Picture of Chuck Lorenz
Wikis: which is best for Adapt?
by Chuck Lorenz - Tuesday, 11 August 2015, 6:10 PM
 

So let's talk documentation: content and platform.

We just finished a big push for better documentation to support the v2 framework. Over 75 pages of readmes and new wiki pages were created that focus on the plug-ins (components, extensions, theme, menu). And yet it is a small deposit of the wealth of information that the community holds and must continue to share.

Documentation is spread out over two dozen repositories, and we're trying to meet the needs of two audiences, software developers and course authors. Without search capability, it can be difficult at times to find what you need.

It's time to explore which documentation platforms (e.g., wikis) can meet the needs of our growing community. Since we want to do this right, we should also explore the information needed by our particular community. The two are often interrelated.

We want to hear from you to ensure a good choice for the community.

What platforms might suit Adapt (both framework and authoring tool)?
What approach/es to documentation might be most useful, facilitate adoption, or achieve the result you deem important?

Thanks in advance for your input!

Picture of Dennis Heaney
Re: Wikis: which is best for Adapt?
by Dennis Heaney - Tuesday, 11 August 2015, 9:06 PM
 

Hey Chuck,

I'll put in a vote for MediaWiki.

 

Pros

  • lots of features
  • well implemented search facility
  • categorisation of content is great
  • well supported

Cons

  • has a bit of a learning curve
  • attaching media is a bit of a chore
  • seem a bit clunky compared to some tools

We use in internally at Learning Pool, and we love it.

Whatever way we decide to go, though, I think gathering the knowledge from the community into one place is a great idea.

Thanks,

Dennis

Mark
Re: Wikis: which is best for Adapt?
by Mark Lynch - Tuesday, 11 August 2015, 10:20 PM
 

Hi Chuck,

We could also look at this by providing a list of features that are essential or highly desirable, maybe we MoSCoW rate them. Then marry that list of features up against the suggestions for suitable tools, put that into a matrix (spreadsheet) score the tools against the list of requirements and the tool with the highest score should win (or something like that).

Requirements

  • Search - fast and contextual
  • Markup/HTML editor
  • Version control/history edits of pages
  • categorisation
  • Easy article/page linking
  • Approval/Publish workflow, it would be nice to link to version control
  • Easy navigation
  • In-line images

 

Tools

  • MediaWiki
  • Confluence

 

Picture of Chuck Lorenz
Re: Wikis: which is best for Adapt?
by Chuck Lorenz - Tuesday, 11 August 2015, 11:07 PM
 

I like the ideas, folks. Keep 'em coming!

Picture of Tom Taylor
Re: Wikis: which is best for Adapt?
by Tom Taylor - Tuesday, 18 August 2015, 4:39 PM
 

I agree with all of Mark's suggestions. Here are mine (in order of importance):

  • The ability to upload read only files such as specification docs - this would remove the need for our documentation repo, which is quite hard to navigate (or even know what's there).
  • In keeping with the spirit of Adapt, I'd like to see us adopt something that's mobile-friendly.
  • In addition to images, would be nice to have support for other media (video, audio etc.).
  • Theming options (to fit the Adapt branding/community site).
  • Any integration with our existing tools/processes is always a benefit, especially git/github and JIRA.

FYI: GitHub's wiki engine is open-source: https://github.com/gollum/gollum (and ironically, I believe it has search). GitHub's wikis are awesome because they're git-based, so you can manually check them out and tinker around with the posts offline.