[NeXus-committee] New wiki pages

[Ray Osborn]

Dear colleagues, 
For a while, I've been dissatisfied with the NeXus Swiki, which was useful
but had limited functionality.  I was also envious of the look of the DANSE
wiki, which uses the MediaWiki software.  I have therefore tried installing
it on our web server, and discovered that it has some extremely useful
functionality.

1) It allows user accounts, so we can require people to login before making
changes.  Anyone can create an account, so it doesn't really limit the free
flow of information.  It gives the user the ability to set up their own
watch pages, simple shortcut signatures, a page identifying their contact
details, etc.

2) It separates articles and discussions.  This is obviously based on the
Wikipedia requirements, where it is essential to keep them separate.  I
think it works well for NeXus as well.  You can write, for example, a white
paper on some new topic, and people can either edit the white paper and/or
post a comment on the attached discussion page.  This keeps the content from
becoming an incoherent mess.

3) I think it could take over from the web pages completely.  I have, in
fact, transferred most of the web pages to the wiki, which is very
attractively formatted, and produces automatic tables of contents.  The
transfer was remarkably easy - it took less than a day though some things
are still missing.  If people like it, it can become the NeXus web presence,
with the advantage that you can all help to correct inaccurate content and
add stuff that's missing.

I would request that everyone on the committee set up an account on the new
wiki and try it out.  You are then free to make whatever corrections you
find (but please post a comment on the discussion page when you do).  For
the time being, I will transfer corrections to the old web pages, but, as I
say, they may eventually be phased out altogether.

The wiki is at <http://www.nexus.anl.gov/mediawiki>.  Eventually,
'mediawiki' will get shortened to 'wiki', but we've had problems configuring
Apache aliases.

Best regards,
Ray 
-- 
Dr Ray Osborn                Tel: +1 (630) 252-9011
Materials Science Division   Fax: +1 (630) 252-7777
Argonne National Laboratory  E-mail: ROsborn at anl.gov
Argonne, IL 60439-4845