[OSGeo-Edu] Why not use the wiki? My reasons... let me know if I am off in my thinking

[Charlie Schweik]

Hi Frank-

On Tue, 2008-01-22 at 22:48 -0500, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> Charlie Schweik wrote:
> > 2) Any other ideas for a platform for distributing educational content?
> > I don't think the wiki will do it. Am I wrong? Any other alternatives?
> 
> I'm not clear on why you are unhappy with a wiki.  MediaWiki seems to
> support reasonable search facilities.  You also mention that a
> "wiki for document distribution will not scale".  I'm not sure what
> you mean by that.  It can't support heavy request load?  I don't
> see that as a big issue.

I'm a bit pressed for time so this is a rushed answer. I'm a wiki user
for my research projects so I have an appreciation for them. I'll admit
I haven't used wiki search much so maybe I'm missing something there. 
But I think we are trying to build the infrastructure for the long term
on educational material. My team here at UMass created a whole set of
course material using our own wiki and then moved it to the OSGeo wiki. 

By scaling I meant how we ultimately handle a larger database of course
material (perhaps that wasn't the best choice of terms):

1) How easy it is to find modules of interest to you... e.g.,   

"Show me all the education content that is on QGIS version .9" or
"Show me all the educational content that is for a beginner". 

I think we need a database driven search system. I'm not convinced the
wiki is right for this, especially if there are other pages that are not
educational content that might be returned on a search.

Right now we have a list of courses that people have done
(http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Educational_Content_Inventory) and it
is already getting difficult to find things in my mind. I'm envisioning
a page like that down the road with 50 course or many more modules...

2) How easy it is to derive new works and keep track of author
contributions

The wiki system of course keeps a history. But you wouldn't want the
"production" education module being edited. I suppose the way we'd have
to do this is have two copies on the wiki, one that is a locked down
current version and the second being an open edit "next release"
version. 

But I think having a system where you check out source and with
designated material maintainers is a better way for what we are trying
to do.

3) Updating wiki pages sometimes can be a little painful.

We had some challenges posting graphics or converting word document
files to the wiki. It wasn't hard but kind of painful. And the wiki
pages wouldn't easily translate to different formats (what we are trying
to do with Docbook -- pdf, html) from what I saw working with it. 

In short, this experience led me to proposing in Victoria for some
"recommended" content format, and some searchable repository system. We
looked hard at this prior to the Victoria meeting, and the best one I
found was Rice's University's Connexions site (http://cnx.org/ - do a
search on OSGeo and you'll find a couple of our tutorials) since it was
designed around modules, not courses. I also looked at MIT Open
Courseware's site but thought we didn't want the unit to be courses. I
think something like Rice's system is what we ideally want to distribute
our educational material.

So those are my thoughts. After my experience with using the wiki, we
could use it, but I'm not sure its where we want to go in the long
term. 

But I learn a lot from others on this group, so I can be convinced
otherwise. I just want us to get something in place and move forward. 

Sorry for the long note - I'm rushing.

Cheers and thanks for your thoughtful response...

Charlie




> 
> I am a bit dubious about wikis for big documents or documents that
> include sophisticated graphics.  It can be done, but it might seem clumsy.
> 
> On the whole DocBook issue - we tried using DocBook for a while for MapServer
> docs and ended up abandoning it because installing and getting to understand
> DocBook tools was too hard for many potential contributors.  It also turned
> out to be a clumsy format to work in.  Perhaps things have improved, or
> we mapserverites were particularly dumb - but take that at least as a mild
> cautionary tale.  We ended up with documents written in html, and restructured
> text in plone though we aren't so thrilled with that either.  There is
> some consideration being given to just moving to a Trac wiki (though Trac
> wiki is particular weak as a wiki in my opinion).
> 
> Good luck with your plans.
> 
> Best regards,
-- 
Associate Professor 
- Department of Natural Resources Conservation (www.umass.edu/nrc) 
- Center for Public Policy and Administration (www.masspolicy.org),
- Associate Director, National Center for Digital Government (www.ncdg.org)
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003
Phone: (413) 545-1824
Website: http://people.umass.edu/cschweik