The Wheels of Progress Begin to Turn

summary:

the Wikidot team after working hard on Wikidot 2.0 is now much closer to community

The Wheels of Progress Begin to Turn

Gabrys 1210100349|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

The wheels of progress at Wikidot.com have begun to turn again — regarding everything from correcting simple spelling and grammar errors to fixing bugs. We're actively involved with the community to identify what needs to be fixed and brainstorm new features.

A Google Group has been set up as a temporary dev-list where we can talk about ways to improve Wikidot, how to fix bugs, and other such things.

Everyone is welcome to join. You can read the posts with your web browser or have them subscribed on your mailbox. This is not only a way to talk to us at Wikidot — but also a research project before implementing a new Wikidot feature — a mailing list.

Many bugs and other errors were fixed at Wikidot today. We've corrected many spelling mistakes suggested by our community. We've fixed a few configuration problems, especially the one that didn't allow you to upload files bigger than 8MB.

Sadly, we had to disable the workaround being used to IFRAME HTML and JavaScript documents into Wikidot pages. This was a security hole.

We understand how important it is to IFRAME HTML documents into your Wikidot pages. Therefore, we are now researching a way for this to work in a safe way for everyone.

There are still more bugs to fix, we're working on them! If you know of any, please report them on our Community Forum or our new Dev List.

Re: The Wheels of Progress Begin to Turn

maki 1210150649|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Congratulations on keeping up the good work!

I am perplexed about the Google group, though. Wikidot already has a community forum, what's the point of a Google group duplicating it?

I personally hate Google groups, they lack so many essential features. I would suggest you (I have actually already suggested this in the forum) to make use of a Wikidot topic at getsatisfaction.com instead of the Google group. A few advanatages to mention - a separate RSS feed for every single discussion; an option to mark issues as resolved; separate categories for ideas, problems and discussions; clicking on a user's avatar would show all posts by him; etc.

last edited on 1210150854|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover by maki + show more

Re: The Wheels of Progress Begin to Turn

Helmuti_pdorf 1210171831|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I think - the google group is only an intermediate solution for fast discussions between all people involved in many little or big decisions …

When the new Wikidot is working, than such solution will work inside wikidot itself on Site / Category / Page level. Controlled by normal admins.
The google group is not longer needed than.

last edited on 1210171873|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover by Helmuti_pdorf + show more

Re: The Wheels of Progress Begin to Turn

pieterh 1210241516|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

The Google group is a temporary solution and will be killed asap. We are designing a new collaborative framework that will replace forums and mailing lists and give us something that works nicely for issue tracking but also for all kinds of other work.

Re: The Wheels of Progress Begin to Turn

maki 1210263140|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Thanks, I am glad to hear that.

Re: The Wheels of Progress Begin to Turn

Sadr 1210335314|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

We're actively involved with the community to identify what needs to be fixed and brainstorm new features.

With all due respect, makers of Wikidot, the statement above is plain bullshit. A grave mistake was done when the .org-domain was put in use. It probably would have worked if you had directed the community appropriately, but you didn't.

An important question raised by me a long time ago, regarding whether or not Wikidot will eventually be possible to install on a shared hosting server just as easily as applications such as Wordpress can, my question still stands unanswered, after nearly a month. Nor is my question the only one that stands untouched. More people are asking for help around there, but there's no sign of the Wikidot staff making an effort to help. Please refrain from making such statements when it's so obvious that you can not back it up.

Re: The Wheels of Progress Begin to Turn

Helmuti_pdorf 1210350389|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Sorry, but I have to defend the developers here !

Last look at what's hot:

• all users: 124681
• new users last 24h: 599

• If every one call for help with an important question the team is overloaded on an unbelievable way…
• if the development is not hosted on a different domain (with second login) than there will me more confusion within the security as now.
• If the questions ask for help and not for a new feature because someone needs exact this the people get help from the community now and not really from the developers.

Who wants to help:

• go to wikidot.org and gets membership ( you are not member today? Why ?) . Some of the members of the community site are members here too.
• and who wants to contribute signs the legal requironments for this and send it to the wikidot support for security reasons.

Intresting is till today that the number of people who wants to help (from the 124.681 ) are not soo much…

Or you can make your own wiki farm (as hartnell did it himself ) and can make it better - it is open source.

I believe a such big project growing from a private form of "hack" to a big collaboration managment needs exact this:
an excellent management.
And who pays for this managment? If nobody does than such (social) project needs time.
I understand your frustration if you need a fast decision where to go with your plans - but exact this question is not so easy to answer from private persons who have other problems too and can only implement one solution after the other. Never forget the people behind wikidot(.inc) have another life too; and work to do; and family…

Re: The Wheels of Progress Begin to Turn

Gabrys 1210450478|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I could bet I have answered such a question (will Wikidot be easily installable on shared- or Windows-hosting service).

The short answer is NO.

The Wikidot is MUCH BIGGER and MUCH MORE POWERFUL than any software that is easily installable on shared-hosting service. It needs some special server configuration though.

The installation process is described in a point-by-point way and everyone is encouraged to identify points that are not fitting to shared-hosting environment and MAKE AN EFFORT to let it work better. Asking without understanding is not worth anything. Asking with understanding and a will to help IS.

Re: The Wheels of Progress Begin to Turn

Sadr 1210611939|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Ehm, I usually ask to understand, but maybe that's just me. You provided me with many more concise, definite answers this time Gabrys; your last reply confused me, which is why I kept on inquiring. Thanks for the final reply, I get it now.

This probably means I won't be able to make Wikidot part of my future project, but we'll see. You've got an excellent piece of software that will be of great use to many I'm sure. Best of luck to ya'all!