ARKA working group conversion from Confluence to github wiki

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John Kunze

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Sep 25, 2024, 10:33:39 AM9/25/24

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Dear ARK Alliance (ARKA) Working Group members,

This message is an update on the conversion of ARKA documents from the Confluence wiki (at wiki.lyrasis.org) to at github wiki (at github.com/arks-org/arks.github.io/wiki), plus a proposal and request for feedback (by September 30) to formally move the focus of future ARKA group support documentation to the new github wiki.

Briefly, the conversion is on track to finish by the end of this year, and each of the four ARKA working groups has given the go-ahead after having a meeting that featured a tour of, and an agenda hosted on, the new platform.

The proposal is that, going forward from October 1, the github (GH) wiki will be considered the version of record for ARKA group documents. If you have feedback, please respond by Monday September 30.

Preparing for the changeover

For the change to go into effect, there would need to be a few more things for ARKA group members to consider.

If you manage calendar invitations, you will want to update agenda links to reference the new wiki.

Each group member is asked to visit the new wiki, and if you do not have edit privileges (do you see an EDIT button when you visit?), please reply with your github user id so we can add those privileges.

Volunteers are invited to reply to help us identify missing links and content that should be brought forward (eg, the FAQs are not completely converted) or archived.

We will still need the Confluence wiki to be operational until the conversion is completed, estimated to be the end of 2024.

Background

As you may know, the old Confluence wiki has been used since 2018, when it was the main web presence for the ARK Alliance, then known as the ARKs-in-the-Open initiative. After the arks.org website was established (then Wordpress, now GH pages), the old wiki still hosted mostly working group support documents (eg, agendas and notes). Still ahead is to convert a few user-facing ARK documents, such as the FAQs in English, French, and Spanish, to be hosted under arks.org.

To help recruit new members, the user-facing page at arks.org/community-groups (content formerly hosted on the wiki) describes the working groups. Also, formerly public NAAN working group content is now only open to working group members (for the same PII concerns that keeps the NAAN mailing list archive non-public).

As with any conversion, there are tradeoffs. While the new platform has many advantages (eg, cost, simplicity), some formatting options have been lost and new conventions are still being worked out. We will all be learning the GH wiki platform together, and we ask you to help us improve the editing tips document.

In case you're wondering why the umbrella wiki at github.com/arks-org/arks.github.io/wiki appears to link to 4 different group wikis, there are actually 2 physical (repo) wikis, 1 associated with the NAAN WG’s private repo, and 3 metaphorical WG wikis associated with the public arks.org repo.