A YACS wiki is not a wiki
Missing basic wiki functionality
Problem has been recordedIssue description
The wikis I have tried (see those at opensourcecms.com for some top-notch ones), all have common features, the main one being use of CamelCode words or some other mechanism to create automatic links. When CamelCode is clicked on, it either jumps to an existing link or creates a new page with that title. There is usually a visual clue whether the page exists or not (color coding, italics, etc.)
It is this fast link that makes a wiki a wiki.
YACS does not have true wiki features and should not include this under Control Panel >Content Assistant.
Call it a 'collaboration' tool, but don't call it a wiki.
YACS does not have true wiki features and should not include this under Control Panel >Content Assistant.
Call it a 'collaboration' tool, but don't call it a wiki.
Comments
Bernard from nearby-an-airport Associate, 6796 posts |
You are right that YACS does not have this CamelCode. However, you can add a nick name to any page, and use the locator to jump to it. For example, type [go=forum] to link to the forum. And, actually, YACS goes beyond wikis since you can create a page without a CamelCode nor a nick name. For me, the core feature of a wiki is the ability to have several persons work at the same page.
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| Dae 4 posts |
In a true wiki, the pages are created when you click on a link that doesn't associate to an existing page. Using your example [go = forum] only works if the 'forum' page already exists. If it doesn't, then nothing happens. In Dokuwiki (for example) if I want to create a link to 'forum', I include [[forum]] somewhere on the page. If the 'forum' page exists, I have an automatic link. If not, when I click on the link, the wiki creates a new blank page, called 'forum' for me. |
| Bernard from nearby-an-airport Associate, 6796 posts |
Dae: My understanding it that for people around the most salient feature of a wiki is the ability to create or edit a page almost freely, with a comprehensive backup of intermediate versions. YACS does support all these, and more. I agree that with YACS, at the moment, you have to create a page before being able to reference it. Please note that the to do list for YACS mentions the capability for the page locator (in go.php) to create a new page where applicable, and this feature will pop up sooner or later. |
Rod 52 posts |
IMHO, CamelCase is a feature of some wikis, but not a requirement. In fact, some wikis I'm using now turn CamelCase off by default, because there is a lot of text (esp code snippets that use camel for var naming) that you don't want as links. On the other hand, I consider forward referencing non-existent pages a "gotta-have" for wiki use. It's the convenience of partitioning your information on the fly and referencing the future pages as you type that makes a wiki especially quick/productive for capturing information. Related to that, referencing the pages by title, and not numeric codes, is almost equally important. Finally, one feature that separates the really good wikis from the...um...less good wikis, is whether you can rename a page and all of the refs to that page are updated. Wikis that lack a "backward reference" to the pages that refer to them aren't able to support this feature. Imagine, if you realize a page has a really bad title, but you're faced with finding and fixing the 2 dozen pages that refer to it if you rename...that's not a good thing. All opinions IMHO, obviously. PS: Can't wait to try the yacs wiki, but I'm stuck on Home page error in 7.1 beta 
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| Bernard from nearby-an-airport Associate, 6796 posts |
Rod: in wikis pages are referenced by their titles, which make any change here a complex thing. With YACS any page can be referenced using either its id or its nick-name. Titles are used of course, but not to reference a page, and you can change it at any time without impact. I agree with you that YACS lacks a forward-referencing mechanism, and that this should be introduced shortly. Thank you for your comment on CamelCode. The bug you are experiencing won't appear in the 7.1 regular release, i hope... |
| Rod 52 posts |
Bernard: Based on schema I've worked on, correct backward referencing is always hard. Recently, I've been using the commercial wiki product from Atlassian called Confluence. Confluence has 2 features that really set it apart, and justify real $s for the product. First is the backward link consistency, as mentioned previously. The other is edit journaling. As you type in the wiki page form, Confluence is journaling your edits up to the server (xmlhttprequest, aka, ajax, I'm assuming). Have you ever started a form and switched to email, broke for dinner, and accidentally closed the window when you didn't mean to? Well, with Confluence the next time you visit or edit that page, you're alerted that there's an unfinished edit on the page and would you like to resume those edits or discard them. I've come back to pages I forgot I was editing 6 months ago and had it remember! Cool beans, IMHO. On the other hand, Confluence does not have any forum or maillist features, and those turn out to be really valuable when collaborating, to created a permanently logged multi threaded discussion. (Page comments don't have the threaded structure and don't cut it for, say, collaborative design docs on a wiki.) |
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Posted by Dae on Dec. 23 2006, commented by Rod on Feb. 14 2007, (popular)
