Moodle plugins directory: OU wiki

Edgardo - sorry but we don't see that problem. If you want to report a problem, please can you ensure you have the server debugging level set to 'DEVELOPER' and the option to display debug messages turned on (both in the 'Debugging' settings page). Hopefully an error will be displayed which you can report as a bug using our GitHub site, linked at the top of this page. Thanks.

I am looking for the OUwiki 1.9 updated plugin that must be installed, in order for ouwikis in courses to transfer properly into 2.4. Do you know where I can find this 1.9 update?

Sue: I don't know, but perhaps Jason might. He's away at the moment.

What has happened to the Comments feature that was available in Moodle 1.9? The Annotations options exists, but the Comments to page seems unavailable.

Sarah: The old comment feature was intentionally removed. It was replaced with (for teachers) the Annotation system, and (for students) actually getting them to edit the wiki page. For more information/discussion please see https://github.com/moodleou/moodle-mod_ouwiki/issues/18

Sam: Thanks for your prompt answer. I am somewhat disappointed by this decision. The Annotations system serves an entirely different purpose, which suits me less as a teacher. The Comments system is most similar to the "Talk" in Wikipedia, and the combination of Edit and Comments pushes instructor and students to understand the implications and use each in accordance with the instructional objectives. Why not leave the option at the discretion of the instructor, as in previous versions?

Well, it's about 18 months since this decision was made so it's a bit hard to remember, but basically because the 1.9 system with 3 different comment methods was too complicated. We're trying to make a wiki for teaching, not a full-featured MediaWiki equivalent, and it was too difficult for users to understand when they should comment and when they should edit (and for teachers, when they should annotate). The interface for comments also wasn't very good. If there's a need for out-of-band comments it is better to do this in a different mechanism such as a forum or online chat.

(Using the new system, users can of course still add in-place comments by editing the page to write it in there.)

Really though it doesn't much matter why we made the decision - this is ancient history for us, it was made about eighteen months ago. So, I mean, you can obviously disagree, but that's the way it is now - sorry.

OK, thanks for the detailed explanation. I understand the considerations.

Any news on when to expect the happy news of a MOODLE_24_STABLE branch for the OU Wiki?

As Sam Marshall wrote 22 May 2013: "The tested version will be available in the MOODLE_24_STABLE branch of each [OU] plugin in GitHub at some point early in June 2013. (You can pester me online if I have forgotten to update it!)"

http://learn.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/viewpost.php?post=144632

FYI. The 2.4 stable branch creation and release via Moodle plugins should be by the end of this week.

FYI. There is a known bug around templates in the 2.4 release version of ouwiki. This has been fixed in the GitHub master and 24 stable branch (an update to locallib.php).

This bug will cause issues for users that currently use xml wiki templates on any activities, it won't do so when using the new zip template format.

Hi Jason, do you know if/when this plug-in will be available for Moodle 2.5? I was looking for a solution to using templates with individual wikis and came across this plug-in, which some users have recommended, but unfortunately our site is currently on 2.5.

There will be an 'official' 2.5 release at the beginning of December. However, we are due to start migrating code to 2.5 in the next month so any updates will be fed into the master branch on GitHub when they are committed. If there are any 2.5 specific issues they can also be raised on GitHub and be addressed before that Dec release.

Is there a release date for OU wiki/blog for 2.6? Would one be available by March 1 since 2.7 release date is looking like March? Love the tools and would like to use them in the new systems. Thanks.

I am not the maintainer of OU blog/wiki any more but I can answer the question about OU release schedule in general. (We should really add this to the plugin descriptions and put it in bold as people keep asking, but I'll leave that for Jason to decide!)

The OU release schedule is currently that we release our live versions in June or December, slightly more than six months after the Moodle release. For example, we will be releasing our Moodle 2.6 version in June 2014.

If you want a live, fully tested version of our plugins that should be suitable for use in 'real' systems, you will need to match this release schedule - i.e. do not update to Moodle 2.6 until after June 2014, and Moodle 2.7 until December 2014, etc. This has the added advantage that you will be using a more reliable Moodle version rather than a bleeding-edge .0 version.

If you are willing to use an untested developer version of our plugins, these normally start working on the 'master' branch of our GitHub repository about three or four months before a release. For example, the Moodle 2.6 versions are gradually becoming available on the master branch in February 2014. There is no announcement or branch or anything for this - we just fix issues in 2.6 as spotted. Community members can help by reporting/submitting fixes for any bugs caused by the upgrade at this point.

In addition to this, depending on what changed in the Moodle version, sometimes (for instance) the 2.5 version might basically work in 2.6, so if you feel like living dangerously you could give it a try.