[Mediawiki-l] Fwd: wiki versus Word

[Evelyn Yoder]

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/index.html
Best,
Evelyn
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Evelyn Yoder
Technical Communications
http://longjump.com/

MediaWiki-based online help:  http://longjumpsupport.com/




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: McHale, Nina <Nina.McHale at ucdenver.edu>
Date: Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 9:06 AM
Subject: [Mediawiki-l] wiki versus Word
To: "mediawiki-l at lists.wikimedia.org" <mediawiki-l at 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/
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