Re: [Air-L] AoIR Wiki Was: A suggestion for reading lists and syllabi
<john.mcknight@asu.edu> I've been tasked with updating the wiki. Assuming it would be similar to updating a WordPress installation on a website, something I do regularly, I volunteered. I've discovered I can't make heads or tails of the MediaWIki update instructions, spread across multiple locations. I've just spent two hours with a friend who ran a corporate database design firm, and they couldn't figure it out either, and have gone back to do further research. At this point, I'd like to see it through, to make best use of my friends' volunteer time, and to develop a single, clear, comprehensive set of directions for AoIR volunteers updating the site. Kudos to those who have worked on this project before for their effort on this challenging project, and I do endorse calls for move to a system that can be maintained easily by amateur volunteer labor. John Carter McKnight, JD, PhD
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Message: 1 Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 22:21:47 -0500 From: Michael Zimmer <zimmerm@uwm.edu> To: AoIR-L <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Subject: Re: [Air-L] AoIR Wiki Was: A suggestion for reading lists and syllabi Message-ID: <52D26A04-5E66-4133-BACE-B0EC2A6B2E9B@uwm.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
I want to express my strong preference for the organization to have its wiki on aoir.org domain, controlled by us, and not monetized (and web-bugged) by third parties.
Currently on http://aoir.wikia.com/ I'm confronted by a Skylanders advertisement, Mazda banner, and a "Naked and Afraid" video commercial. And that's just on the top of the page....
There are also 8 tracking bugs/cookies being added to by browser.
I don't understand why we can't host MediaWiki and lock down editing so it doesn't get overun by spambots. I've had MW on my own site for years, and by requiring a user account to edit (and I control who gets user accounts), there's zero spam.
$0.02, Michael
-- Michael Zimmer, PhD Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies Director, Center for Information Policy Research University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee e: zimmerm@uwm.edu w: www.michaelzimmer.org
On Aug 6, 2013, at 1:14 PM, Alexander Halavais <halavais@gmail.com> wrote:
Alex et al,
I think you list my main pluses for a hosted solution. And I acknowledge the main advantages to self-hosting with MediaWiki. As I noted, many have volunteered to maintain the wiki, and many have failed to follow through. I'm not naming names, because there is no blame to be taken up here--but it's work that generally gets pushed to the back of the queue, particularly when people have to be going up for tenure ("I owe my tenure to my awesome wiki gardening" said no one ever), or looking for a job, or breathing. In other words, we are not more reliable than outsourcing the work, and so we've looked for managed solutions in a number of areas.
If there is a very strong feeling among a community of contributors that we should be using MediaWiki over something like Wikia, we could look a managed solution like Cloudways. But I think it makes more sense to go with a platform that is more user friendly to those without experience editing a MediaWiki (e.g., Wikipedia). If the ads are an issue, we could buy our way out of them. But for me, they aren't *enough* of a problem for that.
Frankly, I don't want to be a pessimist, and I am excited by the enthusiasm around building the wiki. I also am weighing the present enthusiasm against many years of people saying they wanted to work on the Wiki (content-wise) but few actually contributing. My suggestion would be that we build it on Wikia. If there are people regularly contributing, and there is consensus that it makes sense to bring it back under local control, and someone on the Executive is willing to agree to take on the burden of managing it, then I'll be happy to migrating the content. But until there is the commitment to the content, I think Wikia is a good interim measure that allows us to test the waters.
Best,
Other Alex
On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 9:24 AM, Alex Leavitt <alexleavitt@gmail.com> wrote:
Just to throw in a bit of discussion: Alex, I would definitely like to know your thoughts on Wikia vs. our own install. Obviously spam is one issue. Easy of use (ie., markup language) is probably another. On the our-install side, I can think of three arguments: 1) not relying on a 3rd party (issues of access, especially if Wikia goes defunct somehow) 2), supporting open-source software, and 3) no ads.
Personally, I'm still for the wiki.aoir.org install, but by creating a Wikia page without some kind of 'official' support of the org, I'm concerned efforts will be divided across both wikis (well, that is, if we can get new accounts on our own wiki...).
I'm happy to volunteer, btw, to be the point person for helping create new accounts for people that need them.
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Alexander Leavitt PhD Student USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism http://alexleavitt.com Twitter: @alexleavitt
On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 6:41 AM, Jeremy hunsinger <jhuns@vt.edu> wrote:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080421002111/http://wiki.aoir.org/index.php?tit...
is a pretty good version of the prior wiki.
On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 8:45 AM, jeremy hunsinger <jhuns@vt.edu> wrote:
Great Job Alex,
I guess the http://wiki.aoir.org 's heyday was probably back in 2003-2005. It was and is a good idea to have a wiki, spamming aside, and yes i do still help maintain it sometimes on the old url. It would be good to find a way to migrate some of the content from the old site to the new site though. I paid for some of of the content to be added to the wiki by one of my center assistants back in the day, the lists of researchers and a few other things. Those sorts of things were handy and drew some traffic at the time. However, they slowly became dated i guess. _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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Message: 2 Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 20:39:42 -0700 From: Alex Leavitt <alexleavitt@gmail.com> To: Michael Zimmer <zimmerm@uwm.edu> Cc: AoIR-L <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Subject: Re: [Air-L] AoIR Wiki Was: A suggestion for reading lists and syllabi Message-ID: <CACBxmg5oJy29x_6yNkF3R_T_p= JYuCFCtj_5mMw1ZwTjVvMCfQ@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
There really is no reason we can't. Alex's main criticism was loss of people over time willing to maintain it.
If someone's willing to give me access to the wiki backend tonight/tomorrow, I'll be more than happy to update it (given Ben's optimism that the updated infrastructure will be spam-proof) and start setting people up with accounts.
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Alexander Leavitt PhD Student USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism http://alexleavitt.com Twitter: @alexleavitt
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John Carter McKnight