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Features / Usability

Features / Usability


Setting up a Wiki to Publish & Collaborate on PhD work

posts: 7

I've been a "computer guy" for 35 years now - software application developer, dev manager, software engineer, technical communicator, now communication facilitator and consultant. I've also used various collaboration tools, including MediaWiki, Confluence and Sharepoint.

I'm starting on my dissertation in communications and electronic mediation (with influences/impacts in software technology, linguistics, psychology and cognitive science) and I want to do all my writing and collaboration with TikiWiki. (I'm sort of ashamed I didn't look at this product before - frankly, I'm floored.)

I'm looking for someone to help me make some early decision about structuring the whole thing. How to I handle academic references? How can I facilitate accurate searching for critical visitors? .... etc. And I've got some questions about importing stuff from existing databases.

It shouldn't take all that long to decide on all this, but I thought that getting a little help up front might be much more efficient than only experimenting. (If someone out there is game, I promise to return the favour to other newbies when the occasion arises. I became a tech-writer a while ago because I like transferring knowledge, in both directions.) I've already started the site on a publicly accessible server, but I'm not allowing unregistered visitors access until I've figured out what I want the public to see. I have created a read-only user profile for registered users and another for collaborators. So, if you decide to pitch in, I'll register you so you can see what I'm about.


posts: 7

Wow, Marc. Thanks. I had seen a bit about trackers but didn't realize how broadly applicable they are. Ok, so we create a "tracker" for references. Now, this is "social science", so the citations are a particular format, each instance manually entered and different depending on on the context. For example,

Gardiner tells us that "communications is not a system, but a facet of every system" (2005, p. 145).

-or-

"Communications is not a system, but a facet of every system" (Gardiner, 2005, p. 145).

Both of these are valid. What I would expect is that the citations (in parentheses) are links to a unique item in the References tracker. Is this reasonable to expect?

Then, in the tracker, it would be great if I could create an attribute (column in the table) that indicates whether or not a reference is actually cited. I want all my references in the database, but I ultimately won't cite them all.

Also, I'm looking at profiles and this definitely looks like the kind of thing that should be used, although I don't see one in the default list with my install (TW V3.1 using Fantastico on shared linux box) that is especially suitable. Part of the problem, is that I haven't finished understanding my own use case. Having attempted to organize this kind of info before, I'm making (what I consider to be) reasonable guesses, but flexibility is going to be the key. I love the idea of setting all this up and then keeping my configuration as an installable profile for others to use.

Tim


posts: 1630 Canada

So you could use plugin alias to do that. Please read docs and ask questions where it's not clear. It's a new feature, quite powerful, but not yet fully documented.

In the installer, only 4 profiles are promoted. But there are dozens more there.

Best regards,

M ;-)


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