Clinic Profiles
Jemma Neville
We currently have a Clinics Page on the blog site. It was intended to serve as a reference list to all web users.
However, I think it's important for each twin relationship to retain a distinctive identity. It would also be good to have some accessible information about each clinic and the community in which it is located. Each of the ten Scottish medical practices already has its own practice website.
For example, when I visited Selkirk Medical Practice in the Scottish Borders I had to describe their twin clinic, Chileka, from memory. It would be useful for clinicians to check statistics such as patient demographic, geographical location and staff names readily.
Does anyone have suggestions of how we create information profiles for each clinic/ twin? We obviously don't want ten extra (potentially dull) pages. Instead, I had wondered about creating pdf 'fact files' which could be downloaded, and updated, from the site.
What do you think?
Thanks,
Jemma
Rick
I have a suggestion which I've been meaning to suggest for a while but
figured I'd hold off until we'd made more progress with the
technologies and ideas we're implementing. Rather than bamboozle you
with them all at once.
Before I make my suggestion I think your idea about describing each
twinning relationship is a good one and perhaps better than the
initial idea of describing each clinic. However I don't think pdf
files are the way to go here for the following reasons:
- PDF files provide a poor online experience
+ They aren't linkable in the same way that the web is.
+ They often load up in a different program.
- PDF files are not easily updatable.
+ They require specialist software to produce/publish which each
user would need installed
to make changes.
+ Changing a PDF would be complicated. A user would probably need
to download a
master document, update it with their changes, export it as a PDF
and then upload both
documents back to the website.
PDF files are however handy if you already have a printed brochure or
document which you want to make available online. Or if you know that
people will primarily want printed copies of something where layout is
important (e.g. a poster).
My suggestion would instead be to consider using a wiki, which is the
preferred way (for geeks) to collaboratively create comprehensive
online content. You have probably heard the term used in the context
of wikipedia which is based on wiki technology.
Wiki's are quite easy to use and contribute to, however there is a
learning curve which may prove a barrier to adoption. The difficulty
tends to arise in how users often need to familiarise themselves with
'wikitext' which is trickier to use than the formatting controls such
as bold, italic, and underline which appear in Word.
The benefit of a wiki is that it allows you to easily manage multiple
interlinked pages, without ever breaking a link between pages, and
receive edits and changes. If you suspect that the information will
change frequently and you want to rely on the community to manage the
content and provide resources and information; this is IMHO the
cheapest and most effective way of doing so. I'd also see the wiki as
being an excellent way to build up a more formal collection of online
resources.
There are a number of places we could acquire a free wiki, the most
notable of which would be http://www.wikia.com/ which is Jimmy Wales'
(the founder of wikipedia's) company. They provide free wiki's and
profit by selling adverts on the site.
If the advertising is a no-no then we could investigating hosting a
wiki ourselves, however this would likely involve more of a burden on
my time to setup and manage.
The only barrier I can see to us using a wiki for this kind of
information would be in educating people on how to use it and to edit
the information on it.
Let me know what you think.
Rick.
Jemma Neville
I understand Rick's concerns about pdf files. 'Wiki' text seems the way to go, especially if other technology empowering sites favour them. I don't think the training barrier is too difficult to overcome because on a daily basis, it's just myself and Sylvester that add content to the blog and it's our job to learn fast!
The free provider sounds like the one to go for because we certainly don't want you wasting hours trying to devise our own and getting frustrated with the project in the process. When I use Wikipedia for research I don't find the adverts too big a distraction.
Does anyone else have objections to using the free option? Have people seen good examples of information text on other sites?
This is obviously something that will take time to develop properly so we can think it over for a few days.
Cheers,
Jemma
Rick
>
> The free provider sounds like the one to go for because we certainly don't
> want you wasting hours trying to devise our own and getting frustrated with
> the project in the process. When I use Wikipedia for research I don't find
> the adverts too big a distraction.
To be clear it wouldn't be quite like Wikipedia who actually don't run
adverts (only pleas for donations), it would be more like this one (a
Wiki on Psychology):
http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
There may well be better alternatives to wikia for free wiki hosting
though. We'd need to check. Another option might be to join in by
contributing to someone else's wiki. e.g. there "might" be other
projects with a broad enough scope (e.g. looking at health issues
etc...) which we could host pages for the project on.
Rick.
Rick
Google Groups itself!
They provide a page facility, which I guess we should take a look at.
It's not quite as powerful as a Wiki, but it might make more sense and
be a little easier to use, though it might be harder to solicit
contributions from outside the group (assuming we want that - which we
might not).
Anyway, it's another alternative to evaluate.
Rick.