PickWiki
Tony Gravagno
Intro and thoughts start here:
removeNebula-RnD.com/blog/tech/mv/2009/01/wiki1.html
T
drdanny
i couldn't agree more. the resource seems tilted somewhat to U2. is
this due to lack of contributions from other platforms or is the
intent to have a u2 wiki?
i wanted to read the "ConvertReportstoXML" page but nothing
displays...help!
dr
dawn
> On Jan 18, 3:04 pm, Tony Gravagno
>
> <address.is.in.po...@removethis.com.invalid> wrote:
> > I think we should make better use of the PickWiki community resource.
> > Intro and thoughts start here:
>
> > removeNebula-RnD.com/blog/tech/mv/2009/01/wiki1.html
>
> > T
>
> i couldn't agree more. the resource seems tilted somewhat to U2. is
> this due to lack of contributions from other platforms or is the
> intent to have a u2 wiki?
I think those who started are on U2. I am quite sure that others are
welcome to contribute. --dawn
<snip>
Tony Gravagno
>Tony wrote:
>> I think we should make better use of the PickWiki community resource.
>> Intro and thoughts start here:
>>
>> removeNebula-RnD.com/blog/tech/mv/2009/01/wiki1.html
>i couldn't agree more. the resource seems tilted somewhat to U2. is
>this due to lack of contributions from other platforms or is the
>intent to have a u2 wiki?
About U2, see http://212.241.202.162/U2UGWiki/moin.cgi/
Yes, I think the issue with PickWiki is simply that more U2 people
know (care?) about it than non-U2 people. That's easy to change -
just post content and we'll see less bias.
>i wanted to read the "ConvertReportstoXML" page but nothing
>displays...help!
That's not a problem, that's just the way a wiki works. If no one has
contributed content then no content exists. The empty page is created
simply by clicking on it. Or someone might create an empty page in
the hope that someone else might populate it. It's quite simple. If
you have any insight into this at all then feel free to put something
on that page. Others will add to it over time. Inquiries start with
a Google:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=group:comp.databases.pick+d3+report+xml
Play with the query until it returns something meaningful.
I think the best way to approach a wiki is not to look at it like a
book that needs to be filled out, but for each individual to simply
post a page on something they care about, and the book will fill
itself out.
The site should be a better resource when people get over "I don't
know what wiki means so I can't do anything". Anyone who participates
in public forums with the sincere goal of helping others would also
probably be interested in contributing to the wiki. If you aren't
sure what to do or how to do it, please feel free to email me or post
to the Nebula R&D forum.
Tony Gravagno
Nebula Research and Development
TG@ remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com
remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com/forum
Mike Preece
Is this the same thing? http://www.pickwiki.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl
Tony Gravagno
>i actually think i have skills to offer but i'm not straightforwadly
>coherent anymore
Dan, that's the most straightforward and coherent note we've seen from
you in a long time. Thanks.
I was thinking about you when I was working on a couple of those
pages. It's never too late to reduce the intake of substances and put
the past behind you. It's been about 8 years now man, isn't it time
to come back to life? It doesn't matter what you do - but you CAN
make decisions to take your life back and do what you want for a
change.
Tony Gravagno
Yes, but for the many people who have seen that link for the last
couple years and have no idea what it means, I wrote an intro.
Read the blog. :)
Good to see you here Mike - I see you elsewhere, rarely get a chance
to send greetings...
T
dawn
<address.is.in.po...@removethis.com.invalid> wrote:
> Mike Preece wrote:
> >On Jan 18, 11:04 pm, Tony Gravagno
> ><address.is.in.po...@removethis.com.invalid> wrote:
> >> I think we should make better use of the PickWiki community resource.
> >> Intro and thoughts start here:
>
> >> removeNebula-RnD.com/blog/tech/mv/2009/01/wiki1.html
>
> >> T
>
>
> Yes, but for the many people who have seen that link for the last
> couple years and have no idea what it means, I wrote an intro.
I read your blog entry, Tony, and was pleased to see you mention the
nuwiki.com wiki too. It doesn't seem like a large enough community of
contributors for us to support two wikis. Would it make more sense to
pour everything into the one that is built on an MV platform (openqm
IIRC) or the one created first (pickwiki) and with perhaps more
popular wiki software? Or should we have these two plus whatever the
u2ug has going, plus ? Your thoughts? --dawn
Tony Gravagno
>I read your blog entry, Tony, and was pleased to see you mention the
>nuwiki.com wiki too. It doesn't seem like a large enough community of
>contributors for us to support two wikis.
Thanks for the feedback, Dawn. I hope others weigh in on this as
well.
Wiki is a strange thing. Most people don't "get it" (or simply don't
see the benefit) and others can't get enough of it. There are books
on the topic, corporate strategies, titles assigned to individuals in
companies and other groups, patterns for structuring different types
of sites... Some sites have people who beg for participation and
others explode with content. It's a lot like user groups.
> Would it make more sense to
>pour everything into the one that is built on an MV platform (openqm
>IIRC) or the one created first (pickwiki) and with perhaps more
>popular wiki software? Or should we have these two plus whatever the
>u2ug has going, plus ? Your thoughts? --dawn
Personally I think diversity is good for everyone. Even if we wanted
to narrow the selection, this market doesn't have enough collective
experience with the wiki concept yet to vote on what we find to be the
best for our purposes. And given the multitude of wiki packages out
there, I don't think we'll ever find a "best". So in that regard, I'd
say the more the merrier, at least for now.
That said, I also believe PickWiki should be more generic while U2UG
Wiki continues its focus. Where there is cross-over there's nothing
wrong with both sites cross-linking. That also opens the door to
other platform-specific wiki sites for D3, jBASE, OpenInsight, or
Caché for MV people (uh, like this:
http://groups.google.com/group/InterSystems-MV/web, or this
http://www.cachewiki.org ). All of these sites can cross-link where
appropriate - and someone could take it upon themselves to just do
that where it seems appropriate. I think the presence of several
wikis would be a good thing, indicating a healthy market to anyone on
the outside looking in. Contributions from the DBMS vendors would be
a good sign as well, including Support people, Engineers, etc. That's
good internal and external marketing.
I like the idea of a wiki based in MV, however NuWiki is a commercial
offering, hosted in a non-standard format and driven by code that we
can't maintain. If that site goes down we can't move the data
anywhere else. This is _not_ a comment about the software, but about
the suitability of the site as a community resource. I feel the same
about any commercial wiki offering. If these problems can be fixed,
I'd be less concerned about putting too much data there. I'm hoping
Rex Gozar will provide someone access to PickWiki so that we can
backup that resource in case the wind blows it down.
T
Kevin Powick
<address.is.in.po...@removethis.com.invalid> wrote:
> Wiki is a strange thing. Most people don't "get it" (or simply don't
> see the benefit)
I've mentioned this before, but wikis tend to have a lot of problems.
* Consistency of content due to varying author styles
* Accuracy of content
* Relevance of content that goes out of date
* Poor organization
The majority of wikis are like the majority of open source projects --
A few "gung-ho" contributors bring it to life, but when for various
reasons these contributors move on, the wiki stagnates.
I don't suggest they are useless, just that there are a few caveats,
especially for those less familiar with a particular wiki's subject
matter.
Of course these problems can be mitigated, but it takes dedicated
individuals to moderate the material.
--
Kevin Powick
Tony Gravagno
aesthetics, but I think it's better to have content than not.
Wiki isn't just about content. Any individual can decide that their
contribution will be to do nothing more than look at pages and flag
them as being outdated, ugly, inaccurate, or in need of more detail.
Part of my message here is to reinforce the idea that to support a
wiki one doesn't need to write technical information in a nicely
formatted article, there are Many ways to contribute without knowing
anything about the material.
One problem with getting actual content is that many people who have
information don't know where to start or what they can contribute
that's of any value, or they may be concerned about formatting or
proper presentation. Those concerns can be left at the door. If
you're not sure something is correct, say so. If you don't like the
way you wrote something, say so. Part of the wiki paradigm is an
understanding by both author and reader that people aren't writing
papers that are being edited for publishing, but that people are
dumping their thoughts as best they can, and there will be people who
come later to clean up. One form of contribution might simply be to
create a single page that has a dump of text from a personal notebook,
and let other people filter through that and extract helpful data to
pages. Again, organization is a challenge but content comes first.
As content grows, so do inconsistencies and "inaccuracies" which may
be simply a differing of opinions. This is where diplomacy comes in
and all views get presented appropriately and fairly. We can debate
content here or in another forum and link to the debates from the wiki
itself so that people can get more insight into various topics.
Will a wiki burn out? Will it get stale? Well, let's hope not. But
right now we have people in our community repeating questions, talking
about things that aren't in product documentation, citing helpful
tidbits, posting code, etc. These forums are inadequate for many
purposes so a wiki can only help from where we are now.
2 cents worth about .00083 in this economy.
T
Kevin Powick wrote:
Ian McGowan
<address.is.in.po...@removethis.com.invalid> wrote:
> I think we should make better use of the PickWiki community resource.
> Intro and thoughts start here:
>
An interesting read. Pickwiki seems to have waves of interest as kind
folks like yourself come along and
add some nuggets of information. Rex has done some interesting things
recently. Wendy Smoak posted
a great deal of good content a couple of years back. It ebbs and
flows.
The site has done all I expected when setting it up in 2002. It gave
me a place to dump some of the
stories about the history of Pick that I had heard over the years,
starting out on BIX and various bulletin
boards, moving onto comp.databases.pick in the early 90's and since
then onto the web.
It's accomplished what I wanted to do, but my expectations are fairly
low. If there are specific things
that would make the site work better for the shrinking band of Pick
programmers out there, I'm all for it. My
chief constraint is time.
Ian
Rex Gozar
me change the site's original cyan/beige color scheme to its current
white/gray neutral colors. You can also blame/thank me for the logo
graphic.
rex