Source / Wiki migration

DMS General
#1

I’m hosting a discussion tomorrow about the Source / Confluence migration and how best to provide that large body of information.

https://calendar.dallasmakerspace.org/events/view/18879

Thanks
Jack

3 Likes
#2

Can this be made visible without having to log in?

Reading the Wiki was a huge part in my decision to join. It is the best way for an outsider to get a feel of our internal “culture” and that is gone if it moved behind the paywall.

8 Likes
#3

Can’t be at a mtg today, but…

  1. How to best get information structured for DMS members.
    I’m partial to the wiki structure, with categories/tags that are meaningful and useful.

  2. What data should be moved? (Active committees only or historical committee data? User pages? Project pages? etc)
    The wiki should be treated as an archive, and left intact read-only, esp. with respect to the enterprise records e.g. BoD minutes, etc.

  3. How should data be moved? (Copy only? Link back? Link forward? Delete original after migration? etc)
    So far I’m liking the link forward (from wiki to copy in Confluence). I’d leave the original, except for adding that bit and then categorize as “historical”, along with all the other outdated but possibly interesting wiki entries.

Very much agree with Bill that placing BoD minutes and other sausage-making behind a login is counter to the intent of Dallas Makerspace foundation of providing sausage-making information to others concerned about Makerspacing in general in an open an honest way.
Furthermore, corporatizing the information portals does not make for a less-customer-oriented member base, whereas we frequently say we would like to reduce the customerness of our members and help us all instead feel like a community.

5 Likes
#4

^ all the yes ^

Not sure why so much has been made private. Does Confluence not have public categories?

I’m a long time wiki user so not understanding the move in the first place but since I’m not doing the work anymore not my call. I have to assume it is for modernization / reorganization reasons?

7 Likes
#5

A justification for the migration to Confluence was that the wiki was “too hard” to use. Yet with this shiny new tool we’re not seeing a rush of content whose sole impediment was the wiki UI (which was indeed pretty bad with the inline raw editor but livable with the WYSIWYG editor that came along before Confluence).

Turns out that documentation is hard because almost no one actually likes to do tech writing - and when they do it tends to be on the likes of Google docs and other individual tools outside of the Space’s purview. Heck, I write technical-esque things regularly in my spare time - with neither a gun to my head nor the knowledge that a loved on is bound and gagged in the truck of a 1977 Mercury Cougar cruising the streets of Dallas (where either the potholes or the exhaust leak that Cougars of that era shipped from the factory with would lead to their demise) - and even I did not document as much as I could have when I was involved with DMS.

/peanut gallery

6 Likes
#6

The Wiki is your/my friend
Something from some number of years back.
One of the more frustrating problems w/ the Wiki is finding the info you need. Don’t know/remember the magical keyword from your last search - you may be at for long while. Another problem is the lack of organization. You just found what you’re looking for, but not anywhere near where you expected to. Add to this that just about anyone and their pet dog/cat can log in and add, move, edit, etc. creating a large mess of info.

Nuke the Wiki - No.
Move everything to new system - probably not.
Limit access to new system to read only - maybe, to edit - definitely.

There’s a lot of archival info in the Wiki. No longer applicable, but historical.
Probably the only historical docs on DMS.

2 Likes
#7

Similar to the longstanding lack of a WYSIWYG editor this is something that was fixed late in its life - I gather a cron job wasn’t running thus the search algorithm was using stale data.