[OWW-SC] EditTools helper enabled (Greek characters, etc).

Tue Nov 13 00:50:01 EST 2007

Steve,

Please let me know what you think about the way 'talk' feels. As I
mentioned earlier, we can change it back in a flash. I thought it
would be good to try it out rather than imagine what it would be like.

As far as the nature of commenting on a page, Wikipedia has been
pushing for a more structured buletin-board-like format for them. I
haven't seen a date for the inclusion of the current solution, 'liquid
threads' (I think...).

Threaded discussions make a lot of sense for containing a conversation
between users. There are several different gorum applicaions with deep
links to MediaWiki. Let me see how the linking re: talk/discussion
pages are implemented. If any make sense (and actually add value),
I'll let you folks know. I'll let you know even if they don't make
sense for that matter.

I personally find any well-commented web page a bit confusing. You
have to hunt for data. One advantage is that at least all of the
comments are full-text indexed. Presumably this is one of the features
that is making the implementation of the native threaded discussions
within MediaWiki complicated.

Thanks.

Bill.

On Nov 13, 2007 12:19 AM, Steven J. Koch <sjkoch at unm.edu> wrote:
> I remember that being confusing to me when I signed up on OWW earlier this
> year.  I was a newbie to wikis at the time, but I think OWW will be dealing
> with newbies for a long time, so it is important to consider.  A downside of
> changing the name is that newbies may have edited Wikipedia first (which I
> think also has the confusing talk/discussion naming).  The fact that OWW was
> "the same" as Wikipedia was a big plus at the beginning (and also now).
>
> A related confusion is that on OWW it's often not clear whether to put edits
> on the talk or the main article page.  In Wikipedia, it's usually more clear
> given that most of the pages are encyclopedia articles.  Whereas on OWW it
> seems like the main point of an article is often a discussion in the first
> place (such as brainstorming ideas).  Or, in the case of grading, I don't
> like to use the Talk: page, because I have a bunch of little comments, so I
> use a little hack template that's like adding comment bubbles in a PDF or
> Word.  (See this for an example:
> http://openwetware.org/wiki/Physics307L:People/Knockel/formal).  I think in
> my entire Physics307L class, we haven't used the Talk: page ever.
>
> OK, not sure if I have a productive suggestion buried in those comments, but
> I do agree with TK's post and think it may be a real barrier to edits for
> new people.
>
> --S
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: oww-sc-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:oww-sc-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf Of
> Tom Knight
> Sent: Monday, November 12, 2007 10:02 PM
> To: Reshma Shetty
> Cc: Steering Committee
> Subject: Re: [OWW-SC] EditTools helper enabled (Greek characters, etc).
>
> I added some comments.  Has anyone else noticed that the way to get
> to a talk page is to click on the "discussion" link at the top of the
> page?  I find this rather unnecessarily confusing.  The name of one
> or the other should be changed.
>
>
> On Nov 12, 2007, at 8:10 PM, Reshma Shetty wrote:
>
> > Bill and I've modified the set of characters available at the
> > bottom further.
> >
> > We've stripped out many of the symbols and have added some that are
> > particularly relevant to biological research like those for
> > concentration, volume and temperature.  (This is in keeping with what
> > Tom was suggesting.)
> >
> > Check out any edit page or modify the list at
> > http://openwetware.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Edittools
> > (Thanks Bill!)
> >
> > Leave comments at http://openwetware.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Edittools
> >
> > -Reshma
> >
> > On Nov 10, 2007 7:59 PM, Bill F <bill.altmail at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Entering the HTML tag for those characters works. The character
> >> tags for
> >> them are as follows:
> >>
> >>     Mu: &micro;
> >>     Degree: &deg;
> >>
> >> This is a little better than the use of the table at the bottom of
> >> the form.
> >>
> >> An alternative that isn't any shorter than the above expression
> >> would be by
> >> using an extension I modified:
> >>
> >>     {{deg:}} or {{mu:}}
> >>
> >> I've enabled this via an extension in beta. It's pretty clumsy.
> >> Using this
> >> method, we can add any tags of interest. But it's pretty ugly.
> >>
> >> The curly braces tell the parser this is a parser extension, while
> >> the ":"
> >> is present to allow arguments to be appended.
> >>
> >> It's possible to make this more compact if needed, but this is what's
> >> immediately possible,
> >>
> >> We can directly augment the parser if needed if you need a more
> >> compact way
> >> to label either of them.
> >>
> >> If anyone else has suggestions, let me know.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Nov 10, 2007 5:01 PM, Tom Knight < tk at csail.mit.edu> wrote:
> >>> On our pages, the micro (mu) and degree sign are so common that I
> >>> think they deserve special attention.  I don't have a clear idea of
> >>> what to do, but this feature (for me) does not help. It's easier to
> >>> type &mu; and &deg;
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Nov 10, 2007, at 4:23 PM, Bill Flanagan wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> We've added a feature to help displaying special characters and
> >>>> character string to OpenWetWare documents. If you've used this
> >>>> feature in Wikipedia, it now works exactly the same in OpenWetWare.
> >>>>
> >>>> When you edit any page or choose to download a new file,
> >>>> OpenWetWare will now display a list of characters and tags at the
> >>>> base of the page. By clicking on any of these characters or tags,
> >>>> the ascii code will be inserted into the page being edited at the
> >>>> current cursor location.
> >>>>
> >>>> The range of special sequences includes the following:
> >>>>
> >>>> MediaWiki Markup
> >>>> Greek
> >>>> Cyrillic
> >>>> Other special characters.
> >>>>
> >>>> All of the current special tags supported by OpenWetWare will be
> >>>> included in the list.
> >>>>
> >>>> If there are special vocabularies or character sets anyone wants
> >>>> add to this list, please consult with me. We can add them quickly.
> >>>>
> >>>> Thanks.
> >>>>
> >>>> Bill Flanagan
> >>>> OpenWetWare.org
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> OpenWetWare Steering Committee Mailing List
> >>>> sc at openwetware.org
> >>>> http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/oww-sc
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> OpenWetWare Steering Committee Mailing List
> >>> sc at openwetware.org
> >>> http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/oww-sc
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> sc at openwetware.org
> >> http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/oww-sc
> >>
> >>
>
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