This question isn't particularly about the Moodle wikis, but I thought I would post it in this forum because I would assume those who read it would be wiki-knowledgeable.
The common conception of a wiki is something that is open to anyone editing it. However, I'm wondering about the applicability of using a wiki to collaborate on a co-authored academic publication. I've talked to two different colleagues (individually) in the past about the possibility of collaborating on a book on a particular topic that each of us has certain strengths related to it and also differing access to useful sources. Currently, we are in three different countriess (US, Egypt, and Australia) and so we face not only physical distance but also timezone distance so synchronous collaborative activity seems prohibitive. I'm pondering the idea of writing the book using a wiki, even perhaps setting up a special Moodle course to do it. Does anyone know if this has been done before in the academic world? Does anyone know of any wiki-authoring guidelines (I'm not talking about technical ones, more the writing process) available that would be applicable to such a situation? Any ideas on this idea?
Hi,
I strongly believe that the wiki model is the best one for collaborative authoring of texts of any kind.
As you may allready kwno I've ben developing a new wiki module for moodle:dfwiki. This module is designed specifically to host projects of collaborative authoring. Tha'ts wy we include the "blocs" with the "index page tree", page glossay, page navigation, admin with page locking, wanted pages, orphanded pages, user contrib page list, and so on...
Ah you also can choose wich wiki markup language to use and even the moodle HTML editor.
Rigth now we have released a moodle course based on a wiki content.
In the next weeks we are going to release a wiki indexin tool, wich will hep you to solve one of the porblema asociated with the wiki contents: caos. The links in a wiki text tend to grow exponentially, so is a good idea to have a MAIN INDEX to guide the reader throug the text (and a eventual pdf export filter, that we are also developing).
Meet dfwiki here: http://appserv.lsi.upc.es/palangana/moodle/course/view.php?id=15
download dfwiki here:
dfwiki_1.0_rev2005110201.zip
Test dfwiki here
crash test dfwiki
I strongly believe that the wiki model is the best one for collaborative authoring of texts of any kind.
As you may allready kwno I've ben developing a new wiki module for moodle:dfwiki. This module is designed specifically to host projects of collaborative authoring. Tha'ts wy we include the "blocs" with the "index page tree", page glossay, page navigation, admin with page locking, wanted pages, orphanded pages, user contrib page list, and so on...
Ah you also can choose wich wiki markup language to use and even the moodle HTML editor.
Rigth now we have released a moodle course based on a wiki content.
In the next weeks we are going to release a wiki indexin tool, wich will hep you to solve one of the porblema asociated with the wiki contents: caos. The links in a wiki text tend to grow exponentially, so is a good idea to have a MAIN INDEX to guide the reader throug the text (and a eventual pdf export filter, that we are also developing).
Meet dfwiki here: http://appserv.lsi.upc.es/palangana/moodle/course/view.php?id=15
download dfwiki here:
dfwiki_1.0_rev2005110201.zipTest dfwiki here
crash test dfwikiI strongly believe that the wiki model is the best one for collaborative authoring of texts of any kind.
I agree, there are two approaches for writing together with ICT:
- The workflow format, better in control of the process, worse in supporting the creativity flows in a collab.
- The wiki format: the ultime free format tool. Most of the supporting tools of Wiki are there to prevent that it becomes a mess.
So if you choose a wiki:
- You must set rules how to use it together:
for example in the past I was moving a text from page 3 to page 5 in collab project, and everytime it went back to the old page..
Until I got a message from the famous Alan Kay that he was the other person, moving the text from page 5 to page 3.. We settled it in our emails, I forgot the solution, so he won?)
- I use for years a privat wiki (Swiki) to store al my snippets in a Wiki, for example (see picture) Moodle things I find in the forums.
- When you start a project you hardly know how the end-result will look like, so it is very important that you can reorganise the pages AND the page names before your final book will crystalize in your wiki. In the example I wrote Moodle 1.3, but Janne's CMS is for 1.5, so I should AND CAN change the title of the page in this Swiki.
I hope dfWiki wil get - or already has ? - Another nice option in the Swiki is the easy way I can lock the pages page by page (as writers) but still can allow other people to add comments on the closed pages: the visitor can fill the commentbox and I get an email.
- You can divide the pages by simply putting different emailadresses in the edit forms of different pages: the person with the email on that page will receive the messages on that page.
When your book gets structure, you can decide who will work on (the comments) of which chapter / subject. - If you need a form on some page - in Swiki - you can design a form in your webbrowser and publish that for the visitor (or yourself
- In the new version of Swiki you even can past a calendar page and hang "yellow" wiki pages behind every date.
- Swiki is a standalone mini-server. I can install and start to use it in less then 30 seconds and if I get a faster laptop I will improve that record. (Before we had Moodle we used it with secondary school children - for example to write their own guide for the visit to Rome. Soem teachers still combine it with Moodle.)
- If dfWiki will get all these options, I will prefer dfWiki: for advanced users it offers much more support.
- When I want to close a wiki for a group, but still wish to allow not-moodle-users (I hardly can imagine that these people exist) to access the pages AND FILL the comment boxes, then dfWiki must support the guest account for that purpose. (Maybe that is already built in, I did not look for dfWiki for several weeks or so.)
Wow, wow, wow,
this feels lika a requirement list
, I like it... quality feedback is allways hard to find and wellcome!
Let's take it poit by point:
>When you start a project you hardly know how the end-result will look like, so it >is very important that you can reorganise the pages AND the page names >before your final book will crystalize in your wiki. In the example I wrote Moodle >1.3, but Janne's CMS is for 1.5, so I should AND CAN change the title of the page in> this Swiki.
>I hope dfWiki wil get - or already has ?
this option
Yes! It has it:
In the admin block is called UPDATE page (Now I realise that it will be better to change the feature name to RENAME PAGE) You also have the Page synonimous tool to create synonimous of a page name... This for instance can allow you to merge subjects A and B without changing all the links. You delete B page, and define B as A synonimous, so all the links to B will go to A.
>Another nice option in the Swiki is the easy way I can lock the pages page by >page (as writers) but still can allow other people to add comments on the >closed pages: the visitor can fill the commentbox and I get an email.
Yes dfwiki has it!
Its in the Admin bloc you can enable and disable the edition to students.
>If you need a form on some page - in Swiki - you can design a form in your webbrowser and publish that for the visitor (or yourself With forms you can force more page structure, the pages are stored as XML,
so the form-pages are easier to harvest. You even can design the form
pages in edit-view and view-view with additional html or so, so the
form stays not that abstarcat when you fill it.)
Ohhh we don't have this, we are working on something alike, but maybe we can use the idea (and the code if is in php and open source
)
>In the new version of Swiki you even can past a calendar page and hang "yellow" wiki pages behind every date.
Amazing.. I want that on dfwiki!
>When I want to close a wiki for a group, but still wish to allow not-moodle-users (I hardly can imagine that these people exist) to access the pages AND FILL the comment boxes, then dfWiki must support the guest account for that purpose. (Maybe that is already built in, I did not look for dfWiki for several weeks or so.)
Comment boxes and discussion pages are one of the forthcomming features, a matter of weeks.
Please ANY suggestion will be wellcome... I want dfwiki to be as great as it can be.
Regards
Marc
this feels lika a requirement list
, I like it... quality feedback is allways hard to find and wellcome! Let's take it poit by point:
>When you start a project you hardly know how the end-result will look like, so it >is very important that you can reorganise the pages AND the page names >before your final book will crystalize in your wiki. In the example I wrote Moodle >1.3, but Janne's CMS is for 1.5, so I should AND CAN change the title of the page in> this Swiki.
>I hope dfWiki wil get - or already has ?
this optionYes! It has it:
In the admin block is called UPDATE page (Now I realise that it will be better to change the feature name to RENAME PAGE) You also have the Page synonimous tool to create synonimous of a page name... This for instance can allow you to merge subjects A and B without changing all the links. You delete B page, and define B as A synonimous, so all the links to B will go to A.
>Another nice option in the Swiki is the easy way I can lock the pages page by >page (as writers) but still can allow other people to add comments on the >closed pages: the visitor can fill the commentbox and I get an email.
Yes dfwiki has it
! Its in the Admin bloc you can enable and disable the edition to students.
>If you need a form on some page - in Swiki - you can design a form in your webbrowser and publish that for the visitor (or yourself
With forms you can force more page structure, the pages are stored as XML,
so the form-pages are easier to harvest. You even can design the form
pages in edit-view and view-view with additional html or so, so the
form stays not that abstarcat when you fill it.)Ohhh we don't have this, we are working on something alike, but maybe we can use the idea (and the code if is in php and open source
)>In the new version of Swiki you even can past a calendar page and hang "yellow" wiki pages behind every date.
Amazing.. I want that on dfwiki!
>When I want to close a wiki for a group, but still wish to allow not-moodle-users (I hardly can imagine that these people exist) to access the pages AND FILL the comment boxes, then dfWiki must support the guest account for that purpose. (Maybe that is already built in, I did not look for dfWiki for several weeks or so.)
Comment boxes and discussion pages are one of the forthcomming features, a matter of weeks.
Please ANY suggestion will be wellcome... I want dfwiki to be as great as it can be.
Regards
Marc
Since the year 2000 I dream in Wiki's and I am very happy with the growing options of dfWiki. Thanks for all the effort you put in dfWiki.
.
Sorry about the forms: it is implemented in Smalltalk, dialect version Squeak.
I am new to moodle, but am using wiki's (they're great) for a couple of years (especially seedwiki); one of the minor things I often encounter is the problem that when different students work at the same wiki at the same time, information of one of the students get lost; some wiki-environments (like bloki)can avoid simultaneous editing; what about dfwiki?
Sjaak
Sjaak
Oh yeah, concurrecncy avoiding is a recurrent problem.
In dfwiki we have implemented a policy... if a page is overwritten a warning message is shown to the user, in the history page you can find both versions.
We are thinking about a better way, but rigth now we give the responsability to the users... according to the wiki filosophy.
Ludo
In dfwiki we have implemented a policy... if a page is overwritten a warning message is shown to the user, in the history page you can find both versions.
We are thinking about a better way, but rigth now we give the responsability to the users... according to the wiki filosophy.
Ludo
check-out with a count-down mechanism? (so after a certain time the page falls free?
Oh yes, but the tuning of the couter is too much sensible ...
If editing time exceeds it is unusefull , and if is way too high the wiki stand locked most of the time on very active pages. For example I use wiki to host team group assigment inscriptions, wich make the pages very actives and at the end everything goes ok. Sometimes you must rely on human behaviour rather than sophisticated technology.
If editing time exceeds it is unusefull , and if is way too high the wiki stand locked most of the time on very active pages. For example I use wiki to host team group assigment inscriptions, wich make the pages very actives and at the end everything goes ok. Sometimes you must rely on human behaviour rather than sophisticated technology.
What about some kind fo "merging" feature for concurrent edits? (is this in the development roadmap?). This would be great, and it's a missing feature in all the wiki's I've seen so far...
Btw, congratulations for your team work on dfWiki, Ludo & mates.
Btw, congratulations for your team work on dfWiki, Ludo & mates.
