Hi all:
It's been long since I had written to Moodle forums years ago... after many years as an outsider to Moodle community, I started months ago using Moodle in my own University campus (finally!), besides other software in other campuses.
Congratulations, Sam, for the work done so far with OuWiki, and the anounced roadmap. For sure, teachers using Moodle need some better report to see user contributions among different wiki pages of the same course, etc. And simpler usability (I got lost weeks ago when I first attempted to make a revisions of two versions in nWiki). Sorry to say that, ludo, but that was my impression. So, that's good knews to know about OU Wiki roadmap.
However, for what I've seen so far (on the testing site), my vote goes for nWiki current module, which still has to be fixed and improved on some aspects, for sure, as OU Wiki needs improvements to reach a minimum feature set that makes it usable for many pedagogical scenarios.
Maybe OU Wiki could make it for Moodle 3.0? (so that we can decide on a longer term evolution of code features, bug fixing speed along with more features are added to your code, and support to Moodle community as ludo's team have been doing for these years, and are willing to keep that support for longer, besides Moodle HQ...)
On the other side, and from wiki users and coders from outside Moodle world, a good compromise between wiki markup and html wysiwyg editor is using the
wysiwym editor called
WikiWizard (see it in action in this
screencast), which is free software and takes the best of the wysiwyg and wiki markup. This allows using some visual editor (showing markup efect parsed in real time), and allow users to leave your hands on the keyboard (WikiWiki: quick and easy to write and edit afterwards..., not just a matter of technology but philosophy... allowing wiki markup in whatever editor in Moodle is a must, from my point of view)
Moreover, WikiWizard is using
Wiki Creole 1.0 (
http://www.wikicreole.org), the proposed wiki syntax standard for Wikis, since last
Wikisym 2007 conference. A full explanation about the WikiCreole and the WikiWizard can be read at
this paper on that wikisym07(
C. Sauer, C. Smith, & T. Benz. WikiCreole: A Common Wiki Markup). Keep in mind that WikiWizard has been released as LGPL'd
javascript editor to be easily usable in any wiki (or web application for mobile devices, etc), besides the java
applet shown in the screencast. Unluckily Wikimedia foundation decided not to support Wiki Creole in mediawiki for the time being (afaik, too much work for them and troubles since so many people are using theri syntax in many sites around the globe), but this shouldn't be the reason to avoid using that Wiki CReole standard proposal... (should we all stop using free software and OpenOffice because M$ .doc is still the kind of standard
de facto for our students and colleagues out there???)
As far as I've read, nWiki already has some support for Wiki Creole (another strategic vision and decission of nWiki team, beyond using mediawiki markup). Congratulations to ludo's team for that!
For sure, there is a lot to happen with OU Wiki in the future (and I'll like to see it and use it with my students, either testing of for production, who knows), but for the time being in Moodle 2.0, I would suggest to stick to nWiki, improve it (bugfixing code, usability, documentation), and for sure, improve nwiki reports to help assessment from teachers of individuals and groups quantity and quality of activity.
Other open source communities have evolved into nice and promising features... Maybe you want to have a look at that, in order to see what others have done on the reporting side, so that either OU Wiki and/or nWiki make it even better?
The references I know of:
http://doc.tikiwiki.org/Contributionhttp://doc.tikiwiki.org/Action+log So, from my point of view, congratulations Sam (and team) for your work with OU Wiki, and keep up the good work.
Congratulations ludo's team for your good work and support to community for these years, and keep steping forward in your roadmap.
And I'd love to see an improved nWiki module as the default Wiki module in Moodle 2.0.
Cheers
P.S. Attached a screenshot from the wisywym editor in WikiWizard . However, better idea can be taken of its power and usability from the screencast, which I suggest again here with the full url:
http://www.i3g.hs-heilbronn.de/webcasts/wikiwizard/wikiwizard_demo.html