Wiki or not wiki ?

Following up on this discussion, which is now locked.

Forgive me if I missed something and this has been settled. I’ve been a little out of it these past two weeks...

I came accross the plugin page of docuwiki and found out that it offered Textile, BBCode and Markdown syntax on top of DocuWiki’s syntax. As I said I like the idea of building the documentation with MODx, but I think TOC auto-generation, revisionning, auto-acronyms and GeSHi highlighting could be in favor of a wiki.

As we discussed, ability to choose one’s editor might be key to contributions, that’s why I thought I’d mention it.

What do you think ?

Hi

And it’s an easy way to do a multilingual documentation

Aour

Wikis may be great for some applications but TOC auto-generation, revisionning, auto-acronyms and GeSHi highlighting can/will be part of MODx in the future.

I already got TOC autogeneration done via JS for a site I’m working on, auto-acronyms can be done with phpGiggle, GeSHi has been integrated into snippets before, and revisioning is very high on the MODx to do list.

All I can think of is migrating this whole community forum into modx users auth system. With that, basically if what mark said true, we can start building the documentation right away.

I also see the point of david for having documentation based on wiki, which is more pbulic and open, but I can see the negative part of it, which might causes more hasle to doc team in organizing the docs.

Both side has disadvantage and advantage, because right now MODx is not fully capable as documentation medium. Right now i can see that it’s better for us to go with wii base system, but in the long run, when we start to have a lot of interest in documentation, and the documentations starts to gorw, it will be a lot of problem in migrating the documentation system into MODx, when MODx gets into its prime time.

So for now, we need to find a middle way for us to be able to start documentating MODx, without having to depend on Susan and Richard to keep updating them. I can see the weaknesses, which I found some typo and etc, which sometimes it makes me lazy as a community user to remind susan and richard about this. If we have the ability to do it ourself, there will more than 75% chance that we will fix it, compare to report it to the doc admin.

Hope I’m making my point here.

My expience in virtually every Wiki instance is a constant battle of correcting "creative" or "malicuous" entries and Wiki Spam. I don’t remotely have the bandwidth to marshall patrolling that.

Quote from: rthrash at Dec 22, 2005, 10:48 PM

My expience in virtually every Wiki instance is a constant battle of correcting "creative" or "malicuous" entries and Wiki Spam. I don’t remotely have the bandwidth to marshall patrolling that.

Agree, which is that what I mean by

I also see the point of david for having documentation based on wiki, which is more pbulic and open, but I can see the negative part of it, which might causes more hasle to doc team in organizing the docs.

But we need to go with a middle way, which allow people who has more than 10 post for examples to be able to fix some problem on the documentation and etc. User such as me, and others who like to hang out and doing nothing in here, basically we love MODx, and we won’t destroy the documentation. We can judge that mostly by post or contribution and etc. That’s why it’s best to have a middle way of documentation that has user auth system, which only allow certain people login to the system able to do the documentation.

Hi

For french translation we use dokuwiki and I define that you need to login according to modify a wiki:page

It is possible to disable registration, but you have to create user and manage your writer team

Aour

PS dokuwiki do not use database

Generally speaking- I find wiki’s terribly cumbersome to use. I spent hours and hours on the Etomite wiki writing some decent documentation (I think), but it was pure agony. It appears to me that the MODx team is solid, and growing, and a dedicated set of individuals will produce documentation so far superior to that which would come about in a wiki, making a wiki unnecessary.

Quote from: Mark at Dec 22, 2005, 07:29 PM

Wikis may be great for some applications but TOC auto-generation, revisionning, auto-acronyms and GeSHi highlighting can/will be part of MODx in the future.

Now that’s very good news !

Revisionning is great, not only for documentation but if you offer a version comparison tool it can be great for collaborative writing.

I think wikis have pros and cons, but like aour said wiki doesn’t necessarily means fully opened you can restrict who edits what. I was not pro-wiki to start with, just searching the right tool for the job. Wikis can make great docs (take wordpress codex) but they can fail too.

This being said, and considering what Mark tells us I think the best option is to stick to MODx and have the documentation features evolve in time. More probably than not, the absence of TOC generation and revisionning will only be felt later on when the doc starts to grow... I think by then we’ll have TOC, acronyms and revisionning

Looks like we have come a to a conclusion then.

But I’m still waiting for a user integration of SMF with MODx, so that I can help fixing some spelling mistake or adding some unnecessary stuff to make it pretty.