Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to What is a WIKI
Tell me more about the ACS manual module, I can't find any documentation for that in /doc nor in the usual place www/manual. Is it a 4.x thingy?
Anyway, here's why I like the idea of wikis:
1. It puts the users in control of the site without requiring much/any support from the webmaster.
2. Users can add their own information
3. Users can correct other's information
4. Users can add entire new sections
5. Users can reorganize other sections
6. There is a cvs / diff mechanism behind it so changes can be rolled back
7. The zope version appears to have a sophisticated permissions model, allowing for finer grain control of the above. the zope version also appears to have some standard wiki applications: for instance, lacking permission to edit a page, a user can just add comments to a page.
8. It allows rapid response to changes in our environment: when someone gets hot to trot about some initiative, lacking a sourceforge module, they can create an entire new section(s) within a wiki for discussing goals, requirements, tasks, documentation, etc.
9. 8 means that we can better capitalize on momentum. It allows grassroots projects to come together quickly with little intervention (or even approval).
10. It's a wonderful experiment in user collaboration.
If there's an ACS equivalent to wikis wonderful. If someone has time to put one together, terrific. I know at the moment that I have other fish to fry, hence my suggestions over time to just use one that works: the tcl wiki or the zope wiki. In addition to getting a solution that works in an afternoon, it would also provide us some competitive and user insights into other technologies that would better inform our own efforts to reimplement it in within the ACS or aolserver.
Well, I know I couldn't do it in a week of time. Or rather, I don't have that week of time. (And then there's the issue of getting folks to put it up.)
I like the idea of building more and better AOLserver modules and ACS modules, but my preference is to address a problem early, regardless of technology. I would rather use a tcl wiki today and toss it all out or migrate it all out when an ACS manual or ACS wiki comes along. My preference is for rapid satisficing solution today than wait for an optimal or maximal solution tomorrow.
Side note: do you really think that ns_perm would work well for a community of 3000? Maybe since that's in the user space. When I tried a few weeks back to stick a semi large number of rules into it to ensure that the public couldn't get into a site's other ACS modules, I was very unhappy with it's performance. (It was easier and probably better to just archive/delete those directories)
(I never had a birthday... His name is David. ... His is a tale of humanity. It's spielberific! AND IT's PINOCHIO too. Kill! Kill!!! )
