Help talk:Contents
>===IIW Wiki Technical Information===
I pulled in some links to the MediaWiki.org wiki pages that have user information and provision of general resources.
What's missing is anything special about the IIW Wiki itself, who maintains it (contact info), and what is unusual or important to know about how it is setup for users here (extensions available, anything special about account setup, etc.) Some IIW Wiki "How To" items can be linked in the earlier sections on getting around here and on contributing here. However, there is also supplemental technical information that should be maintained on the wiki itself and could be linked from this section.
- Orcmid 08:25, 28 November 2007 (PST)
Starting Fresh
I am making a top-down transfer of materials that I had in suspension on Windley's IIW Wiki. That means that there will be broken links to subordinate content until my manual crawler brings over that additional material.
Now that there is a MediaWiki to use (learning wiki-text formats and editing rules is like going from one word processor to another, but without translators), I am so grateful, and in anticipation of the upcoming IIW2007b, that I may actually get around to providing the material I was interested in having here six months ago.
The notes below are simply preserved here. Some of them need to be reviewed and adjusted for the Identity Commons IIW Wiki.
- Orcmid 16:02, 27 November 2007 (PST)
Slowing Down
I was discussing my promise to provide help materials on IIW Wiki with Kaliya over in Facebook. She warned me that a new Identity Wiki is going to be put up. I need to slow down here and make sure that I have the Wiki texts of pages saved somewhere that I can move them from if this Wiki disappears.
[I saw a cool tool for grabbing chunks of web for archiving or making .chm (Help files) out of them. That doesn't quite work for backing up wiki material. There, the idea is to grab the wiki format (what you enter when editing a page) so the page can be recreated in any (MediaWiki) compatible wiki. Hmm. More work than I want to put in, yet an interesting tool project.]
Added Clippings
I started noticing blog items on particular identity topics that I thought it useful to provide clippings for, sort of like a link blog. This is different than a Blogroll which links to the main page of a blog that regularly has articles on identity-related topics. There should be more on the discussion page for the Clippings topic itself.
- Orcmid 10:00, 15 June 2007 (MDT)
I am not sure what happened. I lost the connection to yesterday's clippings so I put it in again. As long as I was editing, I also put clippings under a new Help topic, Internet Identity Resources, rather than Internet Identity Topics.
- Orcmid 12:20, 16 June 2007 (MDT)
Priming the Pump
In Kaliya's IIW2007a session 6C on Newbies, Mark Aiken and I had been thinking of things we could do, on the IIW Wiki, to make the place more hospitable and useful to newcomers as well as experienced Workshop participants. I have put up all of my Flickr images from the workshop and I am now putting down this placeholder for a Help page.
There is no Help information of any kind on this site - none on how to get around the site, how to find things, how to contribute. There is also no help for the Editing and Markup that is supported by this installation of MediaWiki. I want to gather what I know into some semblance of help that deals with casual navigation and use first, creating and editing pages, and finally digging into MediaWiki (covered last, since it is infrastructure in this context).
The Wikipedia main help page is at Help:Contents. This is a very useful page in terms of the kinds of things that one might cover and also have be available. The organization also seems useful for Help here, with adjustment for the different subject matter.
The MediaWiki home page is at MediaWiki. It provides another level of comprehensive information.
I am posting this much because I want to verify that the MediaWiki tips on formatting and links all work on this installation of MediaWiki.
- Orcmid 13:39, 1 June 2007 (MDT)
First Framework
Inspired by the Wikipedia Help:Content page, I added a few section-level topics and confirmed how they appear. I will return to add some minor bits.
In earlier explorations, I did learn that there is a way to see an index of all of the page titles. I must recover that and add it as a tip while the wiki is in a basically-chaotic state.
- Orcmid 15:22, 9 June 2007 (MDT)
I found it. In the toolbox on the sidebar, there is a link to Special pages. This is an important resource for finding what there is in the absence of an explicit map or guide. The first entry on that page is the link to an index of All pages. There are other useful pages here, including ones that can be used for site maintenance.
- Orcmid 15:30, 9 June 2007 (MDT)
License Considerations
I don't know if it is a consideration, but the MediaWiki Help:Contents section is all marked as public domain. It is not clear what the requirement that derivatives be contributed to the public domain is about, since there are no such enforceable restrictions on public domain works. This appears to be bad lawyering.
At the bottom of the same pages, the works are described as being subject to the GNU Free Documentation License. There is no indication of any options that have been exercised, so we should probably assume the standard GFDL form. However the GFDL does not prohibit commercial use, and this IIW Wiki site does. I have no idea whether license conflicts are behind the omission of help materials and other resources on the IIW Wiki.
I must say that this disconnect is not one that makes me eager to post any significant contributions. I also see no praotical way of working around the MediaWiki licenses unless we can only link to that Help material and not replicate it with any specific editing applicable to the IIW Wiki.
- Orcmid 14:12, 1 June 2007 (MDT)
Differences on the Identity Commons IIW Wiki
I notice that this Wiki uses a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution Share-Alike license, with no other stipulations. The deed states "Unported" and it took a fair amount of fussing around the Creative Commons site to learn that is the version that specifies no national copyright regime.
I don't have any qualms with using Attribution Share-Alike, and I am only moving my own material from the Windley IIW Wiki, so the fact of a stronger license there (non-commercial leaps to mind) is not a concern for me as the author.
- Orcmid 16:22, 27 November 2007 (PST)
