone unintuitive, since there is no "Create A
New Article" page. So far everyone that's added articles has know how to construct the proper URL, but we want to streamline the process a bit. I'm pretty sure I can just write a new special page extension that does this automatically, but if anyone else has a similar and/or better solution, I'm all for it.
What we did was implement the multiple starting page hack. That is, when the user inputs a new article title and the article does not exist, the user is given a choice of about 10 different types of new articles to create (e.g customer, hardware, application, troubleshooting, etc.). When the use clicking on the link the start page is a template with a set of default sections that are required for the give article type. There is also a "page info" section at the bottom, which includes things like creation date, creator, review date and so forth. We also have comments in the templates to explain things to the user.
Also each of these article types have categories automatically included in the templates. When the article is created, the categories are added.
The details of the hack are here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multiple_starting_text_hack
- The bigger problem is with the search results. Our articles were
added to the wiki with their title being the knowledge base number. However, we want the search results to show both this number, and a "title" (which is usually the question or error the article is about). Right now, when someone searches for articles they only see the few lines of context around the search word, and this is often not enough to differentiate between similar articles.
Why are you using numbers? That is not very user friendly. Obviously it makes things easier of you are moving them from a another system or **must** be able to reference them by number. I know a lot of support organizations that tell you "See KB Article 47110815", so it is understandable.
What you should do here is use redirection, as Morten suggested. For example, KB47110815 article addressing creating an index in MS Word. You have an article "Create MSWord Index" which just contains this:
#REDIRECT [[KB47110815]]
When the using input the article title Create_MSWord_Index, they are automatically to the KB article. You could also create an artilce Create_Index_MSWord, etc which also redirect to the same KB article. That way you do not need to know what the author thought was the "best" name. Other places where we use redirection is things like "MS-Word" vs "Microsoft Word".
Maybe in your case you should do it the otherway around, that is the KB article redirects to "real" article. That way, the full text is in the "human-readable" title and you can still reference the KB article by number. From what I have seen, the search does not find the article that just contains the redirection. (someone please correct me if I am wrong)
Another thing we did was to have the start part broken into cells, similar to the Wikipedia Main_Page. Each cell is a "top-level" category which then contains links to categories.
What you need to remember is that not everyone looks for information in the same way and not everyone always looks for information in the same way. People use different search terms. Some like to search, some like to drill-down. Others like a way to simply jump to the right article. The MediaWiki will allow you to do all of these.
I have no problems writing code to make these things happen, and submitting it back to the community. (I've already cleared this with my employer.) But I also don't want to rush into mediawiki coding blind, and what I want to do seems beyond the scope of most tutorials. I've read up on creating extensions, and creating your own markup, but I suspect I will need to make big changes to the existing pages, possibly even the database schema, to achieve everything we need.
I am in the same boat and want to know what direction to go before I start out. However, I have learned that since each company is different, you are likely to need to do some things that you later toss out.
I'm hoping someone else has done something similar, and can either direct us where to find and install it, or at least point me in the right direction for writing it myself.
Another thing we are working on is the ability to create printable handbooks of various type. We have a contractual obligation to provide "datacenter handbooks" to several customers. Currently, we do them in MS-Word and create PDFs, which we send via email. We are working toward moving the data into the wiki and then pulling out specific articles for each customer. Our plan is to create a list of the pages in order that go into each handbook, pull them out of the wiki and then create the PDF.
I am very much interested in this topic, along with the general concept of knowledge management. I started a thread a few weeks ago that seemed to die out fairly quickly. I would enjoy continuing this discussion, (even in private) and maybe we can put together a wiki article about our experiences.
regards,
jimmo
It is a very interesting discussion indeed. My current customer is also looking into using a Wiki for this purpose. They also want to check out a possibility for 'need to know' information. Though that doesn't seem to be a very viable option, it being against everything the wiki is intended for.
Also what the 'MediaWiki Enterprise Edition' (*gasp*, *oh no!*, sorry...) needs would be either integration into the main wiki code (via extensions, as an include into the official code or as a set of patches against the code base).
I concur that some people kick the idea around for a bit (probably offline...) and see what happens. I'd like to invite myself into that discussion if I may. By the way, it is not that such a discussion is closed/not public but rather that this mailing list is likely not the correct place for it.
On 7/30/06, James Mohr mediawiki@jimmo.com wrote:
On Wednesday 26 July 2006 15:13, Mike Edenfield wrote:
Hello,
I am trying to convince my company to use MediaWiki for our public knowledge base, and so far our test setup has been working well. However, I'm running into two major stumbling blocks, both of which seem to be inherent to how the Wiki works, and I'm hoping someone else has found solutions for them, or can at least help us do so.
Although everyone who will be using our KB is tech-savvy, we also have similar problems.
- Creating articles is someone unintuitive, since there is no "Create A
New Article" page. So far everyone that's added articles has know how to construct the proper URL, but we want to streamline the process a bit. I'm pretty sure I can just write a new special page extension that does this automatically, but if anyone else has a similar and/or better solution, I'm all for it.
What we did was implement the multiple starting page hack. That is, when the user inputs a new article title and the article does not exist, the user is given a choice of about 10 different types of new articles to create (e.g customer, hardware, application, troubleshooting, etc.). When the use clicking on the link the start page is a template with a set of default sections that are required for the give article type. There is also a "page info" section at the bottom, which includes things like creation date, creator, review date and so forth. We also have comments in the templates to explain things to the user.
Also each of these article types have categories automatically included in the templates. When the article is created, the categories are added.
The details of the hack are here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multiple_starting_text_hack
- The bigger problem is with the search results. Our articles were
added to the wiki with their title being the knowledge base number. However, we want the search results to show both this number, and a "title" (which is usually the question or error the article is about). Right now, when someone searches for articles they only see the few lines of context around the search word, and this is often not enough to differentiate between similar articles.
Why are you using numbers? That is not very user friendly. Obviously it makes things easier of you are moving them from a another system or **must** be able to reference them by number. I know a lot of support organizations that tell you "See KB Article 47110815", so it is understandable.
What you should do here is use redirection, as Morten suggested. For example, KB47110815 article addressing creating an index in MS Word. You have an article "Create MSWord Index" which just contains this:
#REDIRECT [[KB47110815]]
When the using input the article title Create_MSWord_Index, they are automatically to the KB article. You could also create an artilce Create_Index_MSWord, etc which also redirect to the same KB article. That way you do not need to know what the author thought was the "best" name. Other places where we use redirection is things like "MS-Word" vs "Microsoft Word".
Maybe in your case you should do it the otherway around, that is the KB article redirects to "real" article. That way, the full text is in the "human-readable" title and you can still reference the KB article by number.
From what I have seen, the search does not find the article that just
contains the redirection. (someone please correct me if I am wrong)
Another thing we did was to have the start part broken into cells, similar to the Wikipedia Main_Page. Each cell is a "top-level" category which then contains links to categories.
What you need to remember is that not everyone looks for information in the same way and not everyone always looks for information in the same way. People use different search terms. Some like to search, some like to drill-down. Others like a way to simply jump to the right article. The MediaWiki will allow you to do all of these.
I have no problems writing code to make these things happen, and submitting it back to the community. (I've already cleared this with my employer.) But I also don't want to rush into mediawiki coding blind, and what I want to do seems beyond the scope of most tutorials. I've read up on creating extensions, and creating your own markup, but I suspect I will need to make big changes to the existing pages, possibly even the database schema, to achieve everything we need.
I am in the same boat and want to know what direction to go before I start out. However, I have learned that since each company is different, you are likely to need to do some things that you later toss out.
I'm hoping someone else has done something similar, and can either direct us where to find and install it, or at least point me in the right direction for writing it myself.
Another thing we are working on is the ability to create printable handbooks of various type. We have a contractual obligation to provide "datacenter handbooks" to several customers. Currently, we do them in MS-Word and create PDFs, which we send via email. We are working toward moving the data into the wiki and then pulling out specific articles for each customer. Our plan is to create a list of the pages in order that go into each handbook, pull them out of the wiki and then create the PDF.
I am very much interested in this topic, along with the general concept of knowledge management. I started a thread a few weeks ago that seemed to die out fairly quickly. I would enjoy continuing this discussion, (even in private) and maybe we can put together a wiki article about our experiences.
regards,
jimmo
--
"Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are." -- John Wooden
Be sure to visit the Linux Tutorial: http://www.linux-tutorial.info _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Shall I setup a mailing list for this topic? (Well, I sort of already have, but shall I publish it?)
On 7/30/06, Hans Voss hans.voss@gmail.com wrote:
It is a very interesting discussion indeed. My current customer is also looking into using a Wiki for this purpose. They also want to check out a possibility for 'need to know' information. Though that doesn't seem to be a very viable option, it being against everything the wiki is intended for.
Also what the 'MediaWiki Enterprise Edition' (*gasp*, *oh no!*, sorry...) needs would be either integration into the main wiki code (via extensions, as an include into the official code or as a set of patches against the code base).
I concur that some people kick the idea around for a bit (probably offline...) and see what happens. I'd like to invite myself into that discussion if I may. By the way, it is not that such a discussion is closed/not public but rather that this mailing list is likely not the correct place for it.
On 7/30/06, James Mohr mediawiki@jimmo.com wrote:
On Wednesday 26 July 2006 15:13, Mike Edenfield wrote:
Hello,
I am trying to convince my company to use MediaWiki for our public knowledge base, and so far our test setup has been working well. However, I'm running into two major stumbling blocks, both of which seem to be inherent to how the Wiki works, and I'm hoping someone else has found solutions for them, or can at least help us do so.
Although everyone who will be using our KB is tech-savvy, we also have similar problems.
- Creating articles is someone unintuitive, since there is no "Create A
New Article" page. So far everyone that's added articles has know how to construct the proper URL, but we want to streamline the process a bit. I'm pretty sure I can just write a new special page extension that does this automatically, but if anyone else has a similar and/or better solution, I'm all for it.
What we did was implement the multiple starting page hack. That is, when the user inputs a new article title and the article does not exist, the user is given a choice of about 10 different types of new articles to create (e.g customer, hardware, application, troubleshooting, etc.). When the use clicking on the link the start page is a template with a set of default sections that are required for the give article type. There is also a "page info" section at the bottom, which includes things like creation date, creator, review date and so forth. We also have comments in the templates to explain things to the user.
Also each of these article types have categories automatically included in the templates. When the article is created, the categories are added.
The details of the hack are here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multiple_starting_text_hack
- The bigger problem is with the search results. Our articles were
added to the wiki with their title being the knowledge base number. However, we want the search results to show both this number, and a "title" (which is usually the question or error the article is about). Right now, when someone searches for articles they only see the few lines of context around the search word, and this is often not enough to differentiate between similar articles.
Why are you using numbers? That is not very user friendly. Obviously it makes things easier of you are moving them from a another system or **must** be able to reference them by number. I know a lot of support organizations that tell you "See KB Article 47110815", so it is understandable.
What you should do here is use redirection, as Morten suggested. For example, KB47110815 article addressing creating an index in MS Word. You have an article "Create MSWord Index" which just contains this:
#REDIRECT [[KB47110815]]
When the using input the article title Create_MSWord_Index, they are automatically to the KB article. You could also create an artilce Create_Index_MSWord, etc which also redirect to the same KB article. That way you do not need to know what the author thought was the "best" name. Other places where we use redirection is things like "MS-Word" vs "Microsoft Word".
Maybe in your case you should do it the otherway around, that is the KB article redirects to "real" article. That way, the full text is in the "human-readable" title and you can still reference the KB article by number.
From what I have seen, the search does not find the article that just
contains the redirection. (someone please correct me if I am wrong)
Another thing we did was to have the start part broken into cells, similar to the Wikipedia Main_Page. Each cell is a "top-level" category which then contains links to categories.
What you need to remember is that not everyone looks for information in the same way and not everyone always looks for information in the same way. People use different search terms. Some like to search, some like to drill-down. Others like a way to simply jump to the right article. The MediaWiki will allow you to do all of these.
I have no problems writing code to make these things happen, and submitting it back to the community. (I've already cleared this with my employer.) But I also don't want to rush into mediawiki coding blind, and what I want to do seems beyond the scope of most tutorials. I've read up on creating extensions, and creating your own markup, but I suspect I will need to make big changes to the existing pages, possibly even the database schema, to achieve everything we need.
I am in the same boat and want to know what direction to go before I start out. However, I have learned that since each company is different, you are likely to need to do some things that you later toss out.
I'm hoping someone else has done something similar, and can either direct us where to find and install it, or at least point me in the right direction for writing it myself.
Another thing we are working on is the ability to create printable handbooks of various type. We have a contractual obligation to provide "datacenter handbooks" to several customers. Currently, we do them in MS-Word and create PDFs, which we send via email. We are working toward moving the data into the wiki and then pulling out specific articles for each customer. Our plan is to create a list of the pages in order that go into each handbook, pull them out of the wiki and then create the PDF.
I am very much interested in this topic, along with the general concept of knowledge management. I started a thread a few weeks ago that seemed to die out fairly quickly. I would enjoy continuing this discussion, (even in private) and maybe we can put together a wiki article about our experiences.
regards,
jimmo
--
"Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are." -- John Wooden
Be sure to visit the Linux Tutorial: http://www.linux-tutorial.info _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
--
Met vriendelijke groeten / With kind regards Hans Voss
google talk enabled I am looking for people to invite to Gmail. I have 96 invitations left.
Sure. Sign me up!
Regards,
jimmo
On Sunday 30 July 2006 22:05, Hans Voss wrote:
Shall I setup a mailing list for this topic? (Well, I sort of already have, but shall I publish it?)
OK. I used Google Groups for this (sorry if this offends anyone).
Here are the details: URL http://groups.google.com/group/mediawiki-as-knowledgebase Email mediawiki-as-knowledgebase@googlegroups.com
On 7/30/06, James Mohr mediawiki@jimmo.com wrote:
Sure. Sign me up!
Regards,
jimmo
On Sunday 30 July 2006 22:05, Hans Voss wrote:
Shall I setup a mailing list for this topic? (Well, I sort of already have, but shall I publish it?)
--
"Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are." -- John Wooden
Be sure to visit the Linux Tutorial: http://www.linux-tutorial.info _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org