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I'd like to thank Tom Wolff for the wiki training sessions/philosophy discussions at this year's annual meeting. The mix of training and discussion that I saw during the sessions seemed to be valuable for the organization.
During our session, Tom mentioned that he wanted to keep the 2009 meeting material on the wiki even as we add the 2010 items. As I take a look at the PIUG Discussion Forum, it's clear that we need some way to organize the content. We have announcements of deadlines, workshops, downloadable materials and more spread throughout the Forum.
I'd like to suggest that a page (topic?) be created within the Discussion Forum for each meeting, containing a description of the meeting (dates, location, subject, etc) and that all material relating to that meeting be placed under that page. As I see it, this has several benefits:
- a reader looking for information on an upcoming meeting can open the topic and find all the relevent information in one place, without having to rely on the author of each page clearly identifying the event;
- readers who aren't planning to attend or who otherwise don't want to be notified of changes can un-subscribe to that page and all sub-topics;
- organization like this should reduce the clutter in the main forum area, making it easier for users to browse non-meeting discussion topics; and
- once the meeting is well in the past, all pages relating to that meeting can be moved to a "Past Meetings" section in one simple step.
I can imagine this same structure being created in the Members-Only and Planning Committee spaces as well.
Comments (7)
May 09, 2009
Admin - Tom Wolff says:
John: Thank you for this suggestion. I could implement most of it but not witho...John:
Thank you for this suggestion. I could implement most of it but not without possibly negative ramifications.
I'll deal with your last point first. The 2010 Annual Conference already has a totally separate space from the 2009 Space. The new team would still have access to the old space for reference purposes. I don't think the members-only data will get so big that we'll need to segregate entries beyond making sure that pages are properly titled with the conference year.
The reorganization of the forum entries can easily be taken care of in principal. I checked this out in the Sandbox by creating a new discussion forum page under which related topics were moved; see [All Discussion Forum postings on the same topic - Test Pages]. I moved under this discussion forum three topics that all started with Test Page. It works fine with drawbacks.
First, the children pages don't show up in the main discussion forum table. One can find them as children under the new topic but that requires actually viewing children pages, not always the default, or searching for them with the Search Box. I don't know if and when we want to make "archival" pages that obscure.
Second, I used the nifty WebDav tool that admins have to move the pages all at once. As I feared, a separate email notification was created for each page that was moved; i.e. we're gearing up for an email blizzard. This notification for "moves" is incredibly annoying and unavoidable. I have put in a very comprehensive trouble ticket about it and the response from the Confluence user community and the Confluence developers has been deafening in its silence. I can't understand why developers and admins put up with all the unavoidable email notifications that Confluence generates unnecessarily. At least allow users to control the email notifications.
Maybe this bulk move should just wait until we can avoid email blizzards and after the old notices are really out of date. For now, we have just fifteen topics listed on each discussion forum page. As topics age and aren't commented on, they get buried on later pages. Maybe we'll figure out another way to deal with this as Confluence is further improved and we become more savvy in using the PIUG wiki.
Also note that Cynthia did not create a new topic each time she wanted to alert the PIUG wiki community of new updates about the Annual Conference. Instead, at my suggestion, she just edited an earlier topic. That minimized the number of related topics, namely to one in each case, but did send out an email notification with content each time. I think it worked pretty well. Check out the history for PIUG 2009 Annual Conference - Printable Agenda Now Available using the Information icon in the upper right corner. I can't be sure, but I think there are four or five versions with different titles that went out as alerts but there is still only one Discussion Forum page. I think PIUG 2009 Annual Conference - Technical Program Updates also was used at least three times.
May 10, 2009
John Willmore says:
I was trying to build a list of pages in the Discussion Forum that would have go...I was trying to build a list of pages in the Discussion Forum that would have gone nicely under a "2009 Annual Meeting - San Antonio, TX" topic, but accidentally clicked on one and lost all my typing, so I'm going to leave that as an exercise to the reader. Trust me - not all relevant topics have "PIUG 2009 Annual Conference" at the front of the title, my own company's announcement included.
I understand your hesitancy to do a move of pages from 2009, but that is exactly why I'm suggesting this now. If we can use a new structure for the 2009 Northeast Meeting, and for subsequent meetings, there won't be a need for moves. (The suggestion of moving old meetings to an archival location isn't that important to this proposal, and can be put off for another day).
As far as having the conference page fall off the list of the Discussion Forum table, if there is one home page for the meeting, changes in deadline, etc. can be edited on that page to bump the meeting back up the table. (Is there an option to have a sticky page that is always in the summary table?)
What this really comes down to is organizing the pages created so that there is an easy way to find everything about an upcoming conference in one place: dates, program, workshops, restaurants, housing discussions, casting calls, etc. I believe that using the hierarchy of the wiki does this better than other approaches, reduces visual clutter on the alphabetical Forum topic list, and lets us take advantage of the email notifications system.
May 10, 2009
Admin - Tom Wolff says:
John: An administrative tool for you first: the system saves drafts of entries ...John:
An administrative tool for you first: the system saves drafts of entries every 10 seconds or so. I have had the problem you have, namely previewing an entry and then navigating from it to another site by clicking on a link. If you go back to your original page for editing or adding a comment, the system will usually ask you if you want to continue with the draft you were editing. Alternatively, you can view all the drafts that the system has saved via the top menu bar Settings...My Wiki Data...View My Drafts. Then you may "resume editing" or "delete" entries. It might still be helpful to have the list you compiled. You might just as well send me the list by email as post it on the wiki.
I believe that the idea of putting Discussion Forum postings in the "right place" for meetings is not going to be operative because it is going to add complexity that people won't use properly. I have tried to keep the main PIUG Discussion Forum as analogous to the old discussion list as possible: the main PIUG Discussion Forum should be the first place people think about to post their entries. They do this by going to the main page and clicking on "Post Topic." Even this simple step isn't always followed as people use the "Add Page" function and then have the new page come under whatever page they were viewing.
Having a separate forum or a separate main page within the the main PIUG Discussion Forum for meeting related information just likely to be ignored by most people. I also want to keep the number of forums limited so that people don't have to "watch" too many forums. We might have people forgetting to watch a specific meeting forum whereas they would be watching the main PIUG Discussion Forum. In addition, I have already shown that child pages under forum pages don't show up in the main forum table, and that is a problem. I think we need to balance ease of posting messages with the ease of recalling them. I can take care of the latter by moving pages later once having pages listed in the main forum table isn't so important. Yes, there is a sticky option (see the stick pin icon in the forum table), and I have been using it for the primary PIUG Annual Conference posting.
I am glad we are brainstorming ideas. I recognize that organization is going to be a growing problem as wiki content grows. I am not sure that it is a problem now or that good solutions yet exist. Certainly what we have on the wiki is much better than in the old PIUG-L archives, which have almost no organizational structure and which were hardly ever used. Time will tell regarding the wiki.
Tom
May 12, 2009
Admin - Tom Wolff says:
John: I think I am making progress on this issue. Check out [Subforum - all...John:
I think I am making progress on this issue. Check out [Subforum - all discussion Forum postings on the same topic - Test Pages] in the Sandbox. I moved three topics on the same matter (think PIUG 2009 Annual Conference) to a new Subforum page and it seems to work OK. The search box on the main forum page (think main PIUG Discussion Forum) will find the subforum entries even though they aren't actually listed anymore in the table in the main forum page. I think that is what we want. The only issue will be the email blizzard that would happen when I move all the entries. Even though this seems like it will work, I would like to get the Annual Conference a bit more behind us before I make the move. I still have at least one post-meeting topic to edit, namely on the pending posting of conference presentations in the members-only area.
Your idea of setting up a subforum in advance, such as for the 2009 Northeast Conference will probably work too. I could create a new topic in the subforum. I also could add a sticky on the Subforum so that it would stay at the top of the main forum table for as long as we wanted it to. The only issue will be whether people will put there postings in the right subforum by themselves in advance. If they don't, then the entries will appear in the main forum page, which is probably a good thing, until we manually move them to the subforum, which will create another email notification. At least users will see the notifications "enough" times but maybe not be totally annoyed by getting duplicates or triplicates. We have time to figure this out and maybe Confluence will have a way to stop email notifications for file moves, although I won't bet the farm on that one.
Thanks for promoting the idea of a subforum, even if you didn't actually use that name for what you were asking for. I think it will satisfy all four of your bullet points.
Tom
May 09, 2009
Aleksandr Belinskiy says:
John, Are you talking on arranging of information on PIUG Meetings? I agree th...John,
Are you talking on arranging of information on PIUG Meetings? I agree that discussion on the specific meeting should be kept in one place.
The separate question is what should be kept for future in the "Meeting Page". Ideally, we need to move (or already have moved) on wiki essential information about each meeting: program, speakers bio, chairman's opening and closing remarks, etc. (or linked to piug web-page) + possibly essential (non-logistical) question from discussion list. In the real word, I do no know who would be willing to do that.
For non-PIUG meeting, with some exceptions (IPI conferences), I do no think that we should create a page for every conference; apparently you do not mean that.
Regards,
Alex
May 10, 2009
John Willmore says:
Yes, Alex, I am thinking of the PIUG meetings only. As I noted to Tom above, I ...Yes, Alex, I am thinking of the PIUG meetings only.
As I noted to Tom above, I am proposing this mostly to benefit meetings going forward, so that these items do not have to be moved - they will be created in the correct location from the very beginning.
John
Jul 16, 2009
Admin - Tom Wolff says:
I want to follow-up on this suggestion for subforums. I created the first subfo...I want to follow-up on this suggestion for subforums.
I created the first subforum, Subforum - PIUG 2009 Annual Conference, on July 2 and moved a few more PIUG-DF topics today when I realized I hadn't moved them all before. There are now 15 topics with 8 comments now in this subforum and no longer directly in the main PIUG-DF. I think this is a good move forward. At this time, subforums will only be set up retrospectively. All new postings should be made in the main PIUG-DF.
Unfortunately, moving files to a subforum results in a very annoying "email blizzard": one email message per moved topic. I had I thought I had a workaround, a facility called webDAV, but the only difference it made was that it indicated that the original author moved the items instead of the admin.
While I moved the pages for future convenience, I have absolutely no way to turn off those alerting email messages at this time. I have asked the developer to change this alerting feature and haven't gotten any positive feedback from them. I'll keep trying. I also will try to remember to make these moves on weekends; I did it last time on Independence Day weekend on purpose but I forgot about that today. My apologies for inconvenience to PIUG wiki users.
Tom