Comments on: Should Boycottnovell.com Homepage be Changed?

By: David Gerard

David Gerard — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:56:12 +0000

“I suppose we’re doing it all wrong then”

Not at all! I was just giving one way others do it. “Whatever seems to work” is a good guideline for wiki setup.

“We have Wiki guru David Gerard to hold our hand as we go along. ”

/me runs away screaming

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:09:02 +0000

Check out http://boycottnovell.com (changed minutes ago).

By: Roy Bixler

Roy Bixler — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:09:49 +0000

Will this help the recent load problems? If so, that would certainly be an extra incentive.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:53:40 +0000

kde4work,

The site will not change, except perhaps the front page. The page which is currently the front page will then become boycottnovell.com/?blog

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:51:54 +0000

I’ve already dived into the Wiki and stored information in it, so I might as well go along with this. We have Wiki guru David Gerard to hold our hand as we go along.

By: kde4work

kde4work — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:46:50 +0000

I just recently discovered this site and I enjoy reading it very much the way it is. Never change a running system. Keep up the good work!

By: Linux

Linux — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:06:27 +0000

you should be using drupal with taxonomy + book module great way to classify thing.

maybe ask some drupal guru to set it up for you..

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:59:46 +0000

I suppose we're doing it all wrong then. Can you look very quickly at this schema and see if it can be improved before it grows a lot bigger? The idea is to also make one blog post for each exhibit, so we have: 1) original scan; 2) partial transcript (if any); 3) full transcript/text and blog post annotating it, linking to other evidence; 4) some relational information in the Wiki (not truly decided yet). It's quite a project and I intend to complete it one day.

By: David Gerard

David Gerard — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:51:24 +0000

The Wikisource method is good for this – document scans in a repository, linked from their category, linked from an index page and linked from the transcription.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:48:57 +0000

The Wiki was discussed as an option in IRC some months ago*. It’s valuable for collaboration on documents and organisation by topic (with many-to-many relationships), but you already know that.

Maybe we can use some narrative to glue together the many posts** and tell a story. Wikis are suitable for booking editing, but we mostly use it for Comes exhibits at the moment. There are around 9,000 of them.

___
* Most ideas that BN implemented had come from readers.
** My posts are mostly accumulations of confirmed reports. I love mashups.

By: David Gerard

David Gerard — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:39:13 +0000

A wiki engine as a repository engine? I’ve always wondered what Wikileaks were thinking when they chose MediaWiki. It’s mostly ill-suited to what they’re trying to do.

(Though I know a remarkable number of geeks who use MediaWiki to quickly write a usable website for themselves. Another thing in the class of jobs a wiki *can* do that it isn’t really for.)

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:36:05 +0000

In what sense? The delivery and accumulation of stories is very different there.

By: Linux

Linux — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:29:02 +0000

maybe make something like wikileaks

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:13:37 +0000

Yes, that’s the plan.

By: seller_liar

seller_liar — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:12:29 +0000

For easy change ,continue using mediawiki , but create specific section for news and content .

Don t use mediawiki for news .Put all news on boycottnovell.com/blog instead.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 08:35:34 +0000

I’ve just taken a look. Both are blog-style homepages with most recent stories appearing first.

By: Linux

Linux — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 08:30:48 +0000

What I want to suggest is to check out other sites that have similar content and get good ideas from them. Make a list of them call for vote.

1. http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/
2. http://consumerist.com/

What we need is properly organized content that is easy to navigate even for a newbie. We can have a seperate wiki but hosting the main site on wiki is will not be a good. idea.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 08:30:39 +0000

I don’t think we need another CMS. The idea in creating the Wiki was collaboration and writing of a story that glues together posts.

By: Linux

Linux — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 08:24:16 +0000

I would vote for Drupal !

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:47:02 +0000

The URL for the blog will be boycottnovell.com/?blog, but what we need to do first is organise the Wiki so that it tells a story. To have a reverse-chronological list of posts is not particularly useful to new visitors. It's still not clear what information to include and how to organise it. The biggest section of the Wiki so far is Comes vs Microsoft. The Wiki is still messy, so it needs months of work before visitors are sent there.