Wikis and Plone Investigation for NOvA

Links
Plone site at Fermilab Zwiki site Wiki Software #1 (uses PHP)
Wikipedia on Content Management Systems Use of Plone by NOvA DAQ group Wiki Software #2 (uses PHP)
Wikipedia definition of "wiki" Plone Home Site Nice article on Plone
More than I ever wanted to know about wikis, etc.--an article of interest Wiki used by Mark Messier (MIPP, NOvA, MINOS) Wikipedia entry forPlone
"Cuic" as a form of Wiki Plone Brown Bag session BTeV experience with DocDB & Wiki
CD Presentation on Plone at conferences AD Controls Wiki JSPWiki Software (#3, Java Server Pages)
LARP experiences with DocDB, Plone, webex (slide 15 is about Plone) D0 Wiki (in Plone) SAMgrid Wiki (in Plone)
Twiki software (#4, uses CGI Perl) plone-users mailing list archive MediaWiki (#5, uses PHP)
Wiki from Fermilab Main Control Room MoinMoin wiki software (#6, uses Python)  


Note Links
Zwikis More on Zwikis Wicked
Wiki Content Page in Plone Wiki vs (Wiki in Plone) NOvA DAQ Wiki
Instructions for working with structured text BTeV Wiki Twiki use at FNAL
Plone does not support multiple versions of a document MediaWiki use Help Desk Exchange
Selection from archive of plone-users@fnal.gov Description of Minerva Wiki  


Notes

Zwiki Description

A Helpdesk message of 4/23/07 confirms that Zwiki is being used for the Fermilab Plone site

I found the following description at this location within the web site for Plone .

Zwiki is an easy-to-use, powerful, and fun wiki engine based on the Zope web application server. A wiki is a special kind of website that's easy for anyone to edit. Wikis emphasize simplicity, speed, and cooperation, and have quickly become an essential tool for individuals, businesses and collaborating communities. Zwiki has many useful optional features including: mail in/out, RSS, page hierarchy, Plone integration, issue tracking, dynamic scripting, a number of different text markups including reStructured Text and MoinMoin, WYSIWYG editing, fine-grained security, strong internationalization support, and more.

The SAMgrid Wiki at FNAL has explicit mention of Zwiki use.

More on Zwikis

The Zwiki site has this comment about creating and renaming wiki pages in Plone. It suggests using Zwiki's User Interface, not Plone's, for managing wiki pages. See "plone and cmf" for more such advice. A referenced page is entitled "How to add a wiki".

Wicked

At this location I found the useful text shown in the next paragraphs. It ends up mentioning "wicked", for use with Plone. At Google group "plone:general" (a mirror for the mailing list plone-users@lists.sourceforge.net) I found postings that said that Wicked will be in the Plone 3 core (Plone 3 is listed as "beta" at the Plone web site).

Motivation

Users/integrators often ask for wiki-like collaboration inside of Plone. Wikis in the narrowest and most unique definition have 2 inherent qualities; a open security model and the ability to rapidly create of links and linked content. Manipulation of Plone's security allows for the first quality, "wicked" solves the second.

wicked uses a minimal, readable, international keyboard friendly linking syntax that works with all formats and wysiwyg editors with no invasive changes.

Wiki as a content type in Plone--found here

The CMS provide many different types of content, the wiki basically one--the wikipage. Additional things: embedded images and media, file attachments extend the page, but the wiki is first and foremost about the pages and the crosslinks between them. One of the interesting things about Plone and Zwiki is that they are compatable. You can setup ZWiki as a content type for Plone and then have all the functionality of the Wiki inside your CMS managed site. It allows you to leverage the wiki where apropriate and use other content types when they are apropriate.

Exchange found at this location:

Call me a Luddite but I can't see the value of a Wiki within a CMS like Plone which itself could be set up, without a Wiki plug-in, to be a type of website that allows users to add, remove, or otherwise edit all content very quickly and easily, sometimes without the need for registration.

Non-Luddite

I have deployed various Plone-based sites for a number of widely differing communities of users.  I've found that different people work in different ways.  There are definitely people, like the "Luddite" speaking above, who prefer the explicit nature of Plone's default behaviour to the wiki approach to creating and managing content.  However, I've found that those folks are pretty significantly outnumbered by those who are intimidated and overwhelmed by the abundance of choices, and the relative complexity of interface, that Plone provides.  Wikipedia has become a tremendous success, and a key part of that success is the fact that it does NOT present the users with a lot of choices, but instead makes it absurdly easy to participate.

Comment from a user of Plone for NOvA DAQ

We haven't been actively using that plone site in the past year. DocDB is really useful for documentation that needs to be version controlled and for general availability of documents. Plone seems to be better suited for evolving web content where many people contribute. Quick guides, discussions, howtos, etc. That of course is my opinion and the opinion of someone who does not use plone very much.

Both DocDB and Plone can have their place depending on needs of the project.

Note added: In the NOvA DocDB, the listing for topic "Online/DAQ" has ~five pages of documents listed. Those that are DAQ related range in date from 8/5/05 to the present.

Instructions for working with structured text

at Fermilab Plone site actually mention wikis and how to make wiki links.

BTeV Wiki

A BTeV wiki mention is found in this document. Its address is http://whcdf03.fnal.gov/BTeV-wiki

Twiki

I found a site with a fnal.gov address which is using twiki softare. Here is another one (the name "PeterThoeny" is there because Twiki is his trademark) . A common link seems to be this person. Later I found in my email collection an email from Joe Klemencic, a key guy for Fermilab Computer Security, where he gave notice of a vulnerability in Twiki installations at the lab. From a URL that he included (by mistake) I note that the URL found in his email is very similar to the second local one that I gave.
Elliot McCrory's LARP presentation makes explicit mention that Plone doesn't support multiple versions of a document (on slide 15).

MediaWiki

MediaWiki is used for the Wikipedia. The "Young Minos" people have an instance on NuMI/Minos AFS web space, but it isn't functional since that web server doesn't support PHP. Media Wiki is also used for the Minerva Wiki (see next note)..

Minerva Wiki

Yes, I've set up a wiki server for Minerva. The server is minerva01.fnal.gov (minerva-wiki is an alias) - it's just a dell pc sitting in my former office on the 12th floor. It's running Scientific Linux Fermilab 3. There are indeed several choices for the wiki software - I've decided to go with the most popular one that runs wikipedia.org itself. It's called MediaWiki - all the info is on the website . MediaWiki needs a mysql server and php installed - which is easy, because both come with Scientific Linux Fermi install.


Comments
Last modified: May 14, 2007