MeatballForWikiResearchers

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Welcome to MeatballWiki, one of the earliest OnlineCommunities of practitioners and researchers dedicated to discussing WikiPractices (see MeatballBackgrounder). We encourage you to contribute here, but before doing so, you should explore and get a feel for the way MeatballWiki operates. MeatballMission lists our main goals and values.

MeatballWiki currently contains 4000+ pages "about wiki" organized in accordance with ChristopherAlexander's unfolding theory to strengthen existing centers instead of creating new ones from scratch. In our work, it is important to build off of each other and minimize ReinventingTheWheel.

MeatBall customs

MeatballWiki is powered by a heavily-modified version of UseModWiki. See TextFormattingRules for details on the wiki syntax, and use the SandBox to practice.
MeatballForWikipedians describes some differences between MeatballWiki and WikiPedia culture and practices.
UseRealNames, or PostAnonymously; don't use a PenName. There is no name-signing code. Simply type your name in CamelCase. To "register" your user name, simply create a personal page for yourself.
Efficient use of RecentChanges and RSS: write a summary that allows the reader to judge whether the contribution is interesting to him, hide corrections by using "minor edit".
See also WikiCooperationArticle, BrainstormMode, and RefactorMercilessly?.

We hope you enjoy contributing to MeatballWiki, and find it a conducive place to discover, discuss and share patterns related to WikiResearch.

Discussion

I'm also going to try to set up something like what this page is doing on WikiVersity, Wikimedia's latest project. I envisage this to include a LearningCommunity of people interested in doing research in general - and another one specifically on wikis. We need to establish what form research on Wikiversity will take, but I would like to see these communities doing and publishing original research on Wikiversity itself. It would be great for these two groups (Meatball and Wikiversity) to work together on methodologies, projects, ideas, etc. - I'll try to keep you posted. Cheers. --CormacLawler

: I think a collaboration would be a good idea. Meatball is a kind of research community and any community concept, development or exploration is clearly on topic. MeatBall is already a LearningCommunity (but focused in many ways), a goal that WikiVersity shares. The question is whether the WikiVersity contributors will be inclined to use MeatBall for their meta-meta-topics. -- HelmutLeitner

I have sought in vain for a few weeks how to produce a collaborative report with the Wiki. To find a solution for this question would solve a significant part of the topic of the advantageous use of Wiki for the elaboration of a document by a team of researchers and collaborators. To tell the truth that would be useful each time one seeks to produce structured documents like courses, university work, legal texts, etc.

For the moment Wiki finds its main success in Wikipédia. The reason for me is that Wikipédia is a network of relatively short & synthetic articles. But what to do when one wants to write on the same co-operative mode long, structured by themes, sections and sub-sections texts ? How to obtain a final text, resulting from collaborative work at the same time on the document structure and the sub-sections contents. A document that can be several dozen pages long and eventually saved anytime in a recognized format or published ?

If Lyx/latex is interesting its because it makes it possible to produce quasi-automatic structured text (section, sub-section, toc, index) and that it offers a neat page-setting for the publication... but it is not a collaborative system of wiki type. Wikinyg offers a usefull interface to write Wiki articles but we are here still related to the limits of the "article by article" wiki system. I did not fully study for the moment the possibilities offered by the Wikibooks style which make it possible to write a book by co-operation but they seem quite poor. Are they adapted to simply manage a project of structured document ?

To briefly describe this rare pearl I reproduce here a question written on Wikipédia forum.

I consider a new collaborative method for a collaborative text project. This project will be developped in 3 parts on the Wiki support:

A. Presentation & hierarchized set of themes

B. Rédaction and comments

C. final Text

A. On one hand a presentation of the project by themes. Each themes/topic represents in fact a section/chapitre of report project. (Example: "I Crisis in 30's" or "III. Chapter The New Deal politics"). In this set of themes category is listed the various under-parts according to their heading and their number. If necessary one can here modify the heading of each paragraphs and their classification/number (e.g. 2.1, 2.2, etc. "4.1 Costing", etc.)

B. Each sub-section is written in a single Wiki page which has the sub-section heading as title. Heading and classification originating for part A (e.g. [ I.23 the public Sale. ]) with:

1. An short description of [ideas/raw facts] to be formulated in the sub-section ;

2. One [ Drafting ] of the sub-section (e.g. [ the sale is authorized by the service of the County from January 15. Each week's days except Sunday. The exercise of this activity will not be contrary with the local by-law into force, etc. ]);

3. A part [ Comments ] justifying the use and the function of the key words used and comments proposing an alternative drafting of the sub-section. ("signicative alternate opinion and draftings" may eventually be displayed in a appendix text).

4. [references] which apears as foot-notes or appendix in final text. The sources and main Autors/contributors names for article should be noted.

C. A final text which gathers every [ Drafting ] each sub-section in the order of their number. This final text is in mode "read only", it should not be modified directly but only sub-section by sub-section in their respective page.

To summarize:

Part A represents the structure of the project, sections and the number/heading of the sub-sections. The part B represents the contents sub-section by sub-section with a possibility to modify the text of each sub-section by justifying the proposed changes. The part C is the final text which represents the synthesis of parts A and B. To finalize this method of presentation it is necessary that part C act as a template which registers the contents [ drafting ] of each sub-section from part B by organizing them according structure of themes (sections/chapitres) and sub-section entitled and indexed in part A. In parallel A transmits a subtitle and an order of classification (number/heading) (2.3, 2.4, etc.) for each sub-section/page in part B. Eventually Part B may feed back Part A with new sub-sub-section titles and numbers. And finally each text of the part B appears at its own place in the final text of the part C.

Is it possible to find the wiki codes to use and the instructions to follow to obtain such result ? If not may programmers consider the question for an user-friendly application ?

DavidLedormeur

this topic began january 8th 2007 on french page MeatballPourWikiChercheurs

CategoryWikiResearch CategoryInterCommunity CategoryAcademia