Draft: Wiki Proposal

The current wiki is running Twiki 4.0.1; the new wiki will run Twiki 4.0.5. The default templates on the new wiki are CSS-based, and we'll be updating the look-and-feel to be based on the new default templates.

Goal Our goal is to try and have people pointing to the new wiki before the Preview launch dates. This will help make things easier for people outside the organization to find the most recent information when running searches on the wiki (and in Google).

The following options have been proposed:

• Option 1: Copy all and migrate all the existing files over, ask everyone to go through and deprecate old pages which are no longer useful.
  • Pros: Might be easier to access an older files when mapping files to the new sections. Very easy for Jared to migrate the files. People can take thier time to depricate their old files.
  • Cons: People can take thier time to depricate their old files which may not help the goal of the wiki update which is to help ppl find the most recent information on the wiki. May take a long time to migrate all the files over to the new server. Currently there are about 5000 pages, ~3500 are in Journal

• Option 2: Start completely fresh. Perhaps even to use a different wiki. Link back to the old wiki site, but as a read-only view. The old wiki site will not be maintained, only one wiki will be 'in production'.
  • Pros: This would pretty much guarantee the most current information. Additional plugs in may be available which is not on on Twiki.
  • Cons: There is a need to preserve how decisions were made and a lot of that information is in the current wiki. There may also be migration issues moving old Twiki files to another wiki application ie. Trac. There is also a learning curve for the organization to use the new wiki application.

• Option 3: Copy only selected pages over. Link back to the old wiki site, but as a read-only view. So if people would want to move a page over to the new wiki after migration, they would have to create a new page on the new Twiki. Once again only one wiki site is in production and maintained.
  • Pros: Migrating files may be very fast as there may not be as many pages as migrating the enitire wiki over.
  • Cons: Getting a list of important pages from everyone may take time and difficult to coordinate.

Our current proposed plan of action:

• The wiki team will be working on new templates, layout and sections based on the taxonomy work by Ted/Mimi: http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/WikiReTaxonomy

It should be noted (outside the proposal) that these designs need refreshing as well. Scooby is gone, Cosmo is based on Hibernate and Dojo now, there's no mention of a hosted service. These pages were generated by asking teams for analysis of their respective areas; we need to determine whether the exercise will be repeated, whether a team lead will be asked to review, or whether these top-level pages will be mplemented as-is and then fixed once they are up and easy to review.

-- JaredRhine

• We're deciding to go with option #1: Copy all the wiki pages and migrate all the existing files over to the new server. Excluding some obvious sections ie. trash, other pages which are deprecated.
• Locate all the important pages and map them to the new hierarchy. ie. Journal to Notes section, some sections in 'Projects' need to be moved to the new 'Planning' section.
• Ask everyone to do some wiki gardening on their own sections and deprecate any pages which are no longer relevant.
• Send out a last call to review any last wiki pages left on the old wiki site.
• The plan is to only have a single wiki in production, so after the defined 'cut-off' date all the old content will be available under the new UI.
• Continue to follow up with more wiki pruning into 2007 as needed.

Timeline

• We're working towards December to update the framework and look-and-feel, then a second round in 2007-Q1 for final wiki pruning.

-- PriscillaChung - 17 Nov 2006