[OWW-SC] Alternative Welcome System and Home Pages

Mon Apr 23 11:17:25 EDT 2007

Hi Barry,

I am starting to really see the point of not having 2 pages  
associated with a user though - makes a lot of sense, especially  
tying your biography to your work.

I also think there are two ways to go about finding content on a  
site: search and browsing.  Some people seem to prefer one or the  
other, so I think we should try our best to support both.

Having some 'recommended' heirarchy of pages will go a long way to  
structuring the content so that it is browse-able.  I think that 80%  
of people probably would not deviate from it.  However, we should  
emphasize over and over that anyone can edit anything, and that this  
is only a recommended system, not one that they have to follow.  I  
think if we do a good job of this, then people will be 'encouraged'  
to edit and contribute to pages.  It is all about what we write in  
the auto-generated pages to get a clear message out to new users.

It may be hard to keep the wiki browse-able, and I don't think we  
should force it, rather just recommend a naming scheme.  I think this  
really helps new users who might be too overwhelmed by the  
flexibility of being able to create a new page with a new name almost  
anywhere.  I for one have felt this and have not put up content  
because I couldn't figure out where best to put it.  Having a place  
where you can start and then move later if you want is nicer I think.

I should mention that a large part of this auto-generated content is  
to educate new users on what oww can do - both in terms of wiki  
technology and content structure (with a plug that you can actually  
do anything with content).  Having a nice get-up-to-speed-quick  
system is also a great tool to attract new users - after all, we have  
to encourage them to join so that they can generate content, since  
they can already read anything without an account.

Cheers,

Julius

-----------------------------------------------------
http://openwetware.org/wiki/User:Lucks
-----------------------------------------------------

On Apr 23, 2007, at 10:48 AM, Barry Canton wrote:

> I'm a big fan of auto-generating content for new users as you guys  
> propose.
>
> It seems to make more intuitive sense for every user to have one  
> main page rather than two different pages for biography and  
> projects.   I think I would always want to list my projects on my  
> biography page because they are a very current part of my biography.
>
> Regardless of how user/home pages are implemented, users will still  
> be likely to name pages outside of the user namespace.  I actually  
> prefer if content isn't mainly in sub-pages from user pages because  
> it discourages collaboration and comments from the community (I am  
> less likely to edit a page if I feel it's "owned" by someone).
>
> I'm not sure that keeping content in some sort of organized  
> hierarchy in any namespace matters very much given that search is  
> much more efficient on the wiki than browsing.  It may be very hard  
> to keep the wiki browseable in the future.
>
>
> Barry
>
> On 4/23/07, Julius Lucks <lucks at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> Hey Reshma,
>
> I imagined the home pages to be called whatever the User page is,  
> but without the User: namespace prefix - my 'homepage' is just  
> [[Lucks]], and I guess yours would be [[Rshetty]].
>
> I like your thought about the [[Special:Mypage]] usage and how that  
> simplifies things.  But how hard would it be to create another  
> version of [[Special:Mypage]] that would be [[Special:Homepage]] or  
> something that would just point to your homepage? Would you need to  
> create another namespace for the homepages? Just playing devil's  
> advocate here.
>
> This is totally my opinion, but I like keeping all the scientific  
> content in the same namespace so that the content on the users's  
> project pages is in the same place as the lab's scientific content.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Julius
>
> -----------------------------------------------------
> http://openwetware.org/wiki/User:Lucks
> -----------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> On Apr 23, 2007, at 10:14 AM, Reshma Shetty wrote:
>
>> Hey all,
>>
>> I think I agree with Jason that I don't necessarily see a reason  
>> for a separate homepage and user page.
>>
>> Julius, what naming convention did you envision using for naming  
>> the homepage?  i.e. what would my homepage be called?
>>
>> One motivation for having the pages all linked from the person's  
>> userpage is that it becomes quite easy to encourage good naming  
>> conventions...
>>
>> [[Special:Mypage]] goes to the logged in user's page.
>> [[Special:Mypage/Projects]] goes to a page off the logged in  
>> user's user page.
>>
>> That way you're not relying on folks typing in a new name for a  
>> page by hand and thus generally end up with better page names.   
>> (You just say in the how-to ... edit this page: [[Special:Mypage]]).
>>
>> With regards to the issue of scientific content in the user  
>> namespace versus the main namespace ... I am not sure that that  
>> matters so much.
>>
>> -Reshma
>>
>> PS I agree with Julius that scientific content is not easily  
>> browsable or well-organized on OWW.  That's why I played around  
>> with the page http://openwetware.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli last  
>> week.  All the lists of pages are generated dynamically from the  
>> dynamic page list extension based on categories.  But this is a  
>> topic for a different thread.
>>
>> On 4/23/07, Julius Lucks <lucks at fas.harvard.edu > wrote:
>> 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
>> -----------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>> 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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>>
>>
>
>
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>
>
>
> -- 
> Barry Canton
> Endy Lab
> Biological Engineering Division
> Massachusetts Institute of Technology
>
> Tel.:(617) 899 6062
> Email1: bcanton at mit.edu
> Email2: bcanton at gmail.com

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