[OWW-SC] Alternative Welcome System and Home Pages

Julius Lucks lucks at fas.harvard.edu
Mon Apr 23 09:53:12 EDT 2007 

Hey Jason,

Well I guess it is a little subjective, but I would argue for a  
separate 'Homepage' and User page for the following reasons:

* The User page can be used for more personal info like other  
interests/hobbies, etc - some info on getting to know the oww member  
behind the science.
* The Homepage can be used to focus on the science.
* The Homepage serves as a portal for individual project pages:  the  
naming convention for the project pages would be [[Homepage/ 
project_page]] - i.e.,
the Homepage name would be the base for all the project pages.   
Having a separate Homepage in the main wiki namespace I think is more  
useful than having them all inside the User: namespace since the main  
name space is where we are having scientific content at the moment.   
(I guess we could make a namespace for all of these Homepage and  
project pages.)  Also, having the project page fall under a user's  
Homepage lends some kind of 'ownership' or at least 'foundership' to  
the project content, even though anyone can contribute at any time.   
This can be put to good use in advertising to potential new users as  
a way for them to keep some of the attribution for their work, since  
I imagine many new users are afraid of losing attribution.  Another  
way to put it is this structure is closer to normal authorship  
identification of work, and will be more familiar and thus less of a  
jump for new users to get used to.  (Note that of course one could  
always look into the history logs to see who created a page, but  
these logs are a complication I don't want to have to introduce to a  
new potential user.)
* If new users can follow the [[Homepage/project_page]]  convention,  
then they automatically start to learn good page naming habits, which  
is non-trivial given that you can name pages almost anything.
* This naming convention also promotes self-organization of a lot of  
scientific content on OWW which is something I think we need to work  
on.  Just browsing through the site and only navigating through  
clicking on links (and not typing any URLs), it is non-trivial to get  
from the front page of oww to some scientific content - at least for  
me, and I imagine for a new user.  Having all this info in one place  
(with this naming convention) allows users to go to where they are  
familiar with the structure to look for new content - given that they  
are used to the structure from their own [[Homepage/project_page]]   
pages.  Having all the info in this structure makes it really easy  
for us to scrape content and create some navigation pages like: a  
page that lists all the user Home pages, a page that lists all the  
projects that are ongoing, etc.
* This system is a little bit like the lab Homepage system, but on a  
user level.  Labs can then just link their user Homepages to start to  
form the lab pages, and people are familiar with lab Homepages which  
will lessen the learning curve.

Julius


-----------------------------------------------------
http://openwetware.org/wiki/User:Lucks
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On Apr 23, 2007, at 1:50 AM, Jason Kelly wrote:

> Yeah, I like this idea a lot.  Thanks for the good work, guys.
> Putting up some default info about the person, plus simple
> instructions on how to edit that info will help to 'break the ice' on
> editing for sure.
>
> I'm a little unclear on whether you'd want to have a separate UserPage
> and 'Homepage', rather than just seeding the userpage with the things
> you described in the Homepage.
>
> thanks,
> jason
>
> On 4/20/07, Julius Lucks <lucks at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>> Hi All,
>>
>> Vincent and I have been thinking a lot about how to get oww  
>> members to
>> contribute more content so that we can grow the existing oww  
>> community, and
>> attract new members by pointing to high quality examples of  
>> content on oww.
>> One of the things that struck us is that there doesn't seem to be  
>> an easy
>> way for a complete wiki novice to get into editing.  The existing  
>> welcome
>> email is very long and has many links for people to follow and I  
>> think it is
>> confusing to a novice.  Also I have spent some time browsing  
>> around OWW and
>> it seems hard for someone completely new to the site to find  
>> content by just
>> surfing around.
>>
>>
>> So Vincent and I want to propose a new welcome system that involves
>> automatically creating a 'Home page' for new users when their  
>> account is
>> created.  I'll give you all the reasons why we think this is a  
>> good idea,
>> but to see for yourself, please look at our mock Home page at
>>
>> http://www.openwetware.org/wiki/OpenWetWare:Steering_committee/ 
>> Outreach_chairs/mock_Home_page
>>
>> or the one I am playing around with for myself at
>>
>> http://www.openwetware.org/wiki/Lucks
>>
>> The idea is that every user has 3 pages made for them when their  
>> account is
>> created: the typical User page, a Home page, and a sample project  
>> page (more
>> about this one below).  The User page can be used to show more  
>> personal
>> information, but the idea behind the Home page is to give people a  
>> hands-on
>> quick introduction to the wiki-way in terms of their own academic  
>> projects.
>> The Home page is set up in such a way as to provide both an  
>> introduction,
>> and an example system for how people might think about posting their
>> academic content.  Being an experienced user, I often find that  
>> wiki's give
>> too much freedom in the choice of page and section names, formatting
>> options, etc.  The Home page would give users something to work  
>> off of
>> rather than having to come up with a system on their own.
>>
>> The Home page also has a section listing seperate project pages for
>> individual projects.  The third page automatically created is a  
>> sample
>> project page that gives a skeleton outline of what kind of info it  
>> would be
>> good to have in describing a project on the wiki.  The idea is the  
>> same here
>> - that people can just start to fill this out instead of having to  
>> come up
>> with some system on their own.
>>
>> I'm not sure about the technical difficulties of creating these  
>> pages, but
>> this is something along the lines of Reshma's recent suggestion of  
>> filling
>> in the User page.  The benefits of this system we think are as  
>> follows:
>>
>> * hands on introduction to the wiki for a new users OWN content  
>> rather than
>> a standard tutorial page that they would have to read and then  
>> apply to a
>> page they create
>> * having tutorial info on the page gives the user an incentive to  
>> start
>> editing and personalizing right away (to remove the tutorial info)
>> * having a scaffold of pages is much easier for someone to handle  
>> than
>> having a blank slate - we can emphasize that they can customize at  
>> any time
>> * the scaffold promotes good naming conventions and structuring of  
>> content
>> on the wiki - if everyone did this it could help people find  
>> information
>> easier because they would be automatically familiar with how other  
>> people
>> structure their content from knowing how they do their own
>> * this is more along the lines of what scientists need.  Wikipedia  
>> works
>> well because ALL the articles are in theory collaborated on by  
>> everyone, and
>> a simple User page suffices to identify someone.  Scientists work  
>> on many
>> projects and so need a place to put specific information about these
>> projects in a place where they have at least semi-ownership to  
>> acknowledge
>> that they are the principle person on the project, even though  
>> others may
>> edit.  I think having a project page system like this is more  
>> along the
>> lines of what people think of now in their non-wiki science and  
>> how they
>> might use a private wiki if they have one.  This makes it an easier
>> transition into opening up the data and might facilitate faster  
>> content
>> migration from the private wikis to the public one.
>> * the system is flexible and we can think of a way for people to  
>> easily hook
>> into lab websites and what not, but this allows someone not  
>> affiliated with
>> an OWW lab to get going easily
>>
>> The mock page could use some work, but I hope you all can give  
>> some good
>> feedback on the general concept.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Julius and Vincent
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------
>> http://openwetware.org/wiki/User:Lucks
>> -----------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> OpenWetWare Steering Committee Mailing List
>> sc at openwetware.org
>> http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/oww-sc
>>
>>

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